What ahppened to the Iraqi Army in Gulf War II?

Great Debates
1

I have this hypothesis. It is that the Iraqi military didn’t shatter and dissolve under the weight of American firepower, but according to a careful plan. Saddam and the Iraqi military understood, long beforehand and maybe longer than most Americans understood, that the US invasion was a done deal no matter what the Iraqis offered to prevent it. They also understood that they had no hope whatsoever of resisting in a force-against-force manner.

So they planned to let the Americans roll through. They left enough shell forces visible to satisfy the casual ovserver, which is unfortunately what Bush and Rumsfeld turned out to be. But large numbers of men melted away in advance. They stashed away as many weapons and explosives as they could dig holes for, and they planned for a long guerrilla war. The current state of affairs in Iraq is not a result of a piecemeal religious insurgency. It is the result of carefully laid plans by a hidden Iraqi defacto high command. Of couse, they certainly wouldn’t be behind ALL the car bombings and sundry mayhem, but they would be doing everything they could to persuade all kinds of people to throw bombs at the nearest American. Really, I have no idea how plausible this is, but I have never seen this concept debated in print – that the situation in Iraq today is gping pretty much according to Saddam’s plan – excluding his personal capture of course.

So, what do you think? Can you point me toward evidence to support or refute it?

Please, if this view has already been debated at length, point me to it. Since I don’t spend a lot of time in GD, I could easily have missed it.

2

You should read Cobra II. It has an excellent inside look at what Saddam was thinking in terms of war strategy. Bottom line: he did not expect that the invasion would drive to Baghdad and push him out of power. Saddam didn’t plan to lose the war.

3

To refute it, I’ll point out that many of the insurgents are groups that opposed Saddam. And that if Saddam had formed a strategy based on a guerilla resistance, he’d have done more to ensure his own role as a leader in that resistance.

4

In “Plan of Attack,” Bob Woodward says General Tommy Franks estimated that 30,000 Iraqi soldiers died during the first three weeks of the war - Including an on the record estimate of 3000 killed defending Baghdad.
They didn’t “let” the American Army roll through – they couldn’t stop it and many thousands of Iraqi Soldiers gave their lives bravely.

Here is a thread were we discuss it but only a very few posts