U.S. Report Details What Iraq Was Doing As War Neared
Saddam Hussein was a delusional, paranoid megalomaniac who believed his army was the strongest in the Middle East.
But in the months before the invasion of Iraq, he didn’t want to fight the United States. Nor did he believe that he would have to, mistakenly believing that France and Russia would come to his aid, according to a new report from the U.S. Joint Forces Command, an unclassified version of which was released Friday.
The report gives the U.S. military “what we would call a balanced, holistic view of a battlefield cause and effect,” said Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani Jr., vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Using interviews with former Iraqi officials and seized government documents, the report makes the case that right up to March 19, 2003 when U.S.-led air forces attacked Baghdad Saddam was more concerned about internal threats than about massing American troops.
As late as the end of 2002, officials in Saddam’s Baath Party reported that Saddam ordered his military to “keep the internal situation under control” to prevent uprisings and attempts to overthrow him. This despite that Saddam knew U.S. officials were trying to sway Iraqi generals to cooperate in the impending invasion, the report noted.
“America is a complicated country,” Saddam is quoted in the report as saying. “Understanding it requires a politician’s alertness that is beyond the intelligence community _ that is my specialty.”
The 200-plus-page report, titled “Iraqi Perspectives Project,” reads like a behind-the-scenes study of Iraqi government miscalculation and incompetence during the buildup to the war.
Written mainly by defense analyst Kevin M. Woods, the report cites a classified intelligence document that determined that “the single most important elements in his strategic calculus was his faith that France, Germany and Russia would prevent the United States from invading Iraq.”
But perhaps the most dramatic tidbit of new information _ mentioned only briefly in the report with few details _ concerns Russia’s role in the critical weeks leading up to war.
The report cites Russian intelligence to the Iraqi regime warning that U.S. forces “were moving to cut off Baghdad from the south, east and north.”
It said that Americans would “concentrate on bombing in and around Baghdad,” and that the assault on Baghdad was not likely to begin until around April 15, 2003. In fact, Baghdad fell and Saddam’s statue was toppled on April 9.
The report does not assess how useful the Russian intelligence was to Iraq.
“I was surprised,” Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Cucolo of Joint Forces Command said when asked about the Russians’ role. “You bet.”
The report, two years in the making, was the first of its kind since the fall of the Nazi regime following World War II. “We call it a contemporary historical analysis,” Cucolo said. “This is what Joint Forces can bring to the fight: an ability to stand off, do analysis and try to turn … lessons learned in a unique manner back into the force.”
The classified version of the report is being taught in the Joint Forces Staff College, in part because it helps troops understand the enemy.
It can be hard for western military officials to understand the fear-driven culture Saddam created to quell his own paranoia, Cucolo said.
It was a paranoia that at times reached levels of absurdity and was “something to behold,” Woods said.
For example, in 2001 the Iraq General Security Directorate told Saddam that the Pokemon cartoon character in Hebrew meant “I am Jewish” and “represented a subterfuge by international Zionism to undermine Iraq’s security,” according to the report.
Saddam thought his military was supremely powerful and supported by God, and he viewed as proof his success in his war against Iran. He thought Iraq’s military could “pursue (the Americans) until they lose their nerve and until they lose hope,” the report noted.
By 2002, he viewed Iran and the possibility of a coup as his chief dangers _ not the coalition’s invasion, the Americans’ tank-led run to Baghdad or his capture.
Many Iraqi leaders knew what would happen if the Americans invaded but were afraid to say anything. Iraqis at all levels, the report said, “understood that in this regime the bearer of bad news was in almost every case punished severely.”
Iraqi military professionals were not surprised at U.S. actions at all, said Iraqi Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed Al Hamed Al-Tai.
“We knew what preparations were not done properly,” the defense minister added. “Even if we had a real defense, we wouldn’t have stopped the Americans, but we would have made the price greater.”
For years, Iraq’s military leaders lied to Saddam about his army’s capabilities and the “special” weapons they would have at their disposal. They didn’t exist, despite weapon-production reports created for him.
When the Bush administration made the case for war in 2003, the principle reason most often given was Iraq’s alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Those weapons were never found.
While Saddam hoped to avoid war by convincing the United States that he no longer possessed such weapons, he also was leery of admitting as much for fear of being portrayed as vulnerable in the volatile Middle East.
Still, commanders praised Saddam’s leadership even when he made decisions, such as invading Kuwait, without the advice of his ministers, according to the report.
“Directly disagreeing with Saddam Hussein’s ideas was unforgivable,” an unnamed senior minister said when interviewed for the report. “It would be suicide.”
Literally.
Fearful of being overthrown by Iraqis, Saddam appointed family members he believed he could trust as well as incompetent men to key leadership positions. It was a move that in many ways helped set the country up for failure during the invasion.
“My working for Qusay Hussein was a mistake,” Iraq’s minister of defense said of Saddam’s militarily inexperienced son and leader of the Republican Guard. “Qusay knew nothing. He understood only simple military things like a civilian. We prepared information and advice for him and he’d accept it or not.”
That Saddam set training standards made it even easier for U.S. forces, according to the report.
In 2002, according to the report, Saddam issued an order to “train all units’ members in swimming. Train your soldiers to climb palm trees so that they may use those places for navigation and sniper shooting. And train on smart weapons,” among other tactics.
Saddam reportedly had copies of the movie “Blackhawk Down” _ based on a U.S. operation in Somalia where 18 Americans were killed _ issued to his lieutenants with the order to use the film to study U.S. tactics. The film also served as one of many examples of what Saddam mistakenly interpreted as America’s historical lack of will to fight.
Saddam argued that America pulled out of Vietnam after more than 58,000 troops were killed in action _ nearly as many as Iraq had lost in a single battle against Iran. He also believed in American weakness because the U.S. government didn’t, in his view, retaliate forcefully after a reported Iraqi plot to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush in 1994.
And while the United States was able to push Iraqi forces out of Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Saddam maintained that his regime performed honorably, running away like “lions.”
“He thought that this war would not lead to this end,” said Tariq Aziz, Iraq’s former foreign minister.
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