The Redhunter

• Saddam set up an intricate and complicated set of organizations which spent their time spying on each other. Some even developed paramilitary capabilities. Saddam’s primary objective was to prevent a coup, and everything in this vast bureaucracy was devoted to this goal. His security restrictions severely degraded the military’s ability to defend the country from external threats. For example, because Saddam believed that officers might plot against him, units were forbidden to communicate directly with each other. In another example is that only a few units were allowed to have maps of Baghdad.

• The primary reason why Saddam thought that the United States would not attack with ground forces was his faith that Russia and France would intervene on his behalf. Their economic interests in his country, he believed, was so great that they would use their vetoes in the Security Council to prevent US action.

• Saddam knew how much the US relied on, indeed believe in, the power and effectiveness of air power. He also knew how much we hated American casualties. He therefore thought that we would hit him with air strikes on 2003 but there would be no ground invasion.

• Worst case, Saddam thought we might occupy southern Iraq. He held onto this view well into OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom).

My Take

A western reader comes away with an overwhelming sense of waste and inefficiency after reviewing this chapter. We often or usually regard our own governments as inept in many respects, but they are models of perfection compared to that of Ba'athist Iraq. We didn't so much defeat the Iraqi military as did Saddam.

To a large extent I can understand Saddam's belief that we would not invade. After all, we "ran way" after taking what were to him insignificant casualties in Vietnam, Beirut, and Somalia. We could have easily gone all the way to Baghdad at the end of the Gulf War but did not.

But while this may have made sense in the 1990s, it no longer held true after September 11. As was made clear in Chapter I (Part II of this series), Saddam never understood the impact that day had on Americans.

Further, once resolution 1441 passed the Security Council in November of 2002, only someone completely deluded could not see that the Americans were serious this time. Yet Saddam would still not come clean with his WMD programs. It is clear now that all he had to do was open up completely, and all inspectors would find (at least in late 2002/early 2003) was ready-to-go production facilities; bad, but not a caus belli.

If World War II was, as Churchill said, the most preventable war in history, then the Operation Iraqi Freedom was the most telegraphed. Yet Saddam refused to believe the evidence mounting before his eyes. And now he is on trial for his life, which is just where he belongs.