Fog of War

Yes, American intelligence didn't have a clear view inside Saddam Hussein's regime -- but neither did anyone inside the regime, for that matter. Today's NY Times reports on a secret Pentagon post-mortem on the Iraqi leadership:

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.

The findings were described by senior Defense Department officials and military officers at the Pentagon and in the Middle East who have read it or who have been briefed on its contents.

Wheels inside wheels, as the following neatly illustrates:

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 ["Even"? I would think all four a virtual certainty -- D.], they refused to cooperate.

Unintended consequences aren't always all bad, though:

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 article also notes:

Dr. Kay, the former chief C.I.A. weapons inspector, has said that his team learned that no Special Republican Guard units had chemical or biological weapons — but that all of the officers believed that some other Special Republican Guard unit had them. He said it appeared that the Iraqi officers were the victims of a disinformation campaign by Mr. Hussein.

Pentagon officials and military officers said their scrutiny of the interrogations had found nothing to contradict Dr. Kay's statements.

Posted by David on February 12, 2004 10:08 AM