Posted on 02/13/2004 5:42:36 PM PST by mylife
Secret interrogations reveal a complacent dictator before US attack.
Saddam's big mistakes.
He believed a casualty-averse White House would only order a bombing campaign that Iraq could withstand Iraqi defence ministry believed that any ground offensive would come across the border with Jordan WASHINGTON - A complacent Saddam Hussein was so convinced that war would be averted or that America would mount only a limited bombing campaign that he deployed the Iraqi military to crush domestic uprisings rather than defend against a ground invasion, according to a classified log of interrogations with captured Iraqi leaders and former officers.
Saddam believed that a 'casualty-averse' White House would order a bombing campaign that Iraq could withstand, according to the secret report, prepared for the Pentagon's most senior leadership and dated Jan 26.
And the Iraqi Defence Ministry, in a grand miscalculation, believed that any ground offensive would come across the border with Jordan.
The study, a rough-draft history of the war from the perspective of Iraqi leaders, offers a scathing history of a Stalinist, paranoid leadership circle in Baghdad that guaranteed its own destruction.
The interrogations yielded a portrait of a government disconnected from reality in peace and in war, where members of Saddam's inner circle routinely lied to him and each other about Iraqi military capacities.
The findings were described by senior Defence Department officials and military officers at the Pentagon and in the Middle East who have read it or who have been briefed on its contents.
The interrogations also reveal flaws in the Pentagon's pre-war operations, particularly the information campaign to demoralise and sway Iraqis - from commanders to foot soldiers.
Two of the most celebrated US information operations - a campaign in which Arabic speakers working for the US government called private telephone numbers of senior Iraqi officials, and the massive leaflet drops onto ground and air-defence forces - failed to convince Iraqis to desert or join the Americans, according to the detainees.
Even so, both campaigns scored unanticipated successes, these Iraqis revealed during their interrogations.
When a wave of calls went out to the private telephone numbers of specially selected officials inside Iraq, asking them to turn against Saddam and avoid war, the Arabic speakers making the calls were so fluent that the recipients of the calls did not believe they were Americans.
Instead, the Iraqis believed the calls were part of a brutal 'loyalty test' mounted by Saddam's own secret services, these officials said during questioning.
Afraid of arrest, incarceration, torture and even death, they refused to cooperate.
But as a result, the officers limited their calls or stopped using those telephones altogether, hampering their own ability to communicate in the critical days before the war.
That WAS the CLINTON years Bro!
New DOG in da HOUSE!
First is that any dictatorship will fold due to the dictator being told what he wants to hear, not what he needs to hear. Second, paranoia is more lethal than a bullet if it is used in control of domestic resources. A secret police is not very useful in the long haul.
This entire decade plus, containing both Iraqi conflicts needs to be studied ad nauseum.
Never underestimate ones enemies capabilities!
There is much that that sick bastard knew about the Arab populace and it's behavior when nobody is looking, especially when the lights go out.
Saddam's preparations in dealing with his biggest enemy were aimed at his populace and not his agressors. That may be awfully telling in months and years to come in the domestic hell inside Iraq.
A civilized democracy to that bunch of twisted thugs is like Shakespear to pigs.
It may end up that reality is that it takes a Saddam to govern an Islamic nation.
The Clinton Legacy
The world will be a safer place if it understands that the word "limited" is not in our military dictionary.
My children understand that rule when it comes to breaking the laws of our house. They just don't do it.
Cockroach that he was, same behavior.
It may end up that reality is that it takes a Saddam to govern an Islamic nation.
Let's hope not.
Bttt
Fear of the enemy within and arrogant condescension toward the enemies without are standard fair for dictators throughout history.
Nice analogy 8^). I'm starting to come to the same conclusion myself.
I only see a Balkanization of Iraq as any sort of solution to government. Each sect as semi-autonomous with a parliment as a central government.
These fools have been chewing on each others short hairs for centuries. They still use the same books as reference material, and go to the same school.
What we need there is a string of natural disasters and an outside enemy that all the sects in Iraq hate to pose a constant but stalled threat to it's future. Maybe Turkey?
We need some Bogey Man to rally the sects away from killing each other and instead rally to each others commonality.
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