The Redhunter

March 25, 2008

Iraqi Perspectives Project - Saddam and Terrorism - Tied to Terror

Over at National Review's military blog The Tank, Steve Schippert is taking the msm to task for their misreporting on the latest release by the Iraqi Perspectives Report, Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents . As I discussed in my initial post on the report, much of the media was obsessing on a single sentence which supposedly "proved" that there was no connection between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda, and so by implication "Bush Lied" and the war is unjust.

From Schippert's post

It's no different from, nor unrelated to, the widely disseminated assertion that Saddam's Iraq had "no ties" to al-Qaeda. Both statements are bogus. Both are lazy. And both, more often than not, consciously or unconsciously, result from politically motivated preconceptions that are wrong but difficult to dispel in the minds of the irretrievably convinced...

The job of distilling major reports that are too lengthy and time-consuming for most to digest in full still falls largely on the established media. Yet the media's sorry secret is that precious few among them do actually read and distill the major works, such as the recent Iraqi Perspectives Report. Most often, reporters scan the executive summary, latch onto a passage that fits their particular personal idiom, and craft a column peppered with almost random background notes and the names of the political figures of choice....

Here's a starting point. Before anyone writes another word on the Iraq Perspectives Project report, read it.

In fact you have to do is download and read the Executive Summary to know that 1) Saddam had many links to al Qaeda, even if they were informal ones, and 2) he was a major state sponsor of terror, because there are certainly more terrorist groups on this earth that al Qaeda.

But Schippert is certainly right about last December's National Intelligence Estimate. I downloaded and read it, and what I read bore little resemblance to media reports. See here and here. And I read in its entirety the original Iraqi Perspectives Report. Go to the sidebar under "Categories" and select "Iraqi Perspective Project" to see my chapter-by-chapter posts.

When it was first released only the Executive Summary was posted for downloading, and you had to order the rest as a 5 CD set. Due to public demand the United States Joint Forces Command has posted the whole thing online at the link above.

I haven't gone through it all yet, but today's Washington Times has an excellent editorial on it. Obviously they have actually read it.

Newly declassified documents captured in Iraq show that Saddam Hussein's regime had extensive ties with a variety of Islamist and other terrorist groups, in some cases dating back to the early 1990s. Saddam's Iraqi Intelligence Service (or Mukhabarat) established a working relationship with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, whose leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, later merged the group with al Qaeda, according to a new report by the Institute for Defense Analyses. In addition, the Mukhabarat trained scores of non-Iraqi Arabs to attack Israel. The new report contains copies of captured Iraqi documents that provide what may be the most detailed picture ever of Baghdad's support for terrorism.

Few stories in recent memory have been as badly misreported by the mainstream media. News outlets -- including The Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN and ABC --all issued reports earlier this month declaring that the IDA report showed no link between Saddam and al Qaeda. While the report does say that there was no direct operational link between the two, its most significant new disclosure may be evidence of ties between Zawahri's EIJ and Saddam's regime. A 1993 memo from Iraqi intelligence to Saddam says that Iraq had aided the Egyptian group previously and was restarting contacts with the goal of overthrowing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's government. Two other Iraqi memos included in the IDA report describe the EIJ's terrorist bona fides, including its assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981 and emphasize the importance of training and financing that group. Zawahri, who is believed to be in hiding with Osama bin Laden, is on the FBI's most-wanted-terrorism list for his role in the Sept. 11 attacks and the August 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

In fact, the al Qaeda connection only scratches the surface of Saddam's terrorist ties. As Rowan Scarborough reported in this newspaper on Friday, the IDA report reveals that Saddam provided millions of dollars and arms to Palestinian terror groups and trained Palestinians in Iraqi terror camps. Saddam's security service maintained representatives in the West Bank and Gaza, who met with Hamas founder Ahmad Yassin and conveyed his military needs to Baghdad. Another terrorist who found refuge in Baghdad was Abu Abbas, a leader of the Palestine Liberation Front, who engineered the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. The documents show that Abbas served as Saddam's conduit for meetings with Hamas. Coalition forces captured Abbas in 2003 as he attempted to flee to Syria. Abbas died of natural causes while in custody the following year.

The IDA report also includes translations of Iraqi Intelligence Service documents that describe efforts to destabilize other Arab governments, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and the regime's campaign to kill humanitarian aid workers operating in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. The study also reveals that on Sept. 17, 2001, Saddam gave orders to his military intelligence directorate to recruit Iraqi officers to conduct "suicide operations" against the United States.

Posted by Tom at 8:00 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

March 17, 2008

Iraqi Perspectives Project - Saddam and Terrorism - The Bush Administration

Yesterday I introduced the latest report from the Iraqi Perspectives Project (IPP); Saddam and Terrorism. I'll have more about it in later posts, but for now I wanted to discuss something else; the state of the Bush Administration and why they let this report get portrayed in a negative light.

And unless you only read right-wing blogs, it has been portrayed negatively. Many or most press reports have fixated on a single sentence in the Executive Summary, whereby the authors said that "This study found no 'smoking gun' (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda." Smugly satisfied that this alone "proved" that "Bush lied", they blithely ignored the rest of the report. As I illustrated yesterday, that single sentence proved nothing of the sort, and even a casual perusal of the rest of the report showed many links between Saddam's regime and all sorts of terrorist regimes, including indirect ones with al Qaeda. Indeed, unless you're a complete Bush-hater, the report quite condemned Saddam Hussein's regime.

There were also a few articles in the conservative press bemoaning the fact that the Bush Administration was nowhere to be found. Indeed, they have been almost completely AWOL in this entire affair, apparently happy to have it released and let events take their course. The administration has been totally silent on the IPP report.

This whole affair got me to thinking; in all the writing I've done about Iraq and the War on Jihadism ("War on Terror", or whatever we're going to call it), the administration has hardly figured at all. For military information I go directly to the source, relying on Pentagon press briefings and journalists in-country. For information on Jihadism and radical Islam, I rely on scholars and writers.

Indeed, most of my discussion of the administration over the past two years has been to criticize it. This post won't be much different.

To be fair, I haven't been universally critical of the administration. They did eventually recognize that the Rumsfeld/Abizaid/Casey strategy in Iraq was failing, and approved the "surge" plan, which was carried out by the winning team of Gates/Petraeus/Odierno.

But in 2006 and 2007 I did take the administration to task for many things; the Harriet Myers fiasco, the prolifigate spending, the belated recognition that our strategy in Iraq wasn't working, the inability to articulate or even try to make the case for Iraq or the wider war, their negligence in using our vast amounts of "soft power" in addition to military force, the fixation on the ridiculous "peace process" in the Middle East, and the refusal to say forthrightly that our enemy is more than just a gang of terrorists but an entire movement of Jihadists.

Obviously much of the media will be focused on the presidential campaign. Nevertheless, the administration should at least be trying to make itself relevant. The fact that it has figured so little in my writing speaks volumes about how they haven't.

Bill Kristol, writing on The Weekly Standard , tells us how and why they have been so absent when this most recent IPP report was released

If you talk to people in the Bush administration, they know the truth about the report. They know that it makes the case convincingly for Saddam's terror connections. But they'll tell you (off the record) it's too hard to try to set the record straight. Any reengagement on the case for war is a loser, they'll say. Furthermore, once the first wave of coverage is bad, you can never catch up: You give the misleading stories more life and your opponents further chances to beat you up in the media. And as for trying to prevent misleading summaries and press leaks in the first place--that's hopeless. Someone will tell the media you're behaving like Scooter Libby, and God knows what might happen next.

Ok, I understand the bit about not wanting to refight the reasons we went to Iraq. We are where we are and unless anyone can produce a time machine the only thing relevant at the moment is what we are going to do next. Most of those who insist on talking about why we went in are only looking to force a precipitous exit anyway. Let's save the histories for the next decade.

But when a major report does come out you have to take the bull by the horns and get out in front of the story. A basic rule of politics is that either you define the situation or your opponents will define it for you, and once they have done so it's almost impossible to get back in control of events.

David Frum, writing on his blog at National Review, summed it up

This is a psychologically broken administration: exhausted, passive, prematurely aged, self-defeated.

It is lying on the mat moaning as its opponents kick it, unwilling/unable to block a blow or raise a hand in self-defense.

The indifference to quality of personnel - always a problem - has now become the defining characteristic of the administration. The president continues to imagine he is pursuing one set of policies. But because he allows retiring principals to be succeeded by their deputies, and then those deputies to be followed by their deputies, he has passively acquiesced in allowing his administration to be staffed by people who regard his policies as at best impossible, at worst actively wrong. And then he is surprised when his administration does the opposite of what he wished! Of course it does! If you won't steer the car, it won't go where you want!

Frum believes that the moment when things started to go wrong came at the beginning, with the appointment of Condoleezza Rice as National Security Adviser. The reason, he says, was that bush "needed a strong figure at NSC to broker those clashes. Instead, he chose the weakest NSC adviser in that institution's history." The result was "a total breakdown of policy coordination."

I don't know enough about the inner workings of the administration to say whether that analysis is accurate or not. My take is more that the administration simply became exhausted by the Iraq War. The failure to advance Social Security reform in 2005 and the twin disasters of the Katrina hurricane and the appointment of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court derailed his domestic policy.

Either way, the failure to make the case for Iraq and Saddam's link to terror is inexcusable.

Posted by Tom at 10:00 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

March 16, 2008

Iraqi Perspectives Project - Saddam and Terrorism

In seven posts during March and April of 2006 I summarized and commented on the Iraqi Perspectives Project. Go to the sidebar under "Categories" and select "Iraqi Perspective Project" to see them.

A DOD press release at the time described the Iraqi Perspectives Project as an

...unclassified historical report in book form on the Iraqi view of coalition military operations conducted in Iraq. Conducted by U.S. Joint Forces Command's Joint Center for Operational Analysis, the Iraqi Perspective Project (IPP) is a research effort focused on coalition military operations in Iraq from March to May 2003. This project focused on the perspectives of the Iraqi civilian and military leadership involved in major combat operations gathered through interviews conducted during the fall and winter of 2003/2004, and an extensive review of Iraqi historical documents done in the months since then.

Basically, we interviewed high ranking Iraqi government and military officials to get their "perspective" on a number of issues. We wanted to discover the inner workings of the Saddam regime, and find out why they did what they did in the years between the Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). Among the things we wanted to find out about was their military preparedness, how they tried to stop our invasion, and of course WMD. You can download the report here.

A New Report

Earlier this week a new IPP report was released: Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents (this is the redacted version. I have ordered the entire 5 CD set, which you cannot download but must order. I missed it's release and only found out about it from Steve Schippert on NRO's The Tank.

Apparently, the report was completed in November 2007 but only released this week. The left, including some news outfits (often one and the same), is as usually wrapped up in kooky conspiracy theories along the lines of this being "the report Bush didn't want you to see".

As usual, the truth is more complicated. Here's the Executive Summary (thank you to Steve Schippert, because copy-and-paste is blocked from the pdf download)

The Iraqi Perspectives Project (IPP) review of captured Iraqi documents uncovered strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism. Despite their incompatible long-term goals, many terrorist movements and Saddam found a common enemy in the United States. At times these organizations worked together, trading access for capability. In the period after the 1991 Gulf War, the regime of Saddam Hussein supported a complex and increasingly disparate mix of pan-Arab revolutionary causes and emerging pan-Islamic radical movements. The relationship between Iraq and forces of pan-Arab socialism was well known and was in fact one of the defining qualities of the Ba'ath movement.

But the relationships between Iraq and the groups advocating radical pan-Islamic doctrines are much more complex. This study found no "smoking gun" (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda. Saddam's interest in, and support for, non-state actors was spread across a variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist, and Islamic terrorist organizations. Some in the regime recognized the potential high internal and external costs of maintaining relationships with radical Islamic groups, yet they concluded that in some cases, the benefits of association outweighed the risks. A review of available Iraqi documents indicated the following:

• The Iraqi regime was involved in regional and international terrorist operations prior to OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM. The predominant targets of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside of Iraq.
• On occasion, the Iraqi intelligence services directly targeted the regime's perceived enemies, including non-Iraqis. Non-Iraqi casualties often resulted from Iraqi sponsorship of non-governmental terrorist groups.
• Saddam's regime often cooperated directly, albeit cautiously, with terrorist groups when they believed such groups could help advance Iraq's long-term goals. The regime carefully recorded its connections to Palestinian terror organizations in numerous government memos. One such example documents Iraqi financial support to families of suicide bombers in Gaza and the West Bank.
• State sponsorship of terrorism became such a routine tool of state power that Iraq developed elaborate bureaucratic processes to monitor progress and accountability in the recruiting, training, and resourcing of terrorists. Examples include the regime's development, construction, certification, and training for car bombs and suicide vests in 1999 and 2000.

From the beginning of his rise to power, one of Saddam's major objectives was to shift the regional balance of power favorably towards Iraq. After the 1991 Gulf War, pursuing this objective motivated Saddam and his regime to increase their cooperation with - and attempts to manipulate - Islamic fundamentalists and related terrorist organizations. Documents indicate that the regime's use of terrorism was standard practice, although not always successful. From 1991 through 2003, the Saddam regime regarded inspiring, sponsoring, directing, and executing acts of terrorism as an element of state power.

That sounds pretty damning doesn't it? Not if you're a leftist who insists that the only thing that's important is finding a document similar to the Tripartite Pact between Japan, Germany, and Italy which ties Saddam directly to al Qaeda. if so then you latch on this this sentence in the second paragraph of the Executive Summary quoted above.

This study found no 'smoking gun' (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda

And, in fact, al Qaeda is mentioned in the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq, which was passed in October of 2002 by the U.S. Congress.

Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;

This "whereas" is one of 24 justifications in the document for authorizing force in Iraq.

Before we go on, a few points are necessary.

1. Whether the statement in the Joint Authorization is true or not does not in and of itself invalidate the war, and
2. Even if the statement is false it does not, ipso facto, mean that "Bush lied". Unless, of course, you're the only person on earth who has thought something to have been true and later turned out to have been mistaken.

So what's in the report? On page 34

Captured documents reveal that the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda - as long as that organization's near-term goals supported Saddam's long term vision.

From page 41 about his support of terrorism in general

Saddam Hussein was demonstrably willing to use terrorism to achieve his goals. Using this tactical method was a strategic choice of Saddam's, often requiring direct and indirect cooperation with movements, organizations, and individuals possessing,in some cases, diametrically opposed long-term goals.

And on page 42 we have this

Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, let at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives."

Summarizing the report, Thomas Joscelyn writes on The Weekly Standard blog that

The Iraqi Intelligence documents discussed in the report link Saddam's regime to: the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (the "EIJ" is al Qaeda number-two Ayman al Zawahiri's group), the Islamic Group or "IG" (once headed by a key al Qaeda ideologue, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman), the Army of Mohammed (al Qaeda's affiliate in Bahrain), the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (a forerunner to Ansar al-Islam, al Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq), and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (a long-time ally of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan), among other terrorist groups. Documents cited by the report, but not discussed at length in the publicly available version (they may be in a redacted portion of the report), also detail Saddam's ties to a sixth al Qaeda affiliate: the Abu Sayyaf group, an al Qaeda affiliate in the Philippines.

Also see Saddam's Dangerous Friends: What a Pentagon review of 600,000 Iraqi documents tells us, by Stephen F. Hayes in The Weekly Standard, and Media swings and misses on IDA's Saddam report on
Regime of Terror.

My own brief look at the IPP report does not show that any al Qaeda people were in Iraq at the time of the invasion. Obviously it shows that there was not a formal, or even informal, alliance. What it does show is that Saddam used many terrorist groups, including al Qaeda, to further his goals.

Going back to the Joint Resolution, we see "terrorism" or a form of the word mentioned no less than 19 times. Here are a few examples

Whereas after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, Iraq entered into a United Nations sponsored cease-fire agreement pursuant to which Iraq unequivocally agreed, among other things, to eliminate its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs and the means to deliver and develop them, and to end its support for international terrorism;

Whereas Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations;

Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of American citizens;

(emphasis added). There are more references, but you get the point. And I think it's pretty clear from the report that Saddam's Iraq was guilty of these acts.

The Nature of Our War

Our enemy is not simply al Qaeda. We are fighting what Lt Col (Dr) David Kilcullen has called a "global insurgency". The insurgency consists of many groups, all around the world, who share the common goal of reestablishing the Caliphate and subduing the West. That this may sound fantastic does not make it less so, or less possible that it might well be achieved.

Al Qaeda is at the head of the snake. It is the "top" organization, but this is not a strict hierarchy. Neither Osama bin Laden nor his top aids are vital to its functioning. Killing them would have no more effect on winning the war than the death of Ho Chi Minh in 1968 had in ending the Vietnam War.

Kilcullen explains what this has to do with Iraq

Indeed, current actions in the War on Terrorism appear disparate if viewed through a terrorism paradigm. Some (like international law enforcement cooperation to counter terrorist financing) fit the terrorism paradigm neatly, while others (the Iraq War, counter-proliferation initiatives, building influence in Central Asia, containment of North Korea and Iran) appear unrelated to an anti-terrorism agenda and are thus viewed with suspicion by some. However, if viewed through the lens of counterinsurgency, these actions make perfect sense.

The left wants to limit the WOT to a very narrow police action against al Qaeda. They don't even see it as a war, nor do they see the enemy as anything more than terrorists. This is why they see it as a crime problem, rather than as the global insurgency that I believe it to be.

The bottom line is that one, Saddam was deeply involved in supporting terrorism, whatever his formal links with any one organization. Two, that all Islamic terrorist groups represent a threat to our friends and interests, and three, that this does show that the Bush Administration was correct to make terrorism part of the Joint Resolution to authorize the war.

Posted by Tom at 10:00 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

April 6, 2006

Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part VII

In this final part we come to the end of the Ba'athist regime. Extremely effective American air strikes, coupled with a delusional political leadership, cause mass confusion among the Iraqis.

The Iraqi Perspectives Project is "an unclassified historical report in book form on the Iraqi view of coalition military operations conducted in Iraq." Published in book form by the U.S. Joint Forces Command’s Joint Center for Operational Analysis, the project examines "the perspectives of the Iraqi civilian and military leadership involved in major combat operations gathered through interviews conducted during the fall and winter of 2003/2004, and an extensive review of Iraqi historical documents done in the months since then."

You can download the report here. It is 230 pages and about 7.5Mb.

This series will summarize the report chapter by chapter. I will provide commentary at the end of each part.

Previous Posts
Iraqi Perspectives Project Summary from the Washington Times
Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part II - Introduction and Chapter I: The Nature of the Regime
Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part III: - Chapter II: Skewed Strategy
Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part IV - Chapter III: Military Effectiveness
Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part V - Chapter VI: Crippled Operational Planning
Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part VI - Chapter V: The Regime Prepares for War

CHAPTER VI DOOMED EXECUTION

• The Iraqi regime and military collapsed so quickly that it is difficult to construct a precise picture of the final few weeks.

• Several competent high-level Iraqi officers, including Lt. Gen. Raad Hamdani, commander of the Republican Guard II Corps, could have given American forces considerable trouble if not hamstrung by Saddam’s restrictions.

• Iraqi generals were handicapped by Saddam’s “incessant spying, suspicion, and interference by often militarily incompetent superiors…was a constant psychological stress as well as a serious impediment to making military preparations.”

• Saddam’s December 18 2005 change in war plans (reviewed in Part V) seriously impacted the ability of competent Iraqi commanders to put together a good defense of their country. Saddam’s plan was hopelessly unrealistic and completely unworkable.

• Iraqi commanders, and Saddam himself, expected a coalition invasion to be preceded by weeks of air strikes. They were shocked when the ground campaign began before the air one.

• “Coalition planners underappreciated the psychological effects precision firepower had on Iraqi combat units.” Everyone, from commanding generals to the lowest private, believed that the invasion was unstoppable. Said the commander of the Republican Guard I Corps; “The Americans were able to induce fear throughout the army by using precision air power.”

• Propaganda leaflets dropped by American aircraft also frightened Iraqi soldiers, not for what they said, but because the US Air Force seemed to know just where to drop them it made the Iraqis “feel as if they were in a sniper’s sight.”

• Airpower devastated entire Iraqi divisions, many being completely destroyed without ever having been engaged by American ground forces.

• Saddam was very fearful of being personally targeted by American air strikes, and went to great lengths to hide his movements.

• Because American forces bypassed most cities in the south, leaving the Iraqi forces in them to come out and attack American supply convoys, Iraqi commanders believed reports that their troops were slaughtering the Americans and that everything was going according to plan.

• The Iraqis lost track of events to the extent that they believed that the main American armored attack was coming out of Jordan.

• During the invasion, several Iraqi corps and divisional commanders correctly deducted coalition strategy, and attempted to communicate it to senior Ba’ath party leaders, including Saddam And Qusay, only to be rebuffed. Many times during the invasion Army orders were countermanded and requests denied by the political leadership.

• Saddam delegated operational control to Qusay at some point during the invasion. Qusay, like his father, lived in an imaginary universe and refused to take advice from professional army officers.

• Even after Baghdad had fallen, “the awareness of this catastrophic military defeat only slowly dawned on Saddam and those around him. Those at the center of power still kept a solid hold on unreality.” Saddam kept giving orders to maneuver units that had ceased to exist.

• “As far as can be determined through interviews conducted for this book, there were no national plans to transition to a guerrilla war in the event of military defeat. Nor, as their world crumbled around them, did the regime appear to cobble together such plans.”

• Even as defeat loomed near, the Iraqi bureaucracy, both civilian and military, continued to operate as if nothing special was happening.

My Take

What stands out most clearly in this chapter is how effective the American attack was in creating confusion among the Iraqi leadership, both civilian and military. The United States did three things to help create this state of affairs:

1) Starting the ground assault before the air campaign

2) Bypassing southern cities and leaving them to "wither on the vine"(the Pacific in WWII, anyone?)

3) The effectivness of precision air strikes

From the very beginning the Iraqi leadership was unable to keep up with events on the battlefield. For months they had been "digging in" their units in preparation for what would surely be a lengthy air campaign before the ground assault started. When they realized that coalition ground forces were immediately moving into their country, they found themselves caught on the horns of a dilemna; if they tried to move their units they would be detected and hit with air power, if they stayed in place they would not be where they were needed. As it is, many units stayed in place and were totally destroyed anyway.

Although the authors do not mention "shock and awe", it is clear that our air assault did just that to the Iraqi units that we hit. The report only discusses tactical air strikes (those against military targets), however. The strategic strikes in Baghdad against Ba'athist party and government buildings is left out of the report, so their effect is not assessed here.

At any rate, it is also clear that our air strikes were even more effective than we knew at the time.

Iraqi forces would have been defeated no matter what they did. But we need to remember that if the more competent generals had not been hamstrung by Saddam's insane orders, they would definately have given us a tougher time and inflicted greater casualties on us.

As I mentioned in previous parts of this series, one almost starts to feel sorry for the Iraqi generals after reading page after page of how their directives were countermanded by a delusional political leadership, and how Saddam forced his completely unrealistic plans on them. Althought they were defending an evil regime, for some reason I harbor no animus towards them, assuming of course that they are not guilty of crimes such as murder of civilians.

As Lt. Gen Hamdani was at a meeting in which he gave bad news to Qusay and senior (lackey) generals

Only Qusay seemed somewhat alarmed at the news. The other generals ignored it and turned to discussing the shape that the minefields to the west of Baghdad should take. Hamdani commented on the dismal scene: "It wasthe kind of arguments that I imagine took place in Hitler's bunker in Berlin. Were all these men on drugs?"

Finally, as was mentioned also in part V, the Iraqis had no plans to transition to guerilla war if they should lose the conventional one. While this does not mean that there was no way we should have anticipated one, it does mean that one cannot chalk this up to a failure of intelligence.

Next up: Methodology, Preconceived Notions, and Hindsight

Posted by Tom at 9:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 4, 2006

Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part VI

Of all the chapters I've covered so far as part of this series, this one is the most fascinating. Read on for details about Saddam's WMD that you probably haven't read elsewhere.

The Iraqi Perspectives Project is "an unclassified historical report in book form on the Iraqi view of coalition military operations conducted in Iraq." Published in book form by the U.S. Joint Forces Command’s Joint Center for Operational Analysis, the project examines "the perspectives of the Iraqi civilian and military leadership involved in major combat operations gathered through interviews conducted during the fall and winter of 2003/2004, and an extensive review of Iraqi historical documents done in the months since then."

You can download the report here. It is 230 pages and about 7.5Mb.

This series will summarize the report chapter by chapter. I provide commentary at the end of each part.

Previous Posts
Iraqi Perspectives Project Summary from the Washington Times
Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part II - Introduction and Chapter I: The Nature of the Regime
Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part III: - Chapter II: Skewed Strategy
Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part IV - Chapter III: Military Effectiveness
Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part V - Chapter VI: Crippled Operational Planning

CHAPTER V THE REGIME PREPARES FOR WAR

• The Iraqis were frustrated at how hard it was to talk face-to-face with American diplomats. We had no embassy in Baghdad after the Gulf War, and tried to work through a Polish diplomat. They complained that when they approached the United States to discuss “matters of concern”, “they always rejected us.”

• Because of their inability to communicate with the United States, they used oil to buy influence with “nations that would be key players in any Western military coalition”, including France, Russia, and to a lesser extent China.

• Iraq’s strategy was to use its oil to “gradually alleviate the UN-imposed sanctions and eventually have them lifted.” In fact this policy did have the effect of reducing the impact of the sanctions. However, in the end, countries such as France and Russia looked after their own self-interests and abandoned Iraq.

• Because his oil diplomacy was not sufficient, Saddam believed that he had to convince others of his military might. Weapons of Mass Destruction was an integral part of this campaign.

• Saddam was caught in a Catch-22. On the one hand, he wanted some countries to believe that he had WMD because “they lived in a very dangerous global neighborhood where even the perception of weakness drew wolves.”

• On the other hand, he had to convince the United States and other nations that he did not possess WMD. He did not want to be attacked and in order to get the sanctions lifted it was crucial that they believed that the threat of WMD was gone.

• “When it came to WMD, Saddam was simultaneously attempting to deceive one audience that they were gone, and another that Iraq still had them.”

• Saddam knew that once the sanctions were lifted, he could resume his production of WMD with little threat that they would be reimposed.

• Although it would have made more sense for him to have come clean completely with everyone with regard to WMD, he “found it impossible to abandon the illusion that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction – especially since the illusion played so well in the Arab world.”

• Many members of Saddam’s ruling circle believed that Iraq still possessed WMD in 2003.

• In late 2002, Saddam tried to move away from his policy of ambiguity, as at this time he feared attack by the United States. However, after so many years of deception, few if any believed him.

• The Iraqis tried to remove all evidence of WMD programs, even going so far as to direct that terms such as “nerve gas” be deleted from communications. However, when this was intercepted by Western intelligence agencies, it was viewed “through the prism of a decade of prior deceit.” As such, “what was meant to remove lingering traces of weapons fielded in the past appeared to Western intelligence agencies as attempts to conceal current WMD assets or operations.”

• Saddam feared that Americans or “Zionists” would use UN inspection teams to plant WMD evidence, and use this as an excuse for war. Saddam issued strict instructions to his agents that they were to closely watch the inspection teams. The United States, in turn, viewed this as an attempt to make sure that the teams did not find WMD.

• Prior to invasion, the United States initiated a psychological operations (“psyops”) campaign against Iraq. This included the use of dropped leaflets as well as “individually targeted messages directed at key military personnel.” The Iraqi regime viewed this with great alarm.

• Even when a coalition attack seemed imminent, Saddam’s primary concern was preventing internal revolt.

• The Iraqis expected the war to last as long as 6 months. As such, they stockpiled supplies at key locations. Much of this fell into the hands of insurgents after the initial invasion was over.

• There is no evidence to support the view that Iraqi leaders planned before the invasion to create an insurgency or a guerilla war.

• Although the Iraqis did have plans to destroy their oilfields, Saddam decided against doing so because he viewed them as a source of Iraq’s (and his) wealth.

• When Saddam finally realized that invasion was imminent, he “ordered what was essentially a raid on the Central Bank of Iraq” withdrawing one and one quarter billion dollars and euros. Saddam’s main concern was his personal survival.

My Take

This was the most fascinating chapter of the report. It also puts another nail in the coffin of the Bush Lied! claim. The report makes it quite clear that Saddam intentionally tried to make it appear that he had stockpiles of WMD.

Once it became clear that there were little or no stockpiles of WMD in Iraq, I started to wonder why, throughout the 1990s, Saddam had tried to make it appear that he had WMD so as to "look tough" in the eyes of both his countrymen and neighboring states. What I had not realized was that he was playing a dual game; trying to convince some that he had WMD and others that he did not.

That his policy failed should surprise no one. One's sympathy for Western intelligence analysts grows with the reading of every page of this document. "Does he or doesn't he?" they asked themselves. "What is he hiding?" Saddam's failure to come clean can only have appeared to them to be evidence that he was hiding something.

The analogy is simple; if you're a known criminal who, when confronted by a policeman, makes a quick move to grab something in your jacket, don't be surprised if you get shot. If it later turns out that you did not have a weapon, is it still not your fault?

So if a leader of a country tries to make some people believe that he has WMD, who's fault is it if they believe him?

Our intelligence agencies are not omnipotent. They do not have magical abilities to see all and know all. That most all of the world believed that Saddam had WMD was understandable because he tried to make some of them believe that he did.

Further, if Saddam could deceive members of his ruling circle, why could he not have deceived us? As I reported last week, even Iraq's last foreign minister believed his country had WMD.

I don't have the links handy, but I do clearly recall that one of the reports that looked at our intelligence failure concluded that the people in our agencies made honest mistakes. Far from deceiving or manipulating the evidence, they looked at what they had, took Saddam's past behavior into account, and concluded that he had stockpiles of WMD. I even recall what all the analyists said to the investigators; "in retrospect I now see that there was a different interpretation to the data." Hindsight is always 20/20.

One can see this clearly with the UN inspection teams. We took the Iraqi's close monitoring and interference with of the teams to be evidence that they were indeed hiding something. We knew we were dealing with a dictator, but how could we have known the depth of his paranoia?

Some will still claim that we believed what we wanted to believe. But given all that we know about Saddam's past behavior, and that he was wilfully trying to deceive at least some parties, this argument makes no sense.

None of this is to say that we do not need to revamp our intelligence agencies, or that President Bush should not have fired George Tenant in 2003; he should have. But that is the subject of another debate.

The evidence forces me to conclude that Saddam brought the invasion on himself.

Next up: Chapter VI - Doomed Execution

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April 2, 2006

Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part V

In this part, we see that Saddam never viewed the Coalition as his greatest threat, being much more concerned with internal revolts and his regional enemy, Iran. In addition, Saddam's interference in military matters made a bad situation worse for his generals.

The Iraqi Perspectives Project is "an unclassified historical report in book form on the Iraqi view of coalition military operations conducted in Iraq." Published in book form by the U.S. Joint Forces Command’s Joint Center for Operational Analysis, the project examines "the perspectives of the Iraqi civilian and military leadership involved in major combat operations gathered through interviews conducted during the fall and winter of 2003/2004, and an extensive review of Iraqi historical documents done in the months since then."

You can download the report here. It is 230 pages and about 7.5Mb.

This series will summarize the report chapter by chapter. I will provide commentary at the end of each part.

Previous Posts
Iraqi Perspectives Project Summary from the Washington Times
Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part II - Introduction and Chapter I: The Nature of the Regime
Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part III: - Chapter II: Skewed Strategy
Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part IV - Chapter III Military Effectiveness

CHAPTER IV CRIPPLED OPERATIONAL PLANNING

• Although the highest levels of the Iraqi Army were incompetent at conducting military operations, there were many competent mid and lower-level officers.

• Many of these competent officers were as high as corps and divisional level commanders.

• After the Gulf War, these officers and their staffs “worked hard to make the best of a bad political situation” and “worked hard towards identifying their own shortcomings, and attempted to predict the course of a future war.” Their plans were realistic and made the best use of what they had available to them. Their attitude was one of “pessimistic pragmatism.”

• The plan they developed held until December 18, 2002, when Saddam unilaterally discarded it and enforced the use of his own plan, which resulted in disaster for the Iraqi military.

• During the 1991 – 2002 period, Saddam constantly interfered in the planning process. His primary goal was to prevent internal revolts and coups, and the doctrines he proposed were designed to meet this internal threat. Military efficiency was not his goal, political control from the top was.

• Iraqi planners faced a dilemma; if they dispersed their forces they could better survive air attacks, but to do so would leave them vulnerable to ground assault.

• Saddam’s priorities were 1) internal revolt and coups, 2) regional threats like Iran, and 3) external threats like the United States. However, his military planners took #3 more seriously.

• Some of the more serious effects of Saddam’s late 2002 reorganization were to reduce “the quality of battlefield reporting and leadership situational awareness.”

• Saddam’s December 18 2002 plan centered on the defense of Baghdad as a last-ditch redoubt. Qusay Hussein presented it to his senior officers, and no input or changes to it were permitted. His commanders immediately recognized the plan as ridiculous. For example, it did not take geography into account, “in Saddam’s eyes, the rivers, swamps, and canals simply did not exist.” who nevertheless were forced to carry it out to the letter.

• No guidance was provided to military leaders on how to impliment this plan. Although they met several times, commanders could not agree on an implementation scheme

My Take

One can feel the frustration of Iraqi Army officers as you read this chapter. It is not hard to feel sympathetic towards them. They are already hampered with inferior equipment (relative to the West), the sanctions made it difficult to obtain up-to-date technology, and to top it off their national leader imposes the most insane requirements on them.

It all sort of reminds me of reading about Hitler and his generals. Hitler's "no retreat" strategy at times defied military logic, but the generals had to carry it out anyway or face death themselves.

Like the Germans, the Iraqis were in the service of an evil regime. In a perfect world they would all recognized the immorality of fighting for such a government, and would have refused to fight and sacrificed themselves for truth and justice. Some of the Iraqi officers, no doubt, were true believers in Ba'athism, just as were some of the German officers. But many probably just rationalized what they were doing as "fighting for their country."

To be sure, even under perfect conditions, the Iraqi Army would have been defeated in short order to Coalition forces. Saddam made a bad situation worse. Paradoxically, this was probably to the benefit of his countrymen, for the quick defeat undoubtably saved Iraq from even greater death and destruction.

Next Up: Chapter V - The Regime Prepares for War

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March 30, 2006

Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part IV

In this part we learn about Saddam's inner circle, and how his senior advisors "exhibited pathological behaviors". We also see how Saddam's obsession with internal revolt handicapped his army's ability to fight external enemies.

The Iraqi Perspectives project is "an unclassified historical report in book form on the Iraqi view of coalition military operations conducted in Iraq." Published in book form by the U.S. Joint Forces Command’s Joint Center for Operational Analysis, the project examines "the perspectives of the Iraqi civilian and military leadership involved in major combat operations gathered through interviews conducted during the fall and winter of 2003/2004, and an extensive review of Iraqi historical documents done in the months since then."

You can download the report here. It is 230 pages and about 7.5Mb.

This series will summarize the report chapter by chapter. I will provide commentary at the end of each part.

Previous Posts
Iraqi Perspectives Project summary
Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part II Introduction and Chapter I: The Nature of the Regime
Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part III - Chapter II: Skewed Strategy

CHAPTER III MILITARY EFFECTIVENESS

• Saddam was hardly the only thing wrong with Iraq; his senior officers exhibited pathological behaviors that are “a world apart from a Western conception of military professionalism”. Far from seeing themselves as impartial military advisors, their role was to carry out Saddam’s wishes “to the letter, no matter how infeasible or irrelevant to the military problem”.

• “Simply put, the Iraqi military’s main mission was to ensure the internal security of the Ba’ath dictatorship. It’s second was to fight wars.”

• American assessment of Iraqi military abilities before the war was fairly accurate.

• The Iraqis did things during the war that made no sense to American commanders. Within the Iraqi world view, however, they made perfect sense, for their primary objective was to do whatever Saddam wanted, no matter how objectively absurd it might be.

• For example, Saddam decided that rather than use his air force against the coalition, he would try and hide it as best he could. This took an important weapon away from his commanders, but Saddam believed that we would not send our ground forces very far into Iraq.

• Because the sanctions so hurt the Iraqi army, Saddam formed an organization called the Military Industrial Commission. It’s job was to develop “wonder weapons” that would save Iraq. Saddam put great faith in the eventual development of these weapons. Because the Commission’s leaders were so fearful of Saddam, they made promises that they knew they could not deliver.

• Senior officials lied to Saddam extensively and continually about the true state of Iraqi defenses. As a result, he never knew the true state of his military.

• Any report to Saddam had to be embellished with flowery rhetoric about what a great leader he was. This applied even to the most simple reports.

• After the war, some of the more capable military commanders we interviewed reported four additional factors that negatively affected military readiness:

o “The most irrelevant military guidance passed from the political leadership to the lowest level of military operations.”

o “The creation and rise of private armies.”

o “The tendency for relatives and sycophants to rise to the top national security positions.”

o “The combined effects of the onerous security apparatus and the resulting limitations on authority.”

• Conclusion: “Many senior Iraqi military officers blamed this “coup-proofing” of the regime for most of what befell the Iraqi Army during Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

My Take

The report goes into much greater detail on the "four additional factors that negatively affected military readiness" cited above, but I believe that you can get the gist of it from this summary.

It is clear that the Iraqi regime was much more fragile than we had believed it was. When our analysists looked at the Iraqi Army, they looked at it just as our guys looked at the Wehrmacht before D-Day. We examined their weaponry, expertise in handling it, the leadership capabilities of their junior as well as senior officers, their logistical trail, their communications, in short, everyting that we considered important.

What we failed to realize is that although Iraq was ruled by a Ba'athist regime ever bit as brutal as the Nazis, Saddam had completely co-opted the Iraqi Army in a way that Hitler never had with the Wehrmacht. The German Army managted to remain outside the Nazi structure, it kept and promoted it's own officers, and kept it's own tradition of excellence.

Not Just Our Leaders

But it wasn't just American military leaders who missed it; the entire press corps did as well.

Just as with the Gulf War, in the run-up to OIF we heard predictions of tens of thousands of American casualties, of a "Battle of Baghdad" that was sure to last for months, the "pause" during our invasion that was a sure sign of doom, millions of Iraqi casualties, a gigantic humanitarian crisis, on and on. Gateway Pundit has a collection of these and other predictions that turned out incorrect.

Natan Sharansky would smile if he read this. One of the points he made in his book The Case for Democracy was that dictatorships are much more fragile than they appear. While the aftermath was certainly more messy and difficult than we predicted, taking down the regime was much easier.

There are lessons here for everyone.

Posted by Tom at 9:31 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 29, 2006

Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part III

In this part we learn how Saddam Hussein wrecked the ability of the Iraqi Army to put up an effective defense of their country.

The Iraqi Perspectives project is "an unclassified historical report in book form on the Iraqi view of coalition military operations conducted in Iraq." Published in book form by the U.S. Joint Forces Command’s Joint Center for Operational Analysis, the project examines "the perspectives of the Iraqi civilian and military leadership involved in major combat operations gathered through interviews conducted during the fall and winter of 2003/2004, and an extensive review of Iraqi historical documents done in the months since then."

You can download the report here. It is 230 pages and about 7.5Mb.

This series will summarize the report chapter by chapter. I will provide commentary at the end of each part.

Previous Posts
Iraqi Perspectives Project summary
Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part II - Introduction and Chapter I, The Nature of the Regime

CHAPTER II SKEWED STRATEGY

• Up until the actual invasion occurred, Saddam believed it would not happen. To Saddam, the most important military event that occurred when he was ruler was not the Gulf War, but his war with Iran. He lost hundreds of thousands in that war, and after between it and the revolt by the Shi’a in southern Irar after the Gulf war, he was deeply suspicious and fearful of Iran. To him, then, Iran was the primary enemy.

• “After the 1991 Shi’a and Kurd uprisings Saddam gave his armed forces three priorities: first, secure the regime; second, prepare to handle regional threats; and third, defend against another attack by and American-led Coalition. Thereafter, only the air defense forces received significant resources in order to address the external threat.

• “Saddam always viewed Iran as the primary external threat, followed by Israel and then Turkey.”

• By 2002 Saddam knew we were trying to contact his generals to secure their cooperation in case we invaded. Because of this, he again turned up his internal repression, which had the effect of reducing the effectiveness of his military.

• 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.

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March 28, 2006

Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part II

In this part we begin to gain an understanding of the nature of the Iraqi regime, and how Saddam and his closest advisors lived in a world completely different from any a Westerner might imagine.

A DOD press release describes the Iraqi Perspectives Project as an

...unclassified historical report in book form on the Iraqi view of coalition military operations conducted in Iraq. Conducted by U.S. Joint Forces Command’s Joint Center for Operational Analysis, the Iraqi Perspective Project (IPP) is a research effort focused on coalition military operations in Iraq from March to May 2003. This project focused on the perspectives of the Iraqi civilian and military leadership involved in major combat operations gathered through interviews conducted during the fall and winter of 2003/2004, and an extensive review of Iraqi historical documents done in the months since then.

You can download the report here. It is 230 pages and about 7.5Mb.

Today we will cover the Introduction and Chapter 1: The Nature of the Regime. First I will summarize the report, then provide my analysis.

INTRODUCTION

- Saddam had a history of 'shooting the messenger"

- Saddam did not trust anyone but his sons and a few others, so the army did not receive adequate training. Saddam was afraid that it would turn on him. For example, he restricted units and officers from contacing each other, going as far as to prevent social contacts.

- The American experience in Vietnam influenced Saddam greatly. We had run away, he thought. Therefore, wouldn't we do the same with him? To him we “only” suffered a “mere” 58,000 dead in Vietnam. To Saddam this was a trifling amount. The lesson for him was that we would not risk taking many casualties.

- Saddam was amazed the we had stopped short during Desert Storm. After the Gulf War, he simply couldn’t imagine that we would actually go through with a ground invasion and go all the way to Baghdad.

- Saddam thought that just like with Desert Storm, in 2003 we would start with a sustained air campaign.

- Saddam turned General Patton's aphorism that “no poor dumb son of a bitch ever won a war by dying for his country, he won it by making the other poor dumb son of a bitch die for his” on its head. He perversely saw victory through how may Iraqis could die for him. He had an almost World War I view of war, that his mounting casualties meant that he was winning.

- During OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom, the 2003 invasion) everyone in his government was afraid to tell Saddam bad news. Further, no one wanted to say that the military plans Saddam came up with were rubbish.

- During OIF Saddam was told his Saddam Fedayeen were being successful in attacking American supply convoys when in fact they were being slaughtered.

- “…Saddam and his advisors lived in a world determined by personal ideology and the narrow perspectives of people who grew up in small Iraqi villages. It is this insular mindset, and its subsequent manifestations that this book describes.”

I THE NATURE OF THE REGIME

- In the 1990s Saddam worried a lot about “international Zionism” and saw their troubles at the UN as being caused by "the Zionists". UN General Secretary Butros-Butros Ghali had a Jewish mother, and had married a Jew. Saddam believed that Zionists had driven the Mongols from Europe in the 13th century, and and had deliberatly pushed them toward Baghdad. The Mongols then sacked the city, leaving a mountain of skulls, which he blamed on the aforementioned Jews. As a result of this anti-Semetic paranoia, he and his security services were always on the lookout for internal "Zionist" plots.

- Saddam saw himself as a modern Nebuchadnezzar and Saladin, two heroes of ancient Iraq

- By 2003 Saddam was completely ignorant of the true state of the Iraqi army. Tariz Aziz said that Saddam “lost touch with reality during the 1990s”. He was in denial about his loss during the Gulf War, for example.

- Saddam made decisions himself, for example decided to invade Iran while on vacation and without consulting any advisors. Sometimes he did consult close relatives and advisors but did so erratically. He had “mystical” confidence in his own abilities.

- In the 1990s during meetings Saddam reminded advisors who disagreed with him about his past “right” decisions. He was infallible, he thought.

- Saddam did not recognize that for Americans, Sept 11 changed everything.

My Take

Nothing terribly earth-shattering so far. The Washington Times story I summarized in my introductory piece had more from later parts of the report, ones I will summarize this week.

However, one cannot help but notice similarites between Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler. Hitler too had delusions of granduer, believing himself to be the reincarnation of Frederick Barbarossa or Frederick II ("Frederick the Great"). Hitler's early triumphs such as the remilitarization of the Rhineland, Munich, the blitzkrieg invasion of Poland made him feel invinceable, with disasterous results later in the war. Hitler trusted no one but himself, and in the end lost touch with reality.

One shouldn't take these parallels too far, of course. But they are sometimes helpful in learning how to deal with an enemy.

Just as Osama bin Laden saw our withdrawals from Lebanon after the Marine barracks was bombed, and from Somalia after the "Black Hawk Down" episode as signs of weakness, so did Saddam see our loss in Vietnam in the same light. But while in 1991 we saw the Gulf War as a victory for us, Saddam came to see it as proof that we could always be counted on to stop short of driving all the way to Baghdad.

So we do now see why Saddam felt it safe to bluff, and lead us to believe that he had stockpiles of WMD.

Saddam wanted everyone to believe that despite the inspections and sanctions, he had outwitted the Americans, British, and "Zionists" and had kept a portion of his WMD stockpile. This way he could still look tough; always important for a dictator, whoee internal enemies are not always imaginary.

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March 25, 2006

Iraqi Perspective Project

Within a story in today's Washington Times on Russian spies in US Central Command was a mention of something called the "Iraqi Perspective Project: A View of Operation Iraqi Freedom From Saddam's Senior Leadership,"

I'm not going to write about the Russian spies, because that's been done well elsewhere. Check out this post at Flopping Aces, for example.

But check out what the Times article says about the report

The regime planned to restart production of weapons of mass destruction. It continued to hide scientists from U.N. inspectors right up to the time U.N. inspectors left and the war began.

A seized Dec. 15, 2002, memo, written by an Iraqi intelligence agent posing as a U.N. escort, states, "Inside Bader WMD inspection site, there are Russian and Turkish scientists. When we visited the site, they were forced to hide from inspectors' eyes."

And, Saddam continued to tell his commanders he still had such weapons. "For him, there were real dividends to be gained by letting his enemies believe he possessed WMD, whether it was true or not," the report said.

• The quickly assembled air strike on one of Saddam's residences, Dora Farms, in pre-dawn March 19, 2003, never had a chance of succeeding. Saddam had not stayed there since 1995.

• There was no evidence that Saddam or his top aides planned the insurgency, now in its fourth year; in fact, Saddam was sure the Americans would never advance on Baghdad.

"There were no national plans to transition to a guerrilla war in the event of military defeat," the report states.

This fact helps explain why commanders did not predict, nor plan for, the robust insurgency and al Qaeda terrorists now spreading violence.

Saddam's misguided belief that he would stay in power in 2003 was fed by the support he got from France and Russia, his top aide, Tariq Aziz, told U.S. investigators.

Very interesting, no?

By 2002 the sanctions regime was falling apart. As soon as it was gone, Saddam would restart his WMD programs. He'd already started two wars, there was no reason to believe he would not start a third.

The report also puts an end to the notion that we should have predicted the insurgency. Yes we mishandles it for the first year and a half, but no it was not predictable.

French perfidity is nothing new or unexpected. But I have been very disappointed by Putin. When Bush first reached out to him early in his presidency I had hoped that we might reach some understanding, some accord, or at least not work against each other. It's becoming more and more clear that Putin is reverting to his KGB Cold War Days.

The Report

I did some searching and you can download the report here (link courtesy of Welcome to Jermany)

It is of course a pdf file, and they authors have disallowed copy and paste of text. However, this is from the DOD press release on the report

U.S. Joint Forces Command will release on Friday, March 24 an unclassified historical report in book form on the Iraqi view of coalition military operations conducted in Iraq. Conducted by U.S. Joint Forces Command’s Joint Center for Operational Analysis, the Iraqi Perspective Project (IPP) is a research effort focused on coalition military operations in Iraq from March to May 2003. This project focused on the perspectives of the Iraqi civilian and military leadership involved in major combat operations gathered through interviews conducted during the fall and winter of 2003/2004, and an extensive review of Iraqi historical documents done in the months since then.

The project is the first such effort by the U.S. government to understand the views of an enemy military force since World War II, when the U.S. government conducted a comprehensive review of recovered German and Japanese documents, along with interviews of key military and civilian leadership.

The overall objective of this project was to learn lessons from Operation Iraqi Freedom, and use those lessons for ongoing transformation activities.

The report is 230 pages long. From reading the forwrd, the report is based on a two-year study in which they interviewed political and military officials of the Saddam Hussein regime and went through thousands of documents. The objective was simply to find out why the Iraqis made the decisions they did. The results were summarized in the Times article above. I do not have time to go through it tonight but hope this week to read through parts of it.

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