Posted on 03/12/2006 8:09:38 AM PST by Valin
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein's fear of internal rebellion led him to distrust his military commanders even after U.S. forces began their invasion in 2003, crippling the country's defenses, the New York Times reported in Sunday editions.
Citing a classified U.S. military report as well other documents and interviews, the Times also said that top Iraqi commanders were shocked when Saddam told them three months before the war that he had no weapons of mass destruction.
Prepared nearly a year ago, the classified military report shows that Saddam discounted the possibility of a full-scale American invasion, the Times said.
Two weeks into the war, Saddam and a small circle of aides remained convinced that the main threat came from within, leading him to deny a commander's request to blow up the Euphrates river bridge to slow the U.S. advance, the report said.
His main concern over a possible American military strike was that it might prompt the Shi'ites to take up arms against his Sunni-led government, it quoted Tariq Aziz, the former Iraqi deputy prime minister, as telling interrogators.
"He thought they (the United States) would not fight a ground war because it would be too costly" in terms of casualties, Aziz was quoted as saying.
To collect the material, U.S. military analysts questioned more than 110 Iraqi officials and military officers, sometimes posing as military historians and treating officials to lavish dinners to pry loose their secrets. Others were interrogated in a detention center at the Baghdad airport or Abu Ghraib prison, the Times reported.
The accounts, it said, were viewed as credible because they were largely consistent.
After the invasion began, Saddam continued to make crucial decisions himself, and relied on his sons for military counsel, the Times said. It said his military leaders were demoralized to learn there were no WMDs, as they were counting on stocks of poison gas or germ warfare for defense.
The report also said that Saddam put a general considered to be an incompetent drunk in charge of the elite Republican Guard because he considered him to be loyal. It said commanders were in some cases banned from communicating with other units and were unable to get maps of areas near the airport because those would have disclosed the locations of Saddam's palaces.
NYT and Reuters make for a suspect article. I would rather see the raw report first.
Remember in dictatorships loyality to the leader is more important than competence.
BTW if you do run across it (the raw report) could you let me know? Thanks
" the Times also said that top Iraqi commanders were shocked when Saddam told them three months before the war that he had no weapons of mass destruction.."
"NYT and Reuters make for a suspect article. I would rather see the raw report first."
I am with you on that bit right there, too much has been released saying the opposite of that
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1594805/posts
Posted by demlosers On News/Activism 03/11/2006 10:10:33 PM CST · 21 replies · 839+ views
(Reuters) - Saddam Hussein's fear of internal rebellion led him......
There is some truth here. Saddam knew that his commanders were getting phone calls at 0300 telling them that we knew where they were hiding themselves and that they better think really fast about what could happen to them. He also knew where the calls were coming from. Nuff said.
There is also a lot of Bravo Sierra in the article as well.
Doesn't make sense. - With the American armies sweeping to Bagdad, slowed only by a sandstorm, how could he think that not impeding our advance would make him more secure?
Something doesn't add up.
Saddam's loyalty requirements were too draconian to earn real trust of his military.
Notice that RUETERS conveniently leaves out that the WMD have BEEN REMOVED from the country months prior to the US led invasion!!!!
What I noticed is that much of this is from a classified report. Who leaked that report and is it supposed to still be classified? This looks like one more occasion when we need to really slam down on people working within our government and acting treasonously.
The point I tried to make on the thread yesterday.
Especially since we have Saddam on tapes saying he did have WMD and discussing how to hide them and/or get them out of Iraq.
Reuters and NYT are trying to pre-empt what's coming out about these tapes. They're getting their lies out there ahead of the truth, or trying to. We can't let them get away with this--time to start writing letters and making phone calls, folks.
More important, was it classified by the US, or was it created out of whole cloth ala CBS?
Don't know and with that it looks like the leftist press might well have confected a way to say whatever they want, so long as the official sources remain silent on the matter.
Of course, the idea could also be to bait the officials to make a statement they would otherwise have kept entirely unknown, which to me is yet one more good reason to take these traitors out, line them up and deal with the worst ones summarily.
freepmail
The lies by the left are just sickening. It's about time the administration and Republicans start fighting back.
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