<<  "[A] branch of the Iraqi Intelligence Service known as M14, the directorate for special operations, oversaw a highly secretive enterprise known as the Challenge Project, involving explosives. A Pentagon intelligence report described by The New York Times in April detailed an operation in which Mr. Hussein's intelligence officers scattered, as American-led forces approached Baghdad, to lead the guerrilla insurgency and plan bombings and other attacks.

"The report by Mr. Duelfer describes the M14 unit as having trained Iraqis, Palestinians, Syrians, Yemeni, Lebanese, Egyptian and Sudanese operatives in counterterrorism [??], explosives, marksmanship and foreign operations at its facilities at Salman Pak, near Baghdad.">>
 
The URL for the above-mentioned NYT report in April, along with a brief  "Iraq News" note, is at the bottom of this article.  Of course, this report raises the question of just when did M14 begin training Iraqis and other nationalities in these activities.  The documents recently obtained by Cybernet News Service suggest this may well be something that goes back to the fall of 1990, after Iraq invaded Kuwait.
 
New York Times
October 8, 2004
INTELLIGENCE
Inspector's Report Says Hussein Expected Guerrilla War
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - On the eve of the American invasion in March 2003, Saddam Hussein instructed top Iraqi ministers to "resist one week, and after that I will take over.'' To his generals, Mr. Hussein's order was similar - to hold the American-led invaders for eight days, and leave the rest to him.

Some of those who have recounted those words to interrogators believed at the time that Mr. Hussein was signaling that he had a secret weapon, according to an account spelled out in the new report by the top American arms inspector in Iraq. But what now appears most likely, the report said, is that "what Saddam actually had in mind was some form of insurgency against the coalition.''

American intelligence agencies have reported since last fall that the broad outlines of the guerrilla campaign being waged against American forces in Iraq were laid down before the war by the Iraqi Intelligence Service. But the intimate picture spelled out in the report by the inspector, Charles A. Duelfer, provides an extraordinary glimpse of Mr. Hussein and his advisers on the eve of war, just three months after the Iraqi leader had finally told his aides that Iraq no longer possessed chemical weapons.

As described by Mr. Duelfer, a deep apprehension among senior Iraqis over having to face the Americans with conventional arms alone competed with a conviction, at least on the part of Mr. Hussein, that the American advance could be slowed with the help of a popular uprising, and that those Iraqis who fled would be free to fight again.

The report is drawn from extended interrogations not just of Mr. Hussein, but of many of his top deputies, including former Iraqi officials like Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister. From their prison cells, some of them, including Mr. Aziz, even responded in writing to the Americans' questions, in a process that Mr. Duelfer describes as completing homework assignments. The Duelfer report suggests that the American failure to anticipate the Iraqi insurgency was just one of several major misreadings of Mr. Hussein and his deputies.

Among the disconnects cited in the report are some that portray the United States and Iraq as if they were in parallel universes. As late as March 16, 2003, the report says, three days before the war began, American intelligence services continued to receive reports from foreign services and other sources they regarded as credible saying that Mr. Hussein had decided to use chemical weapons against American troops in the event of war.

In fact, Mr. Duelfer concludes, on the basis of the interviews with Iraqis, chemical weapons were never part of the Iraqi defense strategy because Mr. Hussein had conceded in December 2002 that he had none. What the United States believed to be an Iraqi "red line,'' beyond which an American advance would set off an Iraqi chemical-weapons reprisal, was instead merely part of a standard tactical doctrine, taught to all Iraqi officers, that included the concept of a last line of defense, the report says.

The report does not offer a clear verdict on the extent to which the Iraqi insurgency that has raged for 18 months was planned. But it says that from August 2002 to January 2003, Army leaders at bases throughout Iraq were ordered to move and hide weapons and other military equipment at off-base locations, including farms and homes.

A single sentence in an annex also confirms that a branch of the Iraqi Intelligence Service known as M14, the directorate for special operations, oversaw a highly secretive enterprise known as the Challenge Project, involving explosives. A Pentagon intelligence report described by The New York Times in April detailed an operation in which Mr. Hussein's intelligence officers scattered, as American-led forces approached Baghdad, to lead the guerrilla insurgency and plan bombings and other attacks.

The report by Mr. Duelfer describes the M14 unit as having trained Iraqis, Palestinians, Syrians, Yemeni, Lebanese, Egyptian and Sudanese operatives in counterterrorism, explosives, marksmanship and foreign operations at its facilities at Salman Pak, near Baghdad. But on the Challenge Project in particular, Mr. Duelfer's report says only that "sources have not been able to provide sufficient details'' about that enterprise. The report includes recent debriefings of senior Iraqi officials, including one on June 23 with Mr. Aziz, who was reminded by an American interviewer that "you appeared confident'' on the eve of the American invasion, when Mr. Aziz had said that Iraq was prepared to defeat any American invasion.

"Of course I said these things,'' Mr. Aziz is said to have responded. "How could I say, 'I think we are making a mistake; we are not prepared for an attack?' "

The report describes intelligence analysts from the Iraq Survey Group as having "unprecedented access to detainees'' held in American custody, including such high-level deputies as Ali Hasan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, and Abdel Tawab Mullah Huweish, the former minister of industry, and Sabir Abdelaziz al-Duri, a former lieutenant general who served in both the Directorate of General Military Intelligence and the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

The report names Mr. Majid as among those who spoke colorfully and at length but never revealed any substantial information. But it says that others, including General Duri, had been forthcoming on subjects including Iraq's management of Kuwaiti prisoners after the Persian Gulf war of 1991, the organization of assassinations abroad by the intelligence services and the torture of political prisoners.

The report portrays Mr. Hussein as preoccupied with his own security, to the point that he rarely picked up a telephone after 1990, for fear that it might give away his location and prompt an attack by the United States. It also describes him as isolated, both from his advisers and from real-world realities, to the extent that after the Sept. 11 attacks, he resisted his advisers' recommendations that Iraq issue a statement of condolence to the United States.

That stance, which the report said was based on Mr. Hussein's anger over American attacks on Iraq, left Iraq's media unique among Middle Eastern services in praising the Sept. 11 attackers.

It was in December 2002, the report said, that Mr. Hussein assembled senior officials to tell that Iraq did not possess illicit weapons, and that they should "cooperate completely'' with the United Nations inspectors who had returned to Iraq as part of a last-ditch effort by the Security Council to stave off an American-led war.

By January 2003, the report says, Mr. Hussein finally accepted that American military action was inevitable. But he also believed that Iraqi forces could hold off the invaders for at least a month, even without chemical weapons, and that American forces would not penetrate as far as Baghdad. "He failed to consult advisers who believed otherwise, and his inner circle reinforced his misperceptions,'' the report said. "Consequently, when Operation Iraqi Freedom began, the Iraqi armed forces had no effective military response.''

By March 2003, the report says, quoting "a former field-grade Republican Guard officer,'' Iraq had collected reliable tactical intelligence against American forces in Kuwait and even knew when Operation Iraqi Freedom would start. Just before the war began, on March 19, Mr. Hussein met with his generals and convened a final meeting with his ministers, the Duelfer report says. "At least three times,'' the report says, Mr. Hussein repeated to the ministers the explicit instruction to "resist one week, and after that I will take over.''

In practice, Mr. Hussein did not disappear from sight until early April 2003, when American forces had reached the outskirts of Baghdad. But it would be more than eight months before he was captured by United States troops. During his time at large, he exhorted Iraqis to continue their insurgency, and he and other former Iraqi leaders, some of whom have still not been captured, are believed to have played prominent roles as leaders of the resistance.

"Saddam believed that the Iraqi people would not stand to be occupied or conquered by the United States and would resist - leading to an insurgency,'' the Duelfer report says. "Saddam said he expected the war to evolve from traditional warfare to insurgency.''
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