The Iraqi Military’s Achilles’ Heel Is Saddam Hussein

Long before the fall of the last Taliban and Al Qaeda stronghold at Tora Bora, White House officials were considering where next to strike a blow against terrorism. Iraq is among the targets being considered. However, numerous factors must first be weighed, including the fighting capability of the Iraqi army.

While some see Saddam Hussein’s army as formidable, others feel such is not the case. As one who had the opportunity to interrogate senior Iraqi officers during the Persian Gulf War, I would like to share some insights.

With the rapid collapse of the Iraqi army after U.S. ground forces entered Kuwait and Iraq, I led a team to interrogate 10 Iraqi battalion and regimental commanders. What these commanders voluntarily shared about their army’s capabilities--or, more precisely, its lack thereof--was astonishing. While on paper the Iraqi army looked formidable--a long-toothed tiger poised to attack or defend--in reality, the tiger was made of paper.

Ironically, the army’s greatest strength--a dictator determined to build a massive war machine--was also its greatest weakness. As it turned out, it was not only Iraq’s neighbors who feared Hussein’s army, but Hussein himself. As a result, the Iraqi army that U.S. forces encountered in February 1991 lacked leadership, training and motivation.

With one of the world’s largest armies under arms in 1990, Hussein took great pride in using his military muscle against relatively defenseless Kuwait.

Yet, driven by fear that a powerful army posed just as great a threat to him personally, he also took steps to emasculate his own army’s fighting capabilities before employing it against his much smaller neighbor.

One of the most important elements in fielding a capable fighting force in wartime is ensuring it is well trained in peacetime. U.S. forces constantly undergo peacetime combined arms training, during which all elements of its fighting capabilities--ground, air, artillery--are well coordinated.

The Iraqi army, however, was never permitted to undertake such training by Hussein because he feared the more time his military leaders spent together, the more opportunity they had to plot against him.

As a result, Iraqi commanders had little understanding of how best to employ their ground forces, tanks, artillery and--had their pilots not run for cover--air power.

Iraqi commanders also failed to take any initiative. Hussein had a practice of removing, either temporarily or more permanently by execution, those exhibiting too much initiative. As a result, commanders felt safer maintaining a low profile, fearing even to report faulty equipment or desertions.

In one case, a commander who reported a high desertion rate during the U.S. air war was shot. The desertion rate immediately dropped--at least from a reporting standpoint. In reality, the rates drastically increased, reaching as high as 80% for some units.

Without their commanders taking initiative, Iraqi soldiers who did not desert were on their own. The battlefield tactics they developed were keyed to what the combat situation dictated.

For example, they noticed that U.S. planes would only concentrate fire on Iraqi vehicles, so they learned to quickly abandon a vehicle as soon as it came under air attack.

Combat intelligence was nonexistent for the Iraqi army during the war, again because Hussein feared that too much information in the hands of his subordinates posed a danger to him. Iraqi commanders were kept continually in the dark, not only about their own force dispositions but also about the disposition of U.S. or allied units they were facing.

A difficult element to assess in the current debate about the Iraqi army’s fighting capability is the commitment of its warriors to their cause. In the Persian Gulf War, such a commitment was lacking as most Iraqis felt it was wrong to invade Kuwait. If the U.S. were now to attack Iraq, however, they might feel more of a sense of commitment in defending their own country.

In the final analysis, the Iraqi army, despite its impressive numbers and armament, possesses the same Achilles’ heel today that it had over a decade ago--Saddam Hussein. As long as Hussein fears his army may turn against him, he is content to emasculate it.

Should the decision be made to target Iraq next, we will, as we did a decade earlier, solidly defeat its army.

This time, however, we must ensure the tyrant does not survive.