Pentagon: Russia Gave Saddam U.S. Intel

WASHINGTON - The Russian government provided Saddam Hussein with intelligence on U.S. military movements and plans during the opening days of the war in 2003, according to a Pentagon report released Friday.

The unclassified report does not assess the value of the information or provide details beyond citing an Iraqi document that says the battlefield intelligence was provided to Saddam through the Russian ambassador in Baghdad.

A classified version of the Pentagon report, titled "Iraqi Perspectives Project," is not being made public.

Whether by chance or design, one piece of Russian intelligence actually contributed to an important U.S. military deception effort. By telling Saddam that the main attack on Baghdad would not begin until the Army's 4th Infantry Division arrived around April 15, the Russians reinforced an impression that U.S. commanders were trying to create to catch the Iraqis by surprise.

The attack on Baghdad began well before the 4th Infantry arrived, and the Saddam regime collapsed quickly.

As originally planned by Gen. Tommy Franks, the Central Command chief who ran the war, the 4th Infantry was to attack into northern

Iraq from Turkey, but the Turkish government refused to go along. Meanwhile the 4th Infantry's tanks and other equipment remained on ships in the eastern Mediterranean for weeks — a problem that Franks sought to turn into an advantage by assaulting Baghdad without them.

Based on a captured Iraqi document — a memo to Saddam from his Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dated April 2 — Russian intelligence reported through its ambassador that the American forces were moving to cut off Baghdad from the south, east and north, with the heaviest concentration of troops in the Karbala area. It said the Americans had 12,000 troops in the area, along with 1,000 vehicles.

In fact, Karbala was a major step on the U.S. invasion route along the Euphrates River to Baghdad. The Karbala assault was launched April 1. A key bridge over the Euphrates, near Karbala, was seized on April 2, permitting U.S. forces to approach Baghdad from the southwest before Iraq could move sufficient forces from the north.

The Pentagon report also said the Russians told the Iraqis that the Americans planned to concentrate on bombing in and around Baghdad, cutting the road to

Syria and Jordan and creating enough confusion to force Baghdad residents to flee.

The Pentagon report, designed to help U.S. officials understand in hindsight how Saddam and his military commanders prepared for and fought the war, paints a picture of an Iraqi regime blind to the threat it faced from the U.S. invaders, hamstrung by Saddam's inept military leadership and deceived by its own propaganda.

"The largest contributing factor to the complete defeat of Iraq's military forces was the continued interference by Saddam," the report said.

U.S. officials believed Iraq would set its oil wells on fire as part of a scorched-earth policy, and the invasion plan was constructed in ways meant to get U.S. troops to the southern oil wells before they could be torched.

The new report said, however, that while captured Iraqi documents show that there were plans made at the regional or local level to destroy the northern and southern oil wells, Saddam had expressly forbidden it.

Thanks for that link, taking a step back in time:

After June 30 (2004) , what next in Iraq?

***********************************AN EXCERPT***********************

By Lea Mae Rice
United Press International

Washington, DC, Jun. 22 (UPI) -- In less than a week Iraq will reclaim its sovereignty, but this does not mean the end of U.S. involvement. Like it or not, the United States is stuck there for years, and will continue to feel the burden of its actions.

Daniel P. Serwer, Director of Peace and Stability Operations at the United States Institute of Peace, told United Press International that the U.S. campaign in Iraq has been marked by "too little planning, too little experience and knowledge of local situations, too little attention to security issues. Maybe a bit too much money, maybe a bit too much talking and not enough listening."

Newsweek writer Eleanor Clift, in a phone interview, characterized the U.S. occupation in Iraq as "a dismal failure."

Brookings Institute foreign policy scholar Michael O'Hanlon is not particularly optimistic either. In a paper written for a June 16 conference on the U.S. in Iraq, he stated that the security situation and Iraqi attitudes toward America are "simply not promising."

"We must view Iraq as a genuine strategic crisis of our day, not just a problem that can be solved with a little more patience and a few more resources, as much recent Bush administration commentary would seem to suggest," said O'Hanlon.

Serwer told UPI that Iraq is better off now than it was a year ago. But the country's fragile situation requires the United States to remain there at least until the new government is established and Iraqi security is tighter.

"The new government needs protection, and doesn't have anyone to give it to them," he said. "This is a fundamental problem of the future."

Security is the most important issue for Iraqis -- even more so than the economy, said Jeremy Rosner, senior vice president of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Inc. and former senior staffer in the National Security Council during the Clinton administration.

"We're being looked to as the primary way to sustain a secure environment," he said in a phone interview. Pulling out of Iraq is an option favored by a slim minority of Americans at this point, the pollster said.

If the role of the United States in Iraq all comes down to security, how will this "fundamental problem" be solved? What is the role of the United States now, and what will it be after June 30?

"We need to be guarantors that whatever constitution is enacted would be followed," American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Rubin told UPI. "Our goal should be to make sure that Iraq stays secure from external enemies and, at the same time, that no general with a gun takes over the government."

When asked how long the United States should remain in Iraq, Rubin defined "how long" two different ways: the amount of time U.S. troops should occupy the state ("as short as possible"), and the amount of time the United States should remain in Iraq in a non-military capacity ("I think we're talking years").

**********************************************

See link for the rest of the article.....brings back memories.....MSM still talking the same game!

While Saddam disastrously miscalculated, the U.S. military also erred in areas beyond the well-known failure to realize that the Baghdad regime had no weapons of mass destruction, according to the 210-page report.
U.S. officials believed Iraq would set its oil wells on fire as part of a scorched-earth policy, and the invasion plan was constructed in ways meant to get U.S. troops to the southern oil wells before they could be torched.

Now I see. Bush lied about the burning oil fields too but it was because his Generals made the huge mistake of not reading Saddam's mind before they launched their attacks.

It is appropriate that AP is "Associated" with Yahoo. They are just a bunch of yahoos themselves.

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