Saddam's Perceptions and Misperceptions: The Case of ‘Desert Storm’

Abstract

A large collection of captured documents from the very highest levels of the Iraqi government offers a chance to gain insight into why Saddam Hussein was unwilling and unable to alter his strategy on the eve of the 2003 war that toppled his regime. This paper explores some of the perceptions and misperceptions that Saddam Hussein took away from the 1991 Gulf War and shows how they affected his decisionmaking on the eve of the war in 2003. It concludes with some thoughts on the policy implications of these findings.

Key Words:

• Iraq
• Gulf War
• Saddam Hussein
• Perceptions
• Intelligence

In late 2002, Saddam Hussein told a reporter that he learned from the past through what he characterized as a scientific process:

Politics are science, and in any science there are experiments. The politician is an eternal student, and always benefits from personal experience, or the experience of other people. We believe in the importance of public opinion and its effects, and learn from our experiences. Making mistakes and correcting them are a human act that could be improved.1

What, then, did Saddam learn in the 1991 Gulf War? His understanding of this engagement with the United States appears consistent from 1991 clear to the end of his regime. Saddam believed that despite appearances, the net result was a modestly good outcome for Iraq. In his view, ‘this war … was beneficial for us’.2 A review of captured documents indicates that Saddam's understanding of military and political ‘victory’, as well as his military's capabilities, was influenced by both personal misperceptions and the obsequious attitudes that he imposed on his subordinates.3 This failure to recognize Iraq's true capabilities and how they stacked up against American capabilities ultimately led to Saddam's downfall in 2003.

This article will argue that Saddam learned from the 1991 Gulf War and, furthermore, that he suffered from motivated bias, seeing military and political affairs as he wanted to see them. After examining four cases, the 1991 air campaign, the Battle of Khafji, the missile strikes on Israel, and the electoral defeat of President George H. W. Bush in 1992, the article will show how the lessons that Saddam drew from these and similar events helped to shape his thinking as war approached in 2003. It will further indicate that Saddam was quite open in his public statements about how he assessed the situation. Finally, it will briefly suggest a policy application of this new understanding.

Perception and Misperception

Saddam Hussein acted on the world stage from the time he seized control of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council in 1979 until his demise on the gallows of the new Iraqi government on 30 December 2006. During most of this period, efforts to understand Saddam's perceptions were of significant importance to US policymakers. Unlike many other totalitarian leaders, Saddam provided considerable public material for biographers, journalists, and intelligence agencies to digest. He delivered thousands of public speeches and wrote hundreds of public documents (including several novels). Despite the general stability of his close confidants and advisors, some defections over the years provided useful insights into his more private world view as well as his decisionmaking processes.4 Academics and journalists have produced numerous books, biographies, and studies that, in part, sought to articulate the tyrant's perceptions of the world. He was the subject of extensive scholarly, journalistic, and governmental analyses trying to see behind his mask.5

Saddam worked to project a well-defined, if multi-headed, public persona: the object of a cult of personality at home, modern deliverer of the ‘Arab Nation’ to the region, and regional hegemon to the international community. As a result, many Western observers often saw him as the ‘Madman of the Middle East’.6 Even analysts who judged Saddam a ‘judicious political calculator’ were surprised by some of his decisions in the 1991 Gulf War, as others would be in the lead-up to the 2003 war.7 Thus, the question of how Saddam perceived the events of 1991 and how those perceptions, or misperceptions, affected his decisions in the run-up to the war in 2003 is a worthy topic for study, given the availability of documentary sources.

In order to believe Saddam Hussein's understanding of events matters in this case, one must first accept a basic assumption.8 First, people, not just states, can make policy choices. Therefore, understanding the decisionmaking approach of key people is important to understanding policy choices made by states. In particular, we believe that individual leaders shape their state's strategies, that states led by delusional leaders tend to start wars unnecessarily, that leaders with grandiose visions are more likely to destabilize the international system, and that the more power is concentrated in the hands of a single leader, the greater the influence of that leader's personality on actual outcomes.9

In our example, this means that the policies Iraq pursued in the 1991 Gulf War (assuming the war was inevitable, which of course it was not) probably would have been different had Saddam not been dictator at the time. Finally, and given the first two assumptions, how individual decisionmakers perceive the world matters and will directly affect the decisionmaking process. Individual worldviews are a complex, often impenetrable, idiosyncratic mix of ‘values, personality, political style, intellect, and past experience’.10 Assumptions are the easy part. In most historical cases, real insights into the perceptions and misperceptions of a political decisionmaker, especially in a totalitarian state, are difficult to obtain given the extreme paucity of primary sources.11 Perceptions, however, are only half of the equation. Misperceptions – which in this paper refer to the lessons Saddam drew from the 1991 war that proved fatal to his regime in 2003 – abound.

In his 1988 article ‘War and Misperception’, Robert Jervis offered three propositions on the subject. First, misperception is endemic. Errors in assessing an adversary's capabilities and intentions, the ability to process information, and the inclination to avoid painful choices all contribute to misperceptions. The second proposition is that statesmen often fall ‘into the trap of incorrectly believing that other statesmen are just like themselves’. In failing to ‘empathize with the adversary’ decisionmakers ‘pay insufficient attention to constraints and pressure faced by their opponent, including those generated by the decisionmaker's own state’. Finally, Jervis argues that analyses of the international system must account for misperception, especially when it comes to war.12

Given the nature of regimes such as Saddam's, careful historical work often provides the only viable way of examining misperceptions. However, while the historian's approach of relying heavily on ‘reconstructing the world as the statesmen saw it’ helps account for the failures of theory, it falls short in accounting for how ‘people perceive information’.13 In this connection, it now seems that Saddam and his regime represent a clear example of motivated bias. Motivated bias occurs when an actor sees what he wants to see, or, as Jervis puts it, ‘when commitment to a particular policy produces intellectual and policy rigidity’.14 In Saddam's Iraq, the source of the motivated bias was the interaction between the particular nature of his regime and the specific events of 1991. Moreover, the resultant misperceptions explain, in part, the regime's reaction to events of 2003.

A steady drumbeat of pronouncements from US policy makers after 11 September 2001 left little doubt that the government of the United States was fully prepared to act on its new preemption strategy.15 It seemed obvious to others in the world that the United States was intent on overthrowing by force a regime it had previously attempted to remove by more indirect means. Saddam did not readmit the first weapons inspectors until mid-November 2002 and he did not realize he was in the endgame of his reign until well after the invasion started, in March 2003.16 Why, then, did Saddam not change or appreciably modify his strategy until it was too late?17

Given the stakes in 2002, a reasonable course of action for Saddam might have been to reach an accord with the United States and its partners, subject only to the condition that he remained the master of his own realm.18 Arguably, such an approach, while potentially costly at home and in the region, would have saved Saddam from the hangman's noose. Alternatively, at the purely military level, an optimal (though almost certainly still losing) strategy might have been one that honestly took into account the relative strength of the US military and adapted Iraq's defense accordingly. Instead, Saddam stuck with approaches rooted in the lessons of 1991.

‘Desert Storm’ According to Saddam

Whereas historians have criticized the American military for characterizing war as the sum of numerous successful tactical engagements,19 Saddam Hussein's tendency was to take a holistic view of war in which tactical defeats were of transitory importance. One can clearly see this tendency in the lessons he and the senior leaders around him drew from the 1991 Gulf War and its immediate aftermath. Some of these lessons were new, while others validated things Saddam already ‘knew’, building, for instance, on his understanding of the Iran–Iraq War.

Ironically, although Saddam's conception of war as being more than the clash of arms was theoretically and historically accurate, it would not serve him well in the war of 2003. It appears that, as Jervis suggests: ‘too narrow a conception of the past and a failure to appreciate the impact of changed circumstances result[ed] in the tyranny of the past upon the imagination’. Only ‘dramatic developments’ can then break this tyranny.20 Unfortunately, for Saddam, the ‘dramatic development’ proved politically and personally catastrophic.

The most important factor in understanding Saddam's view of war is his definition of victory, both in the political and military realms. At the political level, the formula was simple. In a 1992 conversation with his military commanders, Saddam argued that America's failure to remove him from power was, in essence, a victory for Iraq: ‘After [America's] experiences with us, which did not achieve its ends regardless of [our] withdrawal from Kuwait, they might wonder how much force they need to deploy this time to achieve what they failed to do the last time.’21 Given the complete identity in Saddam's mind between himself and the state, if he were still in power with his image intact at the end of the war, then he had clearly not lost. From this proposition, it was a short step to ‘victory’, particularly for a man who saw one aspect of this war as personal: Saddam versus President George H. W. Bush.

A similar calculation existed at the military level. Much as an amateur boxer might claim a moral victory from merely going ten rounds against the heavyweight champion, so Saddam cast himself as a scrappy underdog – redefining ‘victory’ as simply doing better than expected against the powerful Coalition. Internally, however, it was in Saddam's interest to play down the Coalition's military dominance to preserve the morale of his own forces as well as the Iraqi people. In effect, Saddam crafted a definition of ‘doing better than expected against a very powerful opponent’ as the functional equivalent of a military victory. Thus he maintained his internal and regional self-image as the great Arab leader ‘while at the same time recognizing American might. Indeed the very strength of the American military forces [made] his own achievements greater.’22 The failure of the US-led Coalition to destroy Iraq's military provided tangible proof that the Iraqi military had been successful. Moreover, the existence of a large Iraqi military after the war also proved that the US military was not as strong as the Americans tried to make everyone think. Two years after the war, Saddam crowed that Iraqi ‘troops fought 33 countries in a month and a half and [were] still in good spirits’.23

Based on the documents of the regime, it seems that Saddam had, or was driven to create, a fundamentally different understanding of the facts of the 1991 Gulf War from that held by the United States. Disagreements over facts can often be traced to different data or methods of analysis. For instance, the chaos that ensued as a result of both the withdrawal (as the Iraqi documents term it) from Kuwait and the internal Iraqi uprising that followed inevitably resulted in incorrect reports, lost data, and self-serving reporting. This latter case is most evident in a series of Iraqi military after-action reviews held between 1991 and 1995. Since most of the corps level commanders and senior staffs survived the Coalition bombardment and ground assault, they recounted events in such a way as to deflect blame. One general suggested in a lessons-learned conference that negative lessons should probably be avoided:

I discussed this issue with the chief of staff, because we will not have a chance other than this to look into every small and large matter so that we can benefit from the positive lessons which the command may allow us, for example, to teach in military institutes. And if there are [any] negative points, then according to the permission of the political or military leadership we can also teach them.24

Despite widely available reports, studies, memoirs, and histories published in the months following the war, Saddam felt that such open-source information, especially when contrary to his view of the facts, was little more than disinformation. In 1994, he distributed the autobiographies of General Norman Schwarzkopf and the British commander, General Sir Peter de la Billière, to his commanders and instructed them to identify errors in the text and rewrite them. He admonished his senior officers that, ‘[w]henever you come across a lie or distorted facts, point them out, criticize them, and state the authenticated and correct information, analysis and data and direct your criticisms toward the two [Coalition] commanders. Their writings [are] full of propaganda and unfounded allegations.’25 Similarly, Saddam did not allow dissenting views from his subordinates. At least in the first years after the war, many officers, especially those with recent battlefield experience, personally held less-than-sanguine views of Iraq's 1991 performance. However, over time, Saddam and his senior ministers imposed orthodoxy on the officer corps. Whatever their personal views might have been, as an officer corps they fell into line with Saddam's understanding both of the facts and their meaning.

Saddam did not hide from the fact that after having ‘returned the branch to the tree’, Coalition forces had forced him to withdraw from Kuwait under pressure.26 On the other hand, the realization that Iraq had confronted the numerically and technologically superior United States and its allies more than offset the loss. Despite the best efforts of its enemies, the Ba'ath regime survived. Furthermore, Saddam gained a personal victory by effectively attacking Israel's war machine, inflicting long-term economic costs on the ‘Zionist entity’, and buttressing the Ba'athist boast that Iraq was the Arab world's deterrent against Israel.

Moreover, Saddam's military forces had reported being able to operate despite an unprecedented Coalition air campaign, and they had survived with their morale intact and modest materiel losses. This outcome demonstrated not only how exaggerated America's military power was, but also how motivated and skillful Iraqi troops were. By these standards, Iraq's only ground offensive, the attack on Khafji, had been a success.

Several factors probably influenced Saddam's beliefs as he looked forward to, and then reflected back upon, Operation ‘Desert Storm’. The first was the myth built up by Saddam himself that he was an historic Arab leader and that this status foreordained bold decisions, such as standing up to overwhelming force. Second, he clearly had some degree of over-confidence born of a flawed assessment of the implications of the Iran–Iraq War. During that conflict, Saddam's military had fought to a standstill the military of a nation three times its size, one armed with some of the most modern weapons available. Finally, Iraq had no experience with modern war of the kind the United States could wage. The American hyperbole that Operation ‘Desert Storm’ reflected a fundamentally new type of warfare was just that. However, Operation ‘Desert Storm’ was not simply a transplantation to the Middle East of World War II-style ground combat, as Saddam, based on his experience from the Iran–Iraq War, seemed to expect. He gained another personal victory when, in his mind, his valiant and ultimately successful stand was instrumental in the electoral defeat of President George H. W. Bush.

The Air War

The Coalition air campaign against Iraq began on 17 January 1991. It focused on destroying Iraq's leadership, communications, electric power, and air defenses. According to most Western accounts, the first night's air and missile strikes were successful. Iraq's air defense system ceased to function as an integrated whole, though many air defense units continued to operate on their own.27 Furthermore, though Coalition military leaders had feared they would lose as many as 25 aircraft on the first night, only one actually went down. Losses of Coalition fixed-wing aircraft to enemy action remained comparably light for the duration of the war, initially totaling 38.28

After the Coalition gained control of the air, a sustained air offensive ensued, focusing more broadly on Iraqi command and control, transportation, electrical, political, and potential weapons of mass destruction targets. The situation changed on 13 February when Coalition aircraft bombed what was believed to be a command post in Baghdad. It turned out the Iraqis were also using this location as a civilian air raid shelter.29 The ensuing political outcry led to a US decision to place most of downtown Baghdad, the regime's controlling heart, largely off-limits to air strikes. This seems to have encouraged Saddam in his belief that the United States cared not only about its own casualties, but about the perception of casualties, civilian and military, on the Iraqi side as well. In mid-February, too, the air campaign's emphasis shifted to Iraq's ground forces. The Coalition launched an air effort to weaken these forces before the long-anticipated ground campaign to drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait began. At the time and subsequently, there were debates over how much damage Coalition air power actually inflicted on the Iraqi ground forces; however, the air attacks indisputably destroyed considerable amounts of ground equipment and severely affected the morale of Iraqi forces.30

The Iraqi view of the air war was quite different. Key in its framing was the perception, shared between Saddam and his elites, that they had faced a unique event in history. Meeting with his senior military commanders in March 1991 after the withdrawal from Kuwait, Saddam noted that the scale of the Coalition air offensive was unprecedented. The fact that Iraq had survived was a victory enabled by the nation's superior will.

Where is it written in the [history] books to have a preparatory bombardment for one month and a half? Which book is it? Was it ever recorded in a war? … I mean, this attack could not be measured. … We should say in a decisive manner that [Iraq] is the master of the world, when it comes to faith … mental and nervous capabilities … and human tenacity because there has never been anything [like this attack] in history.31

The Iraqi Ministry of Defense's (MOD) findings in 1991 concerning the air war were, in some respects, remarkably candid. (The period for such candid assessments was brief.) The study's authors found that the Coalition air campaign had ‘vastly outweighed’ Iraq's air defenses, including the air force's interceptors, radars, and surface-to-air missiles. Moreover, the report noted that ‘extreme fear of attack’ from anti-radiation missiles kept radar operators from using their systems to their fullest potential. Because of all these problems, Air Force pilots were often ‘afraid to carry out their missions (as many aircraft were destroyed moments after takeoff)’. On the other hand, ‘the air defense command centers, which were designed as strike-proof entities, remained intact and unaffected’.32

Despite these generally grim conclusions, the MOD did find some good news. In a post-war 1991 study, the Iraqis estimated they had downed between 44 and 150 Coalition aircraft.33 One explanation the MOD offered for the lack of physical evidence for such a tally was that Coalition aircraft had crashed in Saudi Arabia or into the sea after being hit by Iraqi air defenses.34 A reassessment in 2001 sharpened this number and endorsed what it claimed was a new Coalition estimate of 70–80 aircraft lost. Although the discrepancy between Iraqi and American estimates may not be more unusual than that in previous wars, Saddam attributed the difference to a ‘total media cover-up’ by the West.35

Similar results occurred in a later MOD ‘Study on the Role of the Iraqi Air Force and Air Defense Command in Confronting the American Attack during Um al-Ma'arik Battle’. Like the American Gulf War Air Power Study, this was a detailed work, laden with statistics. The Iraqi study's conclusion was that ‘from a practical point of view, and based on the table of losses of our air force, [our losses] were relatively few compared to what was available and [the] size, nature, and duration of the adversary air aggression’. It frames the institutionalized perception well. In fact, the MOD found that the Air Force took ‘competent measures’ to minimize losses.

	Of all combat and specialized planes, 75 per cent were ‘rescued’, though this did not include aircraft destroyed by Coalition ground forces or in the post-war civil uprisings. The study noted that by contrast, the Egyptians had lost 70 per cent of their air forces in the 1967 Arab–Israeli War to Israeli air forces that were much weaker than those available to the Coalition in 1991.
	The Air Force also ‘rescued’ 92 per cent of all air weapons, including 98 per cent of the ‘expensive guided weapons’.
	The Air Force saved 76 per cent of the ‘very expensive electronic war equipment’.
	‘The losses in [air force] personnel amounted to .096 percent and it is a small percentage.’36

Most officers came to toe this general line. A November 1995 military conference considered American claims about air power in the Gulf War. One officer was unimpressed with the losses inflicted from the air on Iraqi ground forces:

My opinion of the hostile aviation is that [it] had a limited effect on the ground forces in general … With full control over the sky, and should they have had skilled, distinct, and experienced pilots like the Iraqi pilots, they would have taken half the force out of the battle, but that didn't happen.37

When officers did not come to the proper conclusion, Saddam used his special powers of persuasion to enforce his understanding. Given the regime's intolerance for dissent once Saddam had made a decision, officers took his pronouncements very seriously.38 In November 1995, Saddam attended that same conference or a similar one, during which officers discussed Coalition air power, drawing their evidence primarily from the US Department of Defense's report, Conduct of the Persian Gulf War.39 Saddam interrupted the proceedings at one point and told his officers to reconsider the American numbers and their implications: ‘I do not see presented or used numbers, except the number announced by the enemy. Where are our numbers?’ He went on to do his own arithmetic, showing, he said, that the Americans indicted themselves with their own numbers, proving themselves incompetent and liars. For instance, he said the American figures showed that Apache helicopters had been able to fly only once every two-and-a-half days, a pathetic readiness rate, and that the Americans were implicitly claiming to have launched 128,000 Hellfire missiles with a hit-rate of 72 per cent, implying 100,000 hits. ‘Did we have 100,000 hits in the front during the one-and-a-half months?’ he demanded rhetorically. When no one in the conference took up Saddam's statistical challenge, he blasted their use and interpretation of the Pentagon's work: ‘This is not a scientific study … [Is] this how you conduct a scientific study? … That you opened the American booklets and records and gathered information from there? This is what happened.’40

Saddam then told the officers how he expected them to conduct future analyses of American air effectiveness: ‘You know for sure how many vehicles, how many weapons, and how many tanks were hit. Take this into consideration along with the total [enemy] airplanes and the payload and then divide … The result is how accurate the enemy is.’ Finally, Saddam summarized his thinking. First, he said, ‘an aggression such as this one … with all this mobilization, finances, and military means will never happen again’. (In this he was right.) Then he underlined the importance of getting the ‘truth’ out to the fighter about the actual impact of this never-to-be-repeated attack.

Mention the truth as is. Why do you give the enemy a free advertisement? Do we need this? We need to tell the fighter you were hit this much. This is your losses. … When you show the [enemy] accuracy rate at 90 percent, then it is as if you wanted to harm your fighter psychologically. I'm sure that you do not mean this. Correct the study.41

The Battle of Khafji

Saddam did not wait until the war was over to set his ‘victory’ narrative in motion. Approximately two weeks after the air offensive began he created a dramatic event that would bolster his self-declared myth as defender of the Arab nation. In order to keep the myth from crumbling under the weight of the Coalition's air bombardments, Saddam had to prove that Iraq was not intimidated. Iraq would not simply roll over when faced with a more powerful adversary. Saddam would later proclaim that the Battle of Khafji should not be allowed to fade into obscurity but instead be interpreted as emblematic of his military thinking.

The town of Khafji lies inside Saudi Arabia, about ten miles from the border with Kuwait. On 29 January 1991, Iraq launched a multi-division operation to seize the town. General Norman Schwarzkopf and his staff were ‘perplexed’ by this operation, which they thought ‘defied military logic’.42 On the other hand, the Saudi commander of Joint Forces, Lieutenant General Prince Khalid bin Sultan, found that it ‘threatened to disrupt the Coalition's preparations’.43 Such indeed was Saddam's intention.

From the Coalition's point of view, on 29 January, an Iraqi task force based on III Corps' 5th Mechanized Division brushed through a light Coalition screening force and captured Khafji. At the time, the town was essentially undefended – occupied by only a few liaison and special operations teams. The next day, Coalition air forces began devastating the 5th Division, which was still moving elements toward Khafji. Coalition air strikes also paralyzed the supporting attacks by the Iraqi 3rd Division before it could even move to reinforce the forces that did make it to the town.44 Given breathing space by Coalition airpower, on 31 January, ground units from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries quickly ejected the Iraqis from Khafji.45 It appeared to be a crushing victory for the Coalition, and there were no subsequent Iraqi ground incursions into Saudi Arabia.

To Saddam – who, after all, was painting on his own personal canvas – the picture looked quite different. This sort of attack had rooted itself in Saddam's mind during the Iran–Iraq War, when the Republican Guard developed a doctrine of ‘strategic preemptive attacks’. In 1985, a senior officer delivered a lecture describing how such attacks could have ‘political and international significance and consequences … at the strategic level that harms the enemy's plans and arrangements … rendering them incapable of meeting their objectives’. Saddam took a personal interest in this lecture and offered his own instructions and comments to its author.46 Given that the officer's description of ‘strategic preemptive attacks’ precisely matched Saddam's intention for the attack on Khafji, it is entirely possible that Saddam recalled this incident six years later.

Saddam involved himself in the military planning of the Khafji operation to a surprising degree.47 At the final briefing two days before the attack was to begin, he explained his intent directly to the tactical commanders. He told them that he had learned during the Iran–Iraq War that taking the ‘initiative; challenging the enemy; hunting the enemy down; works and gives decisive results’. He thought the multinational Coalition had less ‘determination’ than the Iranians had demonstrated. Thus, ‘the enemy we are faced with would collapse if we manage to challenge and confront it … The world capitals would then hear the news and many rulers’ seats would be shaken as a result.’48

In the end, of course, Iraqi forces suffered extensive losses not only at Khafji, but also on the road to Khafji, and even in their return to their starting positions. However, even some tactical commanders viewed the operation as a success. The forces in Khafji stayed for a decent interval and withdrew only after requesting and being granted authority to do so. An Iraqi history claimed that the 5th Division alone endured greater air strikes than Israel inflicted on Egypt during the 1967 war.49 Thus, it is not surprising that since the division took ‘only 20 percent’ losses during its operation, the Iraqis saw the operation as a success.50 The Iraqi IV Corps commander found that his troops' morale increased when they managed to cross the border into Saudi Arabia and return alive to Iraq.51 This despite the fact that one brigade was almost totally destroyed, ‘spiritually collapsed’, to the point that ‘the only thing that they had left was their name’.52 This brigade was one of several that Coalition leaders thought they had prevented from reinforcing Iraqi positions in Khafji through the massive application of airpower. In fact, however, these brigades never were intended to advance to the town. Their purpose was diversionary: to attract the attention of Coalition airpower, thus reducing the Coalition's ability to blunt the actual attack.53 In this near-suicidal mission, the unit succeeded brilliantly.

While Saddam did not view Khafji as an unalloyed success, he was generally pleased. Certainly, he was willing to put his name behind it, allowing the Iraqi press to report that he had involved himself in planning the operation. The military command also sent a congratulatory memorandum to all units, associating Saddam with the attack and indicating he had ordered that the experience of this battle inform upcoming battles.54 However, his private assessment was hardly different. A few days after the battle, he lamented to senior officers that he should have sent more infantry and less armor, but he said that the battle had ‘defamed the enemy and it was considered a success’.55 A few weeks later, Saddam noted to his senior officers that although the Coalition did not break from the attack as he had hoped it would, he did not regret the attempt. He only wished he had launched the attack sooner and with the elite Republican Guard, rather than the regular army. After all, one of his senior officers told him shortly after Khafji that the results of the battle had shown that the Iraqi military had overestimated the strength of the American military. The officers met Saddam's comments with general approbation.56 The Iraqi official history held that Saddam had provided ‘courageous’ leadership for the operation, which had succeeded because Iraqi forces had conducted the operation despite the Coalition's technical superiority.57 The Battle of Khafji subsequently became an important case study on the curriculum at Iraq's war college.58

Missile Strikes on Israel

During the Gulf War, Iraqi forces fired 88 surface-to-surface missiles. Of these, roughly half were aimed at Israel. The American Gulf War Air Power Survey found the direct effects of the Scud attacks to be almost nil.59 Moreover, in the war's immediate aftermath there was much enthusiasm in the United States over the success of the Patriot air defense system, which the US Army had rushed to Israel and Saudi Arabia, in shooting down the Iraqi missiles. Initial American claims were that Patriots had intercepted 50 per cent of the missiles launched against Israel, though the Department of Defense later reduced its estimate to 40 per cent.60 However, most of the missiles not intercepted fell into unoccupied areas or the sea. Only ten detonated in occupied areas, but some of those were ineffective, landing in places such as a park, an empty lot, and an unfinished shopping mall. Only six missile impacts directly caused casualties. The attacks damaged about 12,000 apartments, though much of that damage consisted only of broken windows. Finally, the missiles killed only two Israelis and injured 230, one severely and another ten moderately.61

The Iraqi view was quite different. The memoirs of General Hazim al-Ayyubi, commander of Iraqi missile forces, argued that the strikes had allowed Saddam to be the leader who ‘fulfilled Arab dreams of destroying the myth of “invincible Israel”.’62 In the mid-1990s, Saddam expressed a similar view, suggesting that Israel had intended to expand into Arab lands, but that the missile strikes made them realize ‘that they cannot play their games with us’.63 In other words, he believed the strikes had deterred ‘Israeli aggression’, whatever the precise damage they might have inflicted.64

Iraq's General Military Intelligence Directorate (GMID) endorsed these views in a 2001 study, inexplicably finding that numerous targets in Israel were ‘attacked and hit effectively’. These included:

	The Israeli Ministry of Defense
	The main communications station in Tel Aviv
	A power station
	A gasoline refinery and a technology institute, both in Haifa
	The Haifa naval base
	Haifa and Tel Aviv ports
	Ben Gurion Airport
	The Dimona nuclear reactor65

The source of the GMID's data is not clear, but it may have been information from Palestinians in Israel or the occupied territories. Rumors flew among Palestinians at the time that the missiles had killed thousands of Israelis, including 400 Soviet immigrants just arrived at Ben Gurion Airport, and that the Dimona reactor lay in ruins.66

The 2001 GMID report asserted that the missile attacks had multiple beneficial effects. They had disproved Israel's ‘safe borders concept’, prevented it from being able to launch a blitzkrieg war, convinced Israel's military command of the military potency of the Arabs (presumably thereby increasing deterrence), and imposed economic costs on Israel by making it embark on the Arrow anti-tactical ballistic missile program and forcing other changes in its defense program.67

The Electoral Defeat of President George H. W. Bush

Notwithstanding their personal views of the 1991 Gulf War, most Americans would probably agree that the war had little to do with President George H. W. Bush's 1992 loss to Bill Clinton. Indeed, the expression ‘it's the economy, stupid’ entered the American political lexicon during that campaign season and stands as probably the simplest and most accurate analysis of the outcome. Surely also relevant to Bush's defeat were Ross Perot's 19-per cent showing in the popular vote, and the fresh face, new ideas, and vigor of Bill Clinton.

Not surprisingly, Saddam's view, some of his closest advisers shared, was rather different. An offhand comment he made in a meeting with Ba'ath Party members in January 1993 sums up his belief: ‘All the world is now saying, “man, why are we afraid of so much?” Bush fell and Iraq lasted!’68 He maintained that although Bill Clinton had played some part in Bush's defeat, as did the economy, Iraq, too, had a role. After all, Bush had promised to ‘save the West from the regime in Iraq’, and manifestly he had failed. Others discussed the issue at the same meeting. Vice President Taha Ramadan said that Bush lost because the Americans disapproved of the outcome of the war that Bush had promised would ‘bring economic power to America’. Moreover, the Vice President noted, and others at the meeting agreed, the American public realized that Bush had failed because Saddam was still in power. ‘Now he is removed and Saddam Hussein still exists.’69

The Effect of Saddam's Misperceptions – 2003

The perceptions of the Gulf War that Saddam held personally and nurtured in his military – that Iraq had ‘defeated’ the US-led Coalition – are clearly identifiable in the regime's thinking during what turned out to be its final international confrontation.70 From Saddam's point of view, the United States had its chance in 1991 to prove it was an existential threat to him and his regime. It failed. There may have been some officers who privately questioned Saddam's net assessment, but few if any spoke up to advise Saddam that he should move the United States higher up on his list of threats. Indeed, Saddam built motivated bias into his national security apparatus. He bent the military to his will and created a system during the 1990s that motivated his subordinates to tell him what he wanted to hear and reinforce his understanding of the world, right or wrong.

Many of the numbers and ‘facts’ the Iraqi military reported to Saddam, particularly about the 1991 war, appear to have been complete fabrications. Certainly, after the 2003 invasion, a general in the air defense forces told a reporter that the regime was characterized by lies: ‘One lied to the other from the first lieutenant up, until it reached Saddam.’71 Some apparent lies may have represented a sincere disagreement about the facts, but, lies or not, it is clear that Saddam had little reason to disbelieve the numbers presented by his Ministry of Defense.

Occasionally, a rare officer tried to break Saddam out of his bubble. For instance, a senior officer of the Republican Guard told interviewers after the war about what happened when he tried to challenge the regime's military orthodoxy:

One 23 December 1995, there was a big military science lecture and conference. Saddam attended along with most of the military leadership. Three of us were scheduled to make presentations. The central idea of my presentation was simple. I realized in 1993 that the gap between us and the Americans was growing. Our capabilities were weakening. The Americans' technological capabilities were growing. The American dependence on air was growing … They know everything because they own this space. Even if you build a new brigade America can see it and destroy it. So why try to build it? If you build up a large army the Americans will just destroy it again. By 1995, we knew we were moving to conflict and lacked the capability. I said we should immediately change the whole picture of the Iraqi military. We need to change from a heavy mechanized force to a light infantry force. We should make simple light infantry formations and starting fighting right away in a guerrilla war. Like in Vietnam – fight and withdraw …

I was the first presenter and Saddam became very angry at my thesis. I was singled out as being a mental hostage of American thinking. Saddam said, ‘If Hamdani's presentation is right then all these officers (Saddam pointed at the assembled officers) would be dead. But since they are here, he is wrong and we were victorious [in the 1991 Gulf War] …

At the same conference … Saddam was so mad at my presentation that the other presenters who were going to say something similar became too scared and changed their reports. About two days later the Air Force was going to deliver a major report to Saddam. The report said that by the end of 1996 the Iraqi Air Force was finished (lack of parts, training, etc.). They changed the study so Saddam would not get mad. They reported that, instead of being finished, the air force would increase its capability by the end of 1996.

It was around this time, 1996 and 1997, that everyone started lying. Everyone started lying a lot. They lied about things like ‘we won the 1991 war’ and such as that. Since that time all military planning was directed by Saddam and a selected few. It was much like Hitler and his generals after 1944. Saddam took interest with military plans in great detail.72

In December 2002, some senior Republican Guard officers, including Hamdani, steeled themselves to tell Saddam the truth about Iraq's readiness for war. However, before they saw the president, Saddam's personal secretary instructed them, ‘If you talk with Saddam you must do so with high morale. You must make him happy.’ And so they did.73

In short, it appears that the officers of Iraq's military and security services divided into two groups: those who believed Saddam's view of the 1991 war and those who did not, but the latter understood that ‘telling the truth was not to your own benefit’.74 After all, as Hamdani put it, Saddam ‘throws out the clever men’.75 Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz commented it was unhealthy to ask what had happened to military officers who disappeared. Stories circulated among senior officers of executions of their comrades, and everyone had heard the story of the Minister of Health whose dismembered body was delivered to his wife after he had the temerity to give his honest opinion to Saddam.76

Nothing Fails Like Success

Robert Jervis wrote, ‘when a policy has brought about a notable success, actors are likely to apply it to a range of later situations’. This tendency can lead to a simplistic analysis and policy-by-analogy approach to emerging challenges.77 One of the most common problems is that ‘outcomes are learned without careful attention to details of causation, lessons are superficial and overgeneralized’.78 For Saddam's regime, where the policy outcome in 1991 was a declared success, most of the studies of the underlying causes of that ‘success’ were necessarily fictional. One might have to modify economist Kenneth E. Boulding's truism that ‘nothing fails like success …’ with a Saddam caveat –‘unless it is the kind of failure that follows a false success’.79 Saddam's view, which was the only one that mattered, and in his view the United States was militarily powerful, but its power was unlikely to prove fatal. There were two components to this view. The first was an assessment that America's military power was less than it appeared. The second was a net evaluation that Iraqi forces were capable and potent. After all, Iraqi air, ground, and missile forces had demonstrated, as in the Battle of Khafji, that they could survive American attacks and still operate.80 And had not the Iraqi forces struck Israel the first blow it received from an Arab state since 1973? It was a convenient fact that not one of these contentions was easily refutable, because Iraqis did their analysis from their own congenial set of data about what had transpired. Finally, according to the Iraqi analysis, the American electorate was a limiting factor and it would ultimately restrain American behavior.

Many of these themes also showed up in Saddam's public rhetoric. Indeed, the record indicates that what he said in public was what he genuinely believed. In late 2002, for instance, the Iraqi dictator told a reporter who asked about the crisis:

No doubt, time is working for us. We have to buy some more time, and the American-British coalition will disintegrate because of internal reasons and because of the pressure of public opinion in the American and British street. Nations know the truth and are more capable of understanding than the leaders.81

Similarly, in January 2003, Saddam attempted to warn the American public that attacking Iraq would be a mistake: ‘I now address a question to the concerned Americans, and through them to the entire American people. Attacking Baghdad in 1991 was a well-known landmark. Was the United States stronger in 1991 than it is now? It was stronger in 1991.’82 By the same token, in the same speech, he compared Iraq to Afghanistan, noting that the Americans had failed to defeat the Taliban and that Iraq's capabilities for defense were greater.83 He also warned American officials to consider the fact that his officer corps had experience in combat against the Americans and had learned from that ‘successful’ experience.84

The record indicates Saddam thought ‘accumulated experience, along with continuous faith, [puts] the enemy in a difficult position’.85 In fact, his private remarks indicate he believed that faith – not specifically faith in Allah, for Saddam's relationship with Islam was tenuous at best, but rather what military experts call ‘morale’. Saddam believed that soldiers possessed a superior spirit – were dominant in warfare. In this, he believed Iraqi forces had the edge. For instance, in October 1994, the Iraqi dictator summoned the leadership of the Republican Guard to a meeting at which his son, Qusay, speaking for his father, announced a decision to invade Kuwait again. The commander of the Republican Guard immediately said that his forces could easily conquer Kuwait. Some of the division commanders, however, summoned up sufficient courage to warn Saddam gingerly that, while their commander was correct, they were incapable of defeating the Americans. Saddam told them they were thinking in terms of numbers whereas he understood it as a ‘spiritual battle’, from which Iraq would have little to fear. Saddam reportedly considered imprisoning the chief naysayer, but in the end he decided only to warn him not to read so much.86

Saddam enunciated precisely the same views in public. He maintained that in the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraqi forces ‘never faltered’, as he told his audience on the 12th anniversary of the launching of the air campaign.87 A month later he addressed the issue publicly again:

Sometimes we see a champion boxer take vicious blows from a man who is not a champion boxer. What is his problem? The point is morale and faith. The latter believes in himself, and with belief he will surely win. The former does not believe in himself and the shreds of his belief are undermined by blows from one who isn't a champion boxer. Thus, he is defeated even though he is a champion boxer … True, we do not have the means of the Americans and the British. But our superiority in other things, which we have already mentioned, is clear and decisive.88

In late 2002, Saddam addressed the question even less metaphorically when, in a rare newspaper interview, he argued that he understood the American threat and that it did not frighten him:

The US, in its daily attacks and attempts to weaken us and to kill civilians every day with its air missiles and artillery from neighboring countries, made us feel as if we were in a perpetual war since January 1991. So we are ready for war. But Iraq will not, in any way, be like Afghanistan. This does not mean that we are stronger than the US, since it has long-range missiles and naval forces, but we have faith in Allah, in our homeland, and in the Iraqi people. Also, and this is important, we have faith in the Arab nation. We will not turn the war into a picnic for the American or the British soldiers. No way! The land always fights on the side of its owners.89

In March 2003, Saddam told his officers, in a publicly reported meeting, that the Iraqis had defeated the British in 1920 despite having inferior weapons, because they had faith. Today, he said, the officers had the same faith and thus, air force pilots should not be dismayed that their adversaries had better planes, nor should the infantry be concerned about the superior ground forces and equipment of their enemies, for the Iraqis ‘have faith that your enemy does not have’.90

Faith was not only an important variable on the battlefield; it could be a motive force in history itself. Saddam believed that, as a general proposition, history did not repeat itself, but that it could be made to. He thought it would be possible to repeat the events of 1991. In particular, the successful application of faith – an increasingly useful tool of Ba'ath Party control – could make history repeat itself. In a January 2003 speech, the Iraqi dictator argued:

Saying that history repeats itself means, among other things, that the pictures of the past are repeated even when they come under contemporary names and colors … A decisive factor in making history repeat itself, however, is a deep faith in man's ability to progress by adhering to his faith, its components and reasons, and by rejecting and abandoning any situation that negatively affects faith and the role of the faithful and pioneering men. This deep faith is the decisive factor that makes history repeat itself exactly as it was in the past, here or there, positively or negatively.91

In the run-up to the 2003 war, then, the regime focused on threats in the following order: (1) internal threats (a coup d'état, the Shia); (2) regional threats (particularly Iran and Israel); and (3) the US/UK threat.92 One can judge the extent to which the military internalized these views by a response given by the Director of GMID to an American interviewer after the war. When the American asked what he thought would happen with the Coalition invasion, the Director responded, ‘we were more interested in Turkey and Iran’, giving this honest answer even though he operated now with hindsight, and had every motivation to avoid making himself look silly.93

Iraq arrayed its forces according to the above priorities. The country had three large mechanized forces: the regular army, the Republican Guard, and the Special Republican Guard. The regular army was the largest force, but the regime considered it the least politically reliable and a large portion of its manpower was Shia Muslims. Accordingly, the regular army found itself deployed farthest from Baghdad, facing the Iranian border. The regime considered the smaller Republican Guard more politically reliable, in part because it contained few Shia in its ranks. The higher command deployed this force between Baghdad and the regular army. However, the Republican Guard did not operate in Baghdad and did not even have maps of the city. The smallest force was the roughly division-sized Special Republican Guard. This force was the most politically reliable – family connections to Saddam counted heavily in its officer assignments – and it alone deployed in and operated around Baghdad.

Saddam's strategic calculus in 2003 was that the United Nations would prevent the United States from attacking. If the Americans did attack, their casualty aversion would limit them to air strikes, which Iraq had proved it could survive in 1991 (and, to a lesser extent, during the nagging air strikes that had continued ever since, notably the four-day 1998 Operation ‘Desert Fox’ bombing campaign). If the regime was wrong about that, the Iraqi troops with their superior morale and fighting spirit would contain any ground incursion far from Baghdad; at worst, the Americans and their allies might occupy southern Iraq, just as they had long occupied northern Iraq. In the end, Saddam's regime would survive and Iraq would win, just as it did in 1991.94

Given the nature of the regime and the growing body of evidence about how the regime operated, it is clear that Saddam's perceptions and misperceptions had direct implications on the tactical battlefield. However, the many actual, potential, and interactive casual forces associated with the chaos that is war makes isolating specific military actions complex. One hesitates to discount the direct effects of the almost overwhelming nature of coalition military actions, the generally poor condition of the Iraqi military, or the role played by bad tactical decisions made at all levels of the Iraqi military. However, based on a review of captured materials and a military analysis of the situation from the perspective of the Coalition and the Iraqi military several significant military actions in 2003 appear to owe their primary cause to the downstream results of Saddam's understanding of the 1991 war.

One of the clearest examples is Iraq's decision not to destroy the bridges along the Coalition's route of march to Baghdad. Southern Iraq is dominated by two large rivers and hundreds of canals and irrigation ditches. Movement in the south, and especially at certain critical choke points such as Karbala and Nasiriyah, is wholly dependent on bridges, large and small. During the 1991 war, Coalition air planners identified the bridges in the south as critical targets for Coalition air strikes. The Coalition directed hundreds of sorties at infrastructure to prevent the reinforcement or resupply of Iraqi forces in occupied Kuwait.95 The 1991 air strikes on transportation links were effective in their primary purpose but it was the less appreciated and delayed secondary effect that haunted Saddam. When a serious uprising arose in southern Iraq after the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from the region, the regime quickly assembled loyal units, primarily Republican Guard and Baghdad based security units, and ordered them to the cities of Karbala, Najaf, Amarah, Nasiriyah, and Basra to reimpose order. However, these forces were significantly delayed and frustrated by collapsed and damaged bridges. During the first week of March, the disparate rebel groups slaughtered thousands of Ba'ath officials and loyalists before the regime, with the effective use of helicopters and the heavy use of artillery, were able to suppress what Saddam later described as the most significant threat to his regime.96

This experiences helps to explain why, when faced with a ground invasion from the south, the Iraqi military did not destroy the bridges critical to any speedy march on Baghdad.97 In anticipation of another uprising, the regime forbade destruction of bridges without unambiguous approval from Saddam. Local commanders often took it upon themselves to wire bridges for demolition but the speed and chaos of the 2003 campaign often meant that orders from Baghdad, even if issued, were often late. One Iraqi corps commander was threatened with execution if he destroyed a key bridge leading into southern Baghdad, even as the lead elements of the US Army's V Corps swarmed over the bridgehead.98

Saddam controlled Iraq through a system of local Ba'ath Party cadres supported by lightly armed militias and the police. The system worked, in part because both the Ba'athists and their victims knew a ruthless military and security machine was on-call to deal with any problem that local intimidation and thuggery could not overcome. The 1991 uprisings, predominately in the south but also in the Kurdish north, punctured the perception of omniscient and omnipresent Ba'ath security. One of Saddam's solutions was to develop a robust local ability to responds immediately to an uprising. One of the complaints voiced by surviving Ba'ath cadres from the 1991 uprisings in the predominately Shia south was that they were isolated and unable to defend themselves when the uprisings began. The local intelligence offices and Ba'ath security formations were quickly overrun, especially in those areas where rebellious soldiers added heavy weapons to the mix. The result was a series of local and regional plans to organize Ba'ath militias, provide training on heavy weapons, preposition weapons in local caches, and develop a robust clandestine communications network. These activities were grouped in formal written plans known as ‘Ba'ath Emergency Plans’.99

Operating under the assumption that the most serious risk to the regime was not an external threat but rather an internal uprising, Saddam's regime invested a significant amount of energy and resources into the Ba'ath Emergency Plans. When one examines the basic tenets of these counter-uprising plans, it is easy to see the outlines of the insurgency that began soon after the regime fell. The Ba'ath Emergency plans were a kind of Petri dish for an insurgency, but Saddam's government originally developed them as counter-insurgency plans.100 The regime focus on the internal threat, à la-1991, led to the development of a series of countermeasures that in large measure distracted it from preparing for the external threat that ultimately sealed its fate. It would be difficult to argue that Iraq stood a chance against the conventional threat regardless of the focus of its leadership. However, Saddam's perception of the threats did affect political and strategic choices and may have been a major factor in his decisionmaking in the run up to the 2003 war.

Another example of the influence of 1991 on Iraqi decisionamking in 2003 was the role played by the Iraqi Air Force. Among the many strange images to emerge from the 2003 war was one showing the excavation of a Russian-built MiG-25 Foxbat fighter from an Iraqi sand dune. In fact, Coalition troops discovered dozens of combat aircraft either buried or disassembled and hidden. The seemingly extreme lengths to which the Iraqi Air Force went to preserve its aircraft was not irrational or particularly surprising in light of Saddam experiences in 1991 and his perception of the threat in 2003.

Saddam's first experience with preserving his air force came in the opening months of the Iran–Iraq War. After failing to catch the Iranian Air Force on the ground in the opening days of that long and bloody campaign, Saddam dispersed a portion of his air force to sympathetic Arab states to keep them out of the reach of the Iranian counter-strikes. This effort to preserve his air force was effective and during the war the Iraqi Air Force developed a degree of confidence and technical sophistication unmatched in most of the Arab world. That self-confidence and Saddam's encouragement were evident in the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Despite its less than stellar performance during the invasion, the Iraqi Air Force drafted detailed plans to defend the new province and if necessary take the fight to the relatively small, but growing, American military outposts in the region.101 The reality of the overwhelming size of the Coalition air armada assembled against Iraq changed the mood by December 1990. The Iraqis quickly developed plans were to evacuate much of their air force to airfields beyond the reach of Coalition strikes. Apparently realizing that this might not be sufficient, however, the regime looked for political borders behind which the aircraft could be hidden. Because of the near universal Arab support for the international coalition, a reprise of the 1980 plan was infeasible. Instead, Saddam sent the cream of his air fleet to the only neighboring country whose airfields were effectively out of reach: Iran. Unfortunately for Saddam, the Iranians chose not to return these aircraft after the war was over.102

These precedents help explain why the Iraqi Air Force did not fight in 2003. The lessons of the past seemed clear: Iraq's air force could fight and die a quick death, flee and perhaps never been seen again, or it could try to hide and try to survive to fight another day. Because Saddam perceived the 2003 war as a limited campaign in which his own rule was not at stake, he chose to preserve his air force.

Conclusion

This paper suggests that motivated bias affected Saddam's decisionmaking. In the end, Saddam saw what he wanted to see. He wanted to see himself as a leader of epochal significance; he wanted to see victory in the 1991 Gulf War; and he wanted to see an Iraqi military that remained strong. Far from knowing his enemy, as Sun Tzu famously advised, Saddam mentally distorted his external enemy to conform to his world view, so he saw a weak American military serving a fundamentally timid American people.

Not only did Saddam apparently perceive these things, but he created and ruthlessly enforced a system in which his subordinates would reinforce those beliefs. Brave indeed was the man who would disagree with Saddam's view on anything. Nevertheless, simply stating this as an unpleasant fact of life for the Iraqi dictator's subordinates is not to describe fully the situation. Intelligence historian Christopher Andrew holds that one of the main purposes of the intelligence service of a one-party state is to reinforce the regime's misconceptions of the outside world.103 Doubtless this was true of Saddam's intelligence services, but the phenomenon was far broader, comprising every part of his national security apparatus. In effect, Saddam's brutality put him in an intellectual trap, which his subordinates (be they convinced of his correctness or merely intimidated into agreeing with him) would present him only with information that comported with what he wanted to hear. Once immersed in this world of alternate reality, it is hard to imagine how Saddam ever could have escaped. In the end, his reality led to catastrophe.

The constant affirmation that Saddam received from his subordinates must have eventually convinced him of his own genius, that he alone had unique insights. He reminded his intelligence staff that during the war with Iran, he was able to analyze the Iranians through ‘deduction and some of it through invention and connecting the dots, all without having hard evidence’.104 In short, what Saddam wanted to see (the foundation of motivated bias) became what he expected to see (the foundation of unmotivated bias). On the face of it, it would seem to have been difficult for an outside observer to discern the extent to which Saddam's understanding of the world made him immune or oblivious to the normal tools of statecraft. However, the record shows that, by and large, Saddam repeatedly laid out his views in public. The presumption often is to take such public utterances as being aimed at an outside audience, in his case the United States. Viewed in such a context, they become mere bluster. Without specific evidence to the contrary, might we not have applied Occam's Razor to conclude that the leader was saying what he believed to be true? This would be a reasonable starting point for projecting the strategic moves of a despotic foreign leader. The value of such a perspective to the formulation of foreign and security policy could be immense. After all, not only was Saddam deluded, but arguably so too was the United States in thinking he was not deluded.

The historical record emerging from Saddam's regime affords new opportunities to test empirically a wider range of theories relating to decisionmaking and international relations. However, given the fact that there will never be another leader precisely like Saddam ruling a country precisely like Iraq situated in the world precisely as Iraq was, is there any policy utility to these conclusions? There may indeed be.

The examples of Saddam's perceptions and misperceptions might most usefully serve as a notice to policymakers that they should think in a more structured, formal way not only about the possibility that adversaries may perceive situations fundamentally differently, but also about how these differing perceptions might influence adversaries' actions. A good starting point might be to assume that foreign leaders mean what they say publicly, no matter how odd these public pronouncements may sound. Saddam, it turns out, was quite sincere in this way. Such a assumption would have led to a realization that Saddam was unlikely to back down and that he was also going fight with one eye toward the post-war regime not, therefore, replicating the sort of apocalyptic scorched earth defense that Hitler ordered in 1945.

Even this simple assumption that leaders say what they mean would probably produce a sufficiently broad spectrum of possible adversary courses of action that American policies and strategies to deal with them would have to be quite adaptable. That greater degree of adaptability would probably be very helpful when the reality – which will certainly, to a greater or lesser extent, differ from expectations – becomes clear.

Notes

¹Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), ‘First Interview with Saddam Hussein in Twelve Years’, Special Dispatch Series, No. 437 (5 Nov. 2002), <www.memri.org>, accessed 2 Jan. 2008.

This paper was written at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) as part of a project sponsored by the US Department of Defense. This ongoing project will make available for scholars a broad collection of primary source documents from the regime of Saddam Hussein. (See the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' speech to the Association of American Universities, Washington DC, 14 April 2008, at <www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1228>, accessed 25 July 2009). Despite the official nature of the overall research effort, this paper represents only the authors' personal views; it does not represent the views of IDA, the Department of Defense, or any command or agency of the Department. The authors thank Dr Robert Jervis, Dr Thomas Mahnken, Dr Williamson Murray, Jessica Huckabey, Elizabeth Nathan, David Palkki, and Carolyn Leonard for their comments on earlier drafts. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Midwest Political Science Association Annual National Conference, Chicago, IL, 4 April 2008.

²ISGQ-2003-M0005705, ‘Meeting chaired by Saddam Hussein discussing events following the end of the 1991 war, c. 1993’, cited in Kevin M. Woods, The Mother of All Battles: Saddam Hussein's Strategic Plan for the Persian Gulf War (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press 2008), 264–5.

³The Iraqi material cited in this paper comes originally from captured Iraqi records and media files (audio and videotapes) originally accessed as part of a US Joint Forces Command project known as the Iraqi Perspectives Project (IPP). More directly, Iraqi materials referred to in this paper come primarily from two IPP studies. Kevin M. Woods, et al., The Iraqi Perspectives Report: Saddam's Senior Leadership on Operation Iraqi Freedom from the Official US Joint Forces Command Report (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press 2006) and Woods, The Mother of All Battles.

Records captured in Iraq as a result of the 2003 war include tens of millions of pages of the regime's most sensitive documents as well as thousands of hours of recorded conversations between Saddam and members of his inner circle. The original paper copies and electronic media captured during Operation ‘Iraqi Freedom’ remain in the Middle East awaiting final disposition and eventual return to Iraq. Captured records are generally handled in accordance with military practice dating back to the US Civil War (the 1863 Instructions for the Government of the Armies of the United States in the Field provided for the protection, exploitation, and return of captured libraries), international law (based on Article 53 of the Annex to the Hague Convention IV, 1907), and various temporary military and occupation authority orders such as Coalition Provisional Authority Order No. 4– Management of Property and Assets of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party (25 May 2003) issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. Copies of captured documents are covered under various parts of the Federal Records Act (Title 44, Chapter 31 – Records Management by Federal Agencies). Electronic copies of this collection, however, are part of a US government captured records database. A recent decision by the Department of Defense will in the near future make portions of this collection available to non-governmental scholars.

Although the specific details of access to the data are still in development, the intent of this project is similar to that of the post-World War II organization known as the American Committee for the Study of War Documents. This organization, formed in 1955, existed to:

direct an organized effort for the fullest scholarly utilization of documents which came into the possession of the Allies as a result of World War II; to secure the aid of the appropriate governmental agencies in making these documents available for study by American scholars; to enlist the support and cooperation of universities and colleges, faculties and graduate students, and of other scholarly organizations, in the systematic exploration of this material; to collaborate with scholars and institutions abroad in regard to such studies.

See ‘Other Activities’, American Political Science Review 50/2 (June 1956), 614–15.

⁴A review of the membership of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council and lists of senior advisors to Saddam between 1979 and 2003 reveals significant stability and loyalty at the top. See Edmund A. Ghareeb, Historical Dictionary of Iraq (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press 2004). Defections, although rare, were occasionally significant. Among the most important defections from Saddam's regime include Hussein Kamil (son-in-law and Director of the Military Industrial Commission), Wafiq As-Samarrai (former Director of Military Intelligence), Nizar Khazaraji (former Army Chief of Staff). Defections were the exception.

⁵See for example, Jerrold M. Post, ‘Saddam Hussein of Iraq: A Political Psychology Profile’, Political Psychology 12 (June 1991), 279–89. See also David Ronfeldt, Beware the Hubris-Nemesis Complex: A Concept for Leadership Analysis (Santa Monica, CA: RAND 1994); Paul K. Davis and John Arquilla, Deterring or Coercing Opponents in Crisis: Lessons from the War with Saddam Hussein (Santa Monica, CA: RAND 1991); Ofra Bengio, ‘How Does Saddam Hold On?’, Foreign Affairs (July/Aug. 2000), 90–103; Ofra Bengio, Saddam's Word: Political Discourse in Iraq (London: OUP 2002); Mark Bowden, Tales of the Tyrant, The Atlantic (May 2002), <www.theatlantic.com/doc/200205/bowden>; Norman Cigar, ‘Iraq's Strategic Mindset and the Gulf War: Blueprint for Defeat’, Journal of Strategic Studies 15/1 (March 1992), 1–29; Kanan Makiya, Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press 1998); Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi, Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography (London: Brassey's 1991). For governmental documents, see National Intelligence Estimate NIE 92-7, ‘Saddam Husayn: Likely to Hang On’, Secret, June, 1992, declassified Nov. 2000), available at <www.foia.cia.gov/search.asp>. See also numerous other declassified CIA documents pertaining to Iraq's leadership available at that URL.

⁶A common public opinion which Post has termed not only ‘inaccurate, but also dangerous’ in Post, ‘Saddam Hussein of Iraq’, 279.

⁷Ibid.

⁸Bruce Russett and Harvey Starr, ‘Individuals and Their Role in Creating Policy’, in James A. Hursch (ed.), Theories of International Relations (Washington DC: National Defense Univ. 1990), 53–4.

⁹We adopt these hypotheses directly from Daniel L. Byman and Kenneth M. Pollack. See their ‘Let Us Now Praise Great Men: Bringing the Statesman Back In’, International Security 25/4 (Spring 2001), 135–40.

¹⁰Russett and Starr, ‘Individuals and Their Role’, 53.

¹¹See Chaim D. Kaufmann, ‘Out of the Lab and into the Archives: A Method for Testing Psychological Explanations of Political Decision Making’, International Studies Quarterly 38 (Dec. 1994), 557–86.

¹²Robert Jervis, ‘War and Misperception’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18 (Spring 1988), 699–700.

¹³Ibid., 700.

¹⁴Robert Jervis, American Foreign Policy in a New Era (New York: Routledge 2005), 66.

¹⁵President Bush made the new strategy clear in a 1 June 2002 speech with ‘we must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path to action. And this nation will act.’ The new US strategy that included preemption was officially codified in Sept. 2002 National Security Strategy.

¹⁶Woods, Iraqi Perspectives, pp. 31–2.

¹⁷Efforts to destabilize the Ba'ath regime actually date to the end of the 1991 Gulf War. News reports in 1992 indicated that the United States provided financial backing to groups seeking to oust Saddam Hussein. See Patrick E. Tyler, ‘Plan on Iraq Told to Congress’, New York Times, 2 June 1992; Elaine Sciolino, ‘Greater US Effort Backed to Oust Iraqi’, New York Times, 2 June 1992; and Patrick E. Tyler, ‘US and Iraqis Tell of a Coup Attempt Against Baghdad’, New York Times, 3 July 1992. Efforts reportedly continued throughout the mid-1990s: see Jim Hoagland, ‘How CIA's Secret War on Saddam Collapsed’, Washington Post, 26 June 1997. Congressional push for regime change followed Saddam's obstructionist stance toward UN weapons inspectors. A series of actions (PL 105-174 signed 1 May 1998; Section 590 of HR 4328, PL 105-277 signed 21 Oct. 1998, and PL 106-113 signed 29 Nov. 1999) allocated $23 million to indirectly oppose Saddam. On 31 Oct. 1998, the Iraq Liberation Act was signed into law (ILA, HR 4655, PL 105-338) authorizing $97 million for Iraqi ‘opposition organizations’. A provision of the Fiscal Year 2001 Foreign Aid appropriation (HR 4811, PL 106-429) 6 Nov. 2000, added an additional $25 million to the general effort to support a coup. US policy change post-9/11 was indicated by senior level statements concerning the enduring and possibly intensifying threat of Iraq's WMD programs and vague links to international terrorism. President Bush's 29 Jan. 2002 State of the Union speech framed the administration's position by including Iraq as a member of the ‘axis of evil’, along with Iran and North Korea. In a May 2003 interview, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said that within days of 9/11, the administration had determined ‘on the surface of the debate it at least appeared to be about not whether but when … It was a debate about tactics and timing’. See Dept. of Defense News Transcript, ‘Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with Sam Tannenhaus, Vanity Fair’, 9 May 2003, <www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid= 2594>, accessed 30 April 2009.

¹⁸Saddam had tried in previous years to improve relations with the US, because ‘[he] did not consider [it] a natural adversary, as he did Iran and Israel’. (See Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq's WMD. Central Intelligence Agency, 2004, <https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/chap1. html>, accessed 1 Aug. 2008). This option was foreclosed, however, after President Bush's 17 March 2003 ultimatum that ‘Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours.’ See White House Press Release, 17 March 2003, <www.white house.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030317-7.html>, accessed 29 Feb. 2008.

¹⁹For instance, Antulio J. Echevarria II of the US Army War College has argued that the ‘concept of war rarely extended beyond the winning of battles and campaigns to the gritty work of turning military victory into strategic success, and hence was more a way of battle than an actual way of war. Unfortunately, the American way of battle has not yet matured into a way of war.’ Antulio J. Echevarria II, Toward an American Way of War (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College 2004), v.

²⁰Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton UP 1976), 217–18.

²¹ISGQ-2003-M0006753, ‘Saddam and his commanders discuss the retreat from Kuwait, c. 1992’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 266.

²²Robert Jervis. Email to Woods, 21 July 2008.

²³ISGQ-2003-M0005705, Iraqi document titled ‘Meeting chaired by Saddam Hussein discussing events following the end of the 1991 war, c. 1993’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 300.

²⁴ISGQ-2003-M0003943, ‘Iraqi lessons-learned conference, c. 1993’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 269.

²⁵ISGQ-2003-M0003474, ‘Saddam Hussein meeting with the national command (1992)’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 266–7.

²⁶ISGQ-2003-M0003852, ‘Saddam meeting with his Ministerial Council on 4 Aug. 1990’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 54.

²⁷Williamson Murray, Gulf War Air Power Survey, Volume II: Operations/Effects and Effectiveness (Washington DC: US GPO 1993), 136–8.

²⁸Eliot A. Cohen (ed.), Gulf War Air Power Survey, Volume V: A Statistical Compendium and Chronology (Washington DC: US GPO 1993), 641.

²⁹Woods, Mother of All Battles, 203–5. See also William M. Arkin, ‘Baghdad: The Urban Sanctuary in Desert Storm’, Airpower Journal 11 (Spring 1997), 4–21.

³⁰Woods, Mother of All Battles, 3–5; Richard L. Russell, ‘CIA's Strategic Intelligence in Iraq’, Political Science Quarterly 117 (Summer 2002), 201–3.

³¹ISGQ-2003-M0003869, ‘Saddam meeting with his senior military commanders after the withdrawal from Kuwait, 3 March 1991’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 270.

³²CMPC-2004-001639, ‘Report on strategies and damages of enemy air strikes (c. May 1991)’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 273–5.

³³Ibid.

³⁴CMPC-2003-006876, ‘Iraqi report on Gulf War air losses (c. 2001)’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 276–7.

³⁵Ibid. The Coalition did lose 75 aircraft, both fixed-wing and helicopter, but that figure includes combat and non- combat losses. Combat-only losses amounted to 42 downed aircraft. See ‘The Operation Desert Storm/Desert Shield Timeline’, American Forces Press Service News Articles, Dept. of Defense, 2000, <www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=45404>, accessed 1 Aug. 2008.

³⁶ISGP-2003-00030181, ‘Study on the Role of the Iraqi Air Force and Air Defense Command in Confronting the American Attack (classified Iraqi top secret and personal – 1991)’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 270–1.

³⁷CMPC-2004-001639, ‘Iraqi report on strategies and damages of enemy air strikes (c. May 1991)’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 276. Ironically, ‘half the force’ was precisely what Schwarzkopf was aiming at in terms of attrition of Iraqi ground forces before launching the ground offensive. He never actually got there with the air campaign, though he thought he did. Russell, ‘CIA's Strategic Intelligence in Iraq’, 202.

³⁸Saddam's reputation for brutality that included senior members of his government and even his own family is deserved, and documented in books such as Kanan Makiya, Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press 1991); Said K. Aburish, Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge (London: Bloomsbury 2000); and Woods, et al., Iraqi Perspectives Report.

³⁹US Dept. of Defense, Final Report to Congress: Conduct of the Persian Gulf War (Washington DC: US GPO April 1992).

⁴⁰ISGQ-2003-M0004555, ‘Audio recording Saddam Hussein attending a military seminar, 27 Nov. 1995’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 279.

⁴¹Ibid.

⁴²Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf with Peter Petre, It Doesn't Take a Hero (New York: Bantam 1992), 424.

⁴³Khaled bin Sultan, Desert Warrior: A Personal View of the Gulf War by the Joint Forces Commander (New York: HarperCollins 1995), 363.

⁴⁴Most Western histories assume the purpose of the supporting Iraqi attacks was to link up with the 5th Mechanized Division in Khafji. A review of Iraqi plans and after-action reviews indicates that while there were early, but not very realistic, options to reinforce success down the east coast of Saudi Arabia, the primary mission of the supporting armored division was to draw Coalition airpower away from the mechanized forces attacking Khafji. From the Iraqi point of view, these supporting operations were considered a success. The presumption that the armored division was ‘stopped’ by Coalition airpower before they could reach their objective, while logical, does not appear to be accurate. For example, see Rick Atkinson, Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1993). For an updated US perspective see, Paul W. Westermeyer, US Marines in Battle: Al-Khafji: 28 Jan. – 1 Feb. 1991 (Washington DC: US Marine Corps History Division 2008).

⁴⁵Woods, Mother of All Battles, 5–6.

⁴⁶NGIC-96-0404, ‘Lecture: The Pre-Emptive Attack and the Spoiling Attack, 20 July 1985’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 16. The future commander of II Corps, Ibrahim Abd al-Sattar Muhammad, delivered a lecture where he described advantages of preemptive attacks. The lecture notes contained a comment that Saddam was interested in this subject and offered pointers as the lecture was prepared.

⁴⁷ISGP-2003-00009833, ‘Draft transcript of interviews compiled for an official Iraqi history of events, c. 1995’, and ISGP-2003-10151507, ‘Audio tape of Lt. Gen. Husayn Rashid Muhammad discussing 1991 Gulf War, dated 11 May 1995,’ cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 16–18. Asked during a formal interrogation by the FBI in 2004 who had planned the attack on Khafji, Saddam answered simply, ‘me’. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Baghdad Operations Center, Saddam Hussein interview number 11, 3 March 2004, <www.gwu.edu/∼nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB279/12.pdf>

⁴⁸ISGP-2003-10151507, ‘Audio tape of Lt. Gen. Husayn Rashid Muhammad discussing 1991 Gulf War, dated 11 May 1995’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 16–18.

⁴⁹ISGQ-2003-M0006181, ‘Iraqi high ranking personnel analyzing the Battle of al-Khafji, c. 1993’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 26. The unidentified speaker said he was quoting the director of the General Military Intelligence Directorate (GMID).

⁵⁰ISGQ-2003-M0003958, ‘Military Seminar on the Um Al-Ma'arik, 10 May 1993’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 25–26 The speaker goes on to note the dilemma in choosing a day or night retreat under the enemy's air dominance. If the 5th Division retreated during the day, it was exposed to observation but could spread out and maneuver as individuals. If it retreated at night, it would have to remain in a formation (for navigation and passage of lines purposes), which made the Coalition's targeting easier. The 5th Division commander concluded that ‘retreating at night is no different than retreating during the day’ as far as losses are concerned.

⁵¹ISGQ-2003-M0006168, ‘IV Corps Commander and senior staff discuss operations during 1991 war, c. 1993’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 20–1.

⁵²ISGQ-2003-M0006183, ‘Iraqi commanders discuss Battle of al-Khafji, c. 1993’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 22.

⁵³See Woods, Mother of All Battles, 18.

⁵⁴Ibrahim al-Marashi, ‘The Nineteenth Province: The Invasion of Kuwait and the 1991 Gulf War from the Iraqi Perspective’ (PhD dissertation, Univ. of Oxford 2004), 291–3.

⁵⁵IISP-2003-00026728, ‘Study on the 1991 Gulf War in Kuwait, 1 Aug. 1995’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 26–7.

⁵⁶ISGQ-2003-M0003869, ‘Saddam meeting with his senior military commanders after the withdrawal from Kuwait, 3 March 1991’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 288–90.

⁵⁷ISGP-2003-00009833, ‘Draft transcript of interviews compiled for an official Iraqi history of events, c. 1995’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 27.

⁵⁸ISGQ-2003-00055154, ‘Al-Bakr University, “concept sketch for al-Khafji”, undated’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 19. The role of this battle in Iraqi professional military education was confirmed to Woods during interviews with various former Iraqi general officers between 2003 and 2007.

⁵⁹Murray, Gulf War Air Power Survey, Vol. II, 190–1.

⁶⁰Some independent studies disagree with these numbers, in particular one by Dr Theodore Postol of MIT, who suggests the Patriot success rate was far lower (See Theodore Postol, ‘Lessons of the Gulf War Experience with Patriot’, International Security 16/3 (1991), 119–71). Regardless, the figures for actual casualties and damage on the ground are approximately the same.

⁶¹Steve Fetter, George N. Lewis, and Lisbeth Gronlund, ‘Why were Scud casualties so low?’Nature 361 (Jan. 1993), 293–6.

⁶²Staff Lieutenant General Hazim Abd-al-Razzaq al-Ayyubi, Forty-Three Missiles on the Zionist Entity (1998) FBIS translation JN2511082498. Al-Ayyubi's detailed public memoirs closely match portions of his war diary, which was captured in Iraqi government files in 2003.

⁶³ISGQ-2003-M0005002, ‘Saddam Hussein meeting with Iraqi officials concerning post Gulf War Iraq, c. late 1994/early 1995’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 302.

⁶⁴It is not always clear what actions Saddam included in the term of ‘Israeli aggression’. In the case of the Gulf War, Israel declared the right to defend itself but was vigorously encouraged to remain on the sidelines of the war by the US in order to preserve the Coalition. Saddam seems to credit the missile strikes with having a deterrent effect on future ‘aggression’ against a broader concept of Arab interests.

⁶⁵ISGP-2003-00033136, ‘Role of the General Military Intelligence Directorate in Um Al-Ma'arik Battle and in controlling riots (Iraqi Top Secret), 15 July 2001’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 290–91. This GMID report is dated 2001. However, at least one Iraqi intelligence report available from Jan. 1991 paints a similar picture. See ISGP-2003-00037278, ‘Collection of Intelligence Reports, 1 March 1991’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 185. Also on 15 Feb., the Iraqi missile forces received a report from the Palestine Liberation Organization about the effects of the missile strikes in Israel as of 10 Feb. This report alleged 14 dead, 273 injured, 818 ‘psychologically shocked’, 3,000 evacuated, and 1,000 houses destroyed in Israel, though it is not clear whether this was for the entire Iraqi missile campaign to that date or for a particular round of attacks. See ISGQ-2003-00046019, ‘Partial Daily Journal of the Commander of Iraqi Missile Forces, part 2, c. 1991’. The journal noted that the report, though received on 15 Feb., was prepared on 10 Feb. 1991.

⁶⁶Jon D. Hull, ‘The Palestinians Back Another Loser’, Time, 11 March 1991, <www. time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,972503-1,00.html>, accessed 31 Dec. 2007.

⁶⁷ISGP-2003-00033136, ‘Role of the General Military Intelligence Directorate in Um Al-Ma'arik Battle and in controlling riots (Iraqi top secret), 15 July 2001’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 291–2.

⁶⁸ISGQ-2003-M0007446, ‘Meeting between Saddam and Ba'ath Party members discussing the 1992 US Presidential Election, Jan. 1993’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 299.

⁶⁹Ibid., 304–5.

⁷⁰For an explicit public use of the word ‘defeated’, see Open Source Center document GMP20030117000061, ‘Saddam Husayn Highlights Resistance in Gulf War Anniversary Speech’, 17 Jan. 2003. See also William C. Martel, Victory in War: Foundations of Modern Military Policy (New York: Cambridge UP 2007), 194.

⁷¹William Branigin, ‘A Brief, Bitter War for Iraq's Military Officers’, Washington Post, 27 April 2003, A25. See also Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives, 42.

⁷²Perspectives of the Iraqi II Republican Guard Corps Commander, Lt. Gen. Raad Hamdani, cited in Woods, et al., Iraqi Perspectives, 8–9.

⁷³Perspectives of the Iraqi II Republican Guard Corps Commander, Lt. Gen. Raad Hamdani, cited in Woods, et al., Iraqi Perspectives, 9.

⁷⁴Perspectives of Lt. Gen. Yahya Taha Huwaysh-Fadani al-Ani, former commander Iraqi coastal and naval forces cited in Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives, 8.

⁷⁵Perspectives of the Iraqi II Republican Guard Corps Commander, Lt. Gen. Raad Hamdani, cited in Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives, 7.

⁷⁶Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives, 7–8.

⁷⁷See for example Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers (New York: Free Press 1986).

⁷⁸Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, 280–1.

⁷⁹Kenneth Boulding quote cited in Ashton Applewhite et al., And I Quote: The Definitive Collection of Quotes, Sayings, and Jokes for the Contemporary Speechmaster, Revised (New York: St Martin's Press 2003), 37.

⁸⁰For a similar Iraqi assessment of the performance of the Republican Guard, which was not involved in the Battle of Khafji, see Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives 43, 47.

⁸¹MEMRI, ‘First Interview with Saddam Hussein in Twelve Years’. Interestingly, British Prime Minister Tony Blair survived a parliamentary revolt in late Feb. 2003 over his policy toward Iraq.

⁸²Open Source Center document GMP20030129000259, ‘Saddam Addresses Military Commanders, Says US “To Be Defeated” 29 Jan. 03’, 29 Jan. 2003.

⁸³Ibid.

⁸⁴Ibid. As early as 1992, Saddam had privately maintained that the nadir of the Iraqi Army's capability came at the end of Operation ‘Desert Storm’ and that it had been improving since. See ISGQ-2003-M0006753, ‘Saddam and his commanders discuss the retreat from Kuwait, c. 1992’, cited in Woods, Mother of All Battles, 266.

⁸⁵Open Source Center document GMP20030129000259.

⁸⁶Perspectives of the Iraqi II Republican Guard Corps Commander, Lt. Gen. Raad Hamdani, cited Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives, 13.

⁸⁸MEMRI, ‘The Iraq Crisis (1): Iraq Prepares for War, 11 Feb. 2003’, Special Dispatch Series, No. 467, <www.memri.org>, accessed 28 Dec. 2007.

⁸⁷Open Source Center document GMP20030117000061, ‘Saddam Husayn Highlights Resistance in Gulf War Anniversary Speech’, 17 Jan. 2003.

⁸⁹MEMRI, ‘First Interview with Saddam Hussein in Twelve Years’.

⁹⁰Open Source Center document GMP20030316000206, ‘Saddam Husayn Meets Commanders, Says War to Spread to “Entire Globe”’, 16 March 2003.

⁹¹Open Source Center document GMP20030117000061.

⁹²Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives, 25–6.

⁹³Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives, 25.

⁹⁴Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives, 25–32.

⁹⁵The Coalition struck 517 targets described as ‘Railroads and Bridges’ (470 with precision munitions) during Operations ‘Desert Storm’. See Cohen, Gulf War Air Power Survey, Vol. V: 514 and 517.

⁹⁶Makiya, Republic of Fear, xviii–xxii; Human Rights Watch, ‘Endless Torment: The 1991 Uprising in Iraq and its Aftermath’, Middle East Watch (June 1992), 29–56.

⁹⁷Coalition planners anticipated the preemptive destruction of bridges by the Iraqis as a part of defensive hydrology strategy that, in addition to bridges, would involve the destruction of dams. See Gregory Hooker, Shaping the Plan for Operation Iraqi Freedom: The Role of Military Assessments (Washington DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy 2005), 53–4.

⁹⁸Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives, 145–6.

⁹⁹The authors have reviewed a number of these plans ranging from local facility plans to town and finally province level plans. Generally, these plans were organized as military style operations orders including logistics and training annexes.

¹⁰⁰Early analyses of the insurgency argued, from the speed of its development and its sophistication, that it must have been preplanned. For example, see, Tom Shanker, ‘Husseini Agents are Behind Attacks in Iraq, Pentagon Finds’, New York Times, 29 April 2004 and Brian Bennett, ‘Who Are the Insurgents?’, Time, 16 Nov. 2003.

¹⁰¹See Woods, Mother of All Battles, 70–2, 78–81, and 144–7.

¹⁰²See Ibid. According to Iraqi air force records, 137 fighter, bomber, and transport aircraft were flown in Iran during the 1991 war. For their part, the Iranians acknowledged that only 22 Iraqi aircraft were illegally flown into their territory. Not surprisingly, no Iraqi aircraft were ever returned.

¹⁰³Christopher Andrew, ‘Intelligence, International Relations and “Under-Theorization”’, Intelligence and National Security 19/2 (June 2004), 177.

¹⁰⁴ISGQ-2003-M0004609, ‘Saddam and members of the Revolutionary Command Council discuss American reactions to invasion of Kuwait’, cited in Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives, 12.