As the U.S.-led coalition prepared for war against Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 by pouring troops and materiel into the Middle East, key members of Saddam Hussein's government viewed the build-up as a lesser danger than a possible coup attempt from within its ranks, according to a report released today by U.S. Joint Forces Command.  

This perspective may seem perplexing to readers in the West and others looking at Saddam's Baath Party regime from the outside, but it made sense to those who played a key role in that government given all the times they were threatened with ouster by internal coups, the report, prepared by JFCOM's Joint Center for Operational Analysis, states. The center conducts "lessons learned" studies of past and ongoing missions across the globe, producing classified reports on major combat in Iraq three years ago and subsequent stability operations.

The center's work is used to inform decisions made by top Pentagon personnel and to train joint task forces deploying to operational theaters, the group's director, Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Cucolo, told Inside the Pentagon in January.

The subject of the newly unveiled "Iraqi Perspectives Project" report is Operation Iraqi Freedom as viewed by several leaders of Saddam's regime, many of whom were interviewed while in custody after coalition forces took Baghdad, which ended Baath Party rule. Among those questioned were Ali Hassan Al-Majid Tikriti, otherwise known as "Chemical Ali," and Tariq Aziz, the nation's former deputy prime minister and member of the Revolutionary Command Council.

The study describes two overarching assumptions guiding Saddam's response to an increasing threat from coalition forces, the first being that a possible internal coup posed the greatest challenge to the regime.

The Baath Party, after all, failed in its first attempt to control Iraq in the early 1960s when military leaders refused to cooperate. Later that decade, after Arab defeat in the Six-Day War with Israel, the Baathists, with Saddam among its leaders, returned to power in another coup.

Before the Persian Gulf War, Saddam, now Iraqi dictator, established the Republican Guard in part to prevent coup attempts. After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the Republican Guard, which did not not fare well against U.S. and allied forces during the conflict, brutally put down an attempted rebellion by Shia and others in that country.

Even later, Saddam created the Special Republican Guard and the Fedayeen in attempts to further consolidate his power.

However, his concern about internal coups led him and colleagues to make disastrous decisions about how to train such groups and staff them, according to the JFCOM report.

"Because Saddam was unwilling to trust anyone except for his sons and a few close relatives, he forbade the military to train in anything resembling rigorous fashion," the document states. "Fearing that any training maneuvers might well turn into another coup attempt, Saddam severely restricted unit movements and even social contacts between senior officers."

Eschewing a system of merit-based promotions, Saddam chose commanders who were loyal blood relatives.

"Most of the competent [officers] fell by the wayside, retired if they were lucky, dead if Saddam had any reason to distrust them," the report states. "Military effectiveness, at least in Western terms, ceased to exist."

While to Western eyes, "the choices Iraq made may appear dysfunctional or even absurd, the regime's responses to the threat and then invasion were logical within the Iraqi political framework, even if later proven to be counterproductive," the report states. "Saddam may have been, to a large extent, ignorant of the external world; he was, however, a student of his own nation's history and culture.

"Thus, the Iraqi response to threats and the invasion of coalition forces was a function of how Saddam and his minions understood their own world, a world that looked nothing like the assessments of Western analysts," it adds.

Besides, Saddam did not take the United States seriously in threatening regime change in Iraq, according to the report. His second major assumption, the document adds, was that America feared an extended ground fight, based on the way the United States left Vietnam after its troops suffered 58,000 deaths, a low figure in his eyes, as well as the U.S. military's departure from Somalia after facing resistance there. The 1998 Desert Fox air campaign against Iraq, and, in the Balkans, the war against Serbia, which was conducted without a ground invasion, made Saddam even more confident in his assessment.

"From Saddam's point of view, the idea that the Americans would attack all the way to Baghdad appeared ludicrous," the report states.

Some of Saddam's advisers thought the U.S.-led coalition would invade in 2003, but they expected a long air campaign before that would happen, according to the study.

"Therefore, the entire Iraqi leadership -- military and civilian -- was surprised by coalition ground forces beginning their offensive into Iraq at the same time the air campaign was starting," the report states. "Adding to their incomprehension were the speed and power of the American offensive, which were simply beyond their understanding of military operations and logistical capabilities."