Complacent Saddam
NY Times:
"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 of captured Iraqi leaders and former officers.
"Mr. Hussein 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 Defense 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 Mr. Hussein's inner circle routinely lied to him and each other about Iraqi military capacities."
They sound like the Democrats.
The attempt to persuade Iraqi leaders to turn against Saddam had an unintended but desirable effect.
"When a wave of calls went out to the private telephone numbers of selected officials inside Iraq, asking them to turn against Mr. Hussein and avoid war, the Arabic speakers making the calls were so fluent that the recipients did not believe the calls were from Americans.
"Instead, the Iraqis believed the calls were part of a 'loyalty test' mounted by Mr. Hussein's secret services, the 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 ability to communicate in the critical days before war.
...
"The study details problems with another information operation, and quotes Iraqis saying that the millions of leaflets ? carrying statements like 'Beware! Do not track or fire on coalition aircraft!' ? did not incite desertions. But the leaflets intimidated Iraqi soldiers who realized that American bombers could just as easily drop their payloads on their locations, despite Iraq's vaunted air defenses, according to the detained officials.
...
"Despite the broad news media coverage of the American and British buildup in Kuwait, the Iraqi Defense Ministry insisted that Jordan would be the launching pad for the invasion, according to the detainees.
"That assessment was a wild misinterpretation of a series of Special Operations raids by relatively small numbers of the elite troops in the western desert, which began before the major land force crossed out of Kuwait."
NY Times:
"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 of captured Iraqi leaders and former officers.
"Mr. Hussein 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 Defense 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 Mr. Hussein's inner circle routinely lied to him and each other about Iraqi military capacities."
They sound like the Democrats.
The attempt to persuade Iraqi leaders to turn against Saddam had an unintended but desirable effect.
"When a wave of calls went out to the private telephone numbers of selected officials inside Iraq, asking them to turn against Mr. Hussein and avoid war, the Arabic speakers making the calls were so fluent that the recipients did not believe the calls were from Americans.
"Instead, the Iraqis believed the calls were part of a 'loyalty test' mounted by Mr. Hussein's secret services, the 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 ability to communicate in the critical days before war.
...
"The study details problems with another information operation, and quotes Iraqis saying that the millions of leaflets ? carrying statements like 'Beware! Do not track or fire on coalition aircraft!' ? did not incite desertions. But the leaflets intimidated Iraqi soldiers who realized that American bombers could just as easily drop their payloads on their locations, despite Iraq's vaunted air defenses, according to the detained officials.
...
"Despite the broad news media coverage of the American and British buildup in Kuwait, the Iraqi Defense Ministry insisted that Jordan would be the launching pad for the invasion, according to the detainees.
"That assessment was a wild misinterpretation of a series of Special Operations raids by relatively small numbers of the elite troops in the western desert, which began before the major land force crossed out of Kuwait."
Comments
Post a Comment