Volume 1 - Iraq Watch

and after that I will take over.” They took this tomean he had some kind of secret weapon. There areindications that what Saddam actually had in mindwas some form of insurgency against the coalition.• Just before the war began, Saddam reiteratedthe same message to his generals. According toHuwaysh, Saddam told them “to hold the coalitionfor eight days and leave the rest to him. Theythought he had something but it was all talk.”• Saddam believed that the Iraqi people would notstand to be occupied or conquered by the UnitedStates and would resist—leading to an insurgency.Saddam said he expected the war to evolve fromtraditional warfare to insurgency.Alternative Hypotheses on Iraq’s Nonuse of WMDDuring Operation Iraqi FreedomThe view has been advanced widely that if Saddamhad WMD at the time of OIF, he would have used it.In the event, there are no indications that WMD wasused during OIF.If Iraq possessed WMD Saddam may have concluded,given his perception of the Coalition threat,he would not need to use WMD. Military commandersconsistently over-reported their combat capabilityand Saddam had concluded most Iraqis would fightto defend the country. He may not have realized thathis Regime could not be saved until it was too lateto deploy CW from existing storage areas to operationalforces. Saddam told his debriefer that it wasclear to him, some four months before the war, thathostilities were inevitable. Despite this knowledge, itseems that Saddam and those around him misjudgedthe nature and intensity of the conflict. It is possiblethat Saddam’s public statements and those to hischief lieutenants were intended to reassure rather thanconfide.• Former Director of Directorate of Military Intelligence,Staff Gen. Zuhayr Talib ‘Abd-al-Satar:“Two to three months before the war, SaddamHusayn addressed a group of 150 officers. He askedwhy the Americans would want to come here.Negative Indicators—What Iraqi Preparations WereNot Observed?A former Iraqi army offi cer familiar with groundoperations and planning compared ground CW activityrequired during the Iran-Iraq war to the absenceof similar preparations for Operation Iraqi Freedomin the 2nd RG Corps area. He noted that standardoperating procedures for CW had been validatedduring the Iran-Iraq war by experience, with manyaccidents, as many shells were defective. Unlikeduring the Iran-Iraq war, during Operation IraqiFreedom there were:• No orders from Baghdad to bring any artillerypieces from indirect support to a special handlingpoint.• No meetings to carefully fix friendly and enemypositions.• No decontamination unit assigned to the unitengaging in chemical fi res.• No special security offi cer informing any commanderthat a chemical ammunition convoy wascoming.• No SSO handlers ready to receive convoys.• No messages warning chemical battalions to donprotective gear and to prepare to receive chemicalweapons.Why would they come here when they don’t needanything from Iraq? They have already fulfilledthe goals that the military established in the firstGulf war. They wanted to occupy the Gulf Statesand look it has happened. Everyone except forSaddam Husayn, his children, and his inner circle,everyone else secretly believed that the war wouldcontinue all the way to occupation. Saddam and hisinner circle thought that the war would last a fewdays and then it would be over. They thought therewould be a few air strikes and maybe some operationsin the south.”66