Boston.com / News / World / Study ties Hussein, guerrilla strategy
US may have played into plans, report says
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | October 11, 2004
[Excerpts]
WASHINGTON -- The ''shock and awe" attack that toppled Saddam Hussein in three weeks is often touted as a brilliant strategy that defeated Iraq with relatively few US casualties. But new information suggests that the United States may have played into Hussein's plans for a quick war followed by a long guerrilla insurgency.
The report last week of the Iraq Survey Group, based partly on interviews with captured leaders of the secretive Iraqi regime, said Hussein planned to have his troops and loyalists pull back after an initial US thrust and engage the Americans under terms more favorable to the Iraqis.
"Saddam believed that the Iraqi people would not stand to be occupied or conquered by the United States and would resist -- leading to an insurgency," said the 1,000-page report by chief weapons inspector Charles A. Duelfer. "Saddam said he expected the war to evolve from traditional warfare to insurgency."
The report said that from August 2002 to January 2003 Iraqi commanders across the country were ordered to hide weapons in the countryside. An index to the report says that a branch of Iraqi intelligence trained fighters from Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Lebanon, Lebanese, and Sudan in explosives and marksmanship at Salman Pak, near Baghdad. Indeed, intelligence officials said that instead of reading up on tank warfare, Hussein and some of his top generals are believed to have been boning up on books penned by Vietnamese communists on guerrilla warfare tactics.
The United States should not have been surprised, according to officials and outside analysts. Signs that a guerrilla war might be in the offing were apparent before the United States invaded. Nonetheless, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the intelligence branches of the Army, Navy, and Air Force do not appear to have given them much credibility or passed concerns up the chain of command, they said.
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