Two weeks after the US invasion began, Lieutenant General Raad Majid al-Hamdani drove to Baghdad for a crucial meeting with Iraqi leaders. He pleaded for reinforcements to stiffen the capital's defenses and permission to blow up the Euphrates River bridge south of the city to block the US advance.
But then-president Saddam Hussein and his close aides had their own ideas of how to fight the war.
Convinced that the main danger to his government came from within, Saddam had sought to keep bridges intact so he could rush troops south if the Shiites got out of line.
Hamdani got few additional soldiers, and permission to blow up the bridge came too late. The Iraqis damaged only one of the two spans, and US soldiers soon began to stream across.
The episode was just one of many incidents, described in a classified US military report, other documents and in interviews, that demonstrate how Saddam was so preoccupied about the threat from within his country that he crippled his military in fighting the threat from without.
Only one of his defenses -- the Saddam Fedayeen -- proved potent against the invaders. They later joined the insurgency still roiling Iraq.
Wary of coups and revolt, Saddam was distrustful of his own commanders and soldiers, the documents show. He made crucial decisions himself, relied on his sons for military counsel and imposed security measures that had the effect of hobbling his forces. He did this in several ways:
Saddam was so secretive and kept information so compartmentalized that his top military leaders were stunned when he told them three months before the war that he had no weapons of mass destruction, and they were demoralized because they had counted on gas or germ weapons.
He put a general widely viewed as an incompetent drunkard in charge of the Special Republican Guard, entrusted to protect the capital, primarily because he was considered loyal.
Saddam micromanaged the war, not allowing commanders to move troops without permission from Baghdad and blocking communications among military leaders.
The Fedayeen's operations were not shared with leaders of conventional forces. Republican Guard divisions were not allowed to communicate with sister units. Commanders could not even get precise maps of terrain near the Baghdad airport because that would identify locations of the Iraqi leader's palaces.
Much of this material is included in a secret history prepared by the US military of how Saddam and his commanders fought their war.
Posing as military historians, US analysts interrogated more than 110 Iraqi officials and military officers, treating some to lavish dinners to pry loose their secrets and questioning others in detention centers.
Captured Iraqi documents were also reviewed.
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