The recent reports of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Iraq Survey Group, and the Presidential WMD Commission regarding intelligence and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq offer many useful insights into Iraq's weapons programs and the challenges that the intelligence community faced in assessing them. But the reports offer no conclusive answer to a key question: How did Saddam Hussein plan to fight the war and avert defeat at the hands of the world's sole superpower without WMD? This is a troubling omission. After all, Saddam believed WMD to be the key to averting defeat during the Iran-Iraq War and to deterring the United States from "going on to Baghdad" after liberating Kuwait in 1991. If there was a time that Saddam needed WMD to fend off a threat to the very survival of his regime, it was in March 2003. This question must be answered if future WMD intelligence failures--in Iran, North Korea or elsewhere--are to be avoided.

It can now be said with confidence that on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraq did not possess militarily significant quantities of WMD. Moreover, there is no evidence that prior to the war Saddam Hussein gave any orders to resume production of chemical and biological weapons (CBW). One possible explanation for this is that Saddam feared the consequences of getting caught by United Nations weapons inspectors--who returned to Iraq in November 2002 and left Iraq the day before the war began on March 19, 2003--lest he undermine diplomatic efforts to avert war. An alternative explanation is that Saddam--worn down by more than a decade of sanctions and intermittent but wearying military confrontations with the United States--realized that the military balance did not favor Iraq and that his best chance for survival hinged upon the organization of a postwar insurgency that would return him to power. He therefore chose to focus his efforts in this direction, rather than resume Iraq's WMD programs. Support for such an explanation can be found in hints of fatalistic resignation discernible in some pre-war interviews with Saddam. Beyond this, evidence for such an explanation is rather thin.

Conversely, Saddam may have believed that he did not need CBW because the impending war did not threaten his grip on power. According to postwar debriefings of senior Iraqi military officers, Saddam believed that the United States planned a brief, punitive air campaign--essentially an expanded version of Operation Desert Fox (December 1998), perhaps in conjunction with limited ground operations to seize the oil fields in southern Iraq. (Saddam repeatedly claimed that control of Arab oil was a key U.S. objective.)

Moreover, in pre-war speeches and pep-talks with his generals, Saddam expressed his belief that Iraq could deal with a ground invasion. He apparently believed that the Iraqi army and the regime's popular militias would halt a foreign invasion far from the gates of Baghdad, while France or Russia would work for a ceasefire at the UN. The use of CBW would have undercut wartime diplomacy and complicated postwar efforts to further undermine sanctions.

Finally, Saddam might also have concluded that CBW would not deter the United States from going to war. After all, it had not deterred the United States in 1991. He might have reasoned that it would have only a limited impact on U.S. forces equipped and trained to fight in a contaminated environment. And its use could prompt the type of devastating response threatened by the United States in January 1991, thereby hastening his demise rather than ensuring his survival.

These explanations would suggest that Saddam was in fact optimistic about his prospects for survival in the event of war and that, as a result, a crash program to produce and use CBW would have been both unnecessary and counter-productive. This optimism might also explain why he confounded pre-war expectations by not prosecuting a "scorched earth" campaign, destroying Iraq's oil fields or preparing for urban combat in Baghdad. Why would he lay waste to Iraq if he expected to remain in control after the war and would need its oil and infrastructure to ensure his grip on power? And why should he prepare for combat in Baghdad if he did not expect coalition forces to reach the capital?

Saddam's Intelligence Failure

How would one account for Saddam's apparent optimism on the eve of the war that was to unseat him? Throughout his life, Saddam had overcome long odds to become the leader of Iraq and fend off numerous challenges to his survival. He survived his mother's apparent attempts to abort his birth; overcame humble origins to play a leading role in the Ba'ath Party, eventually becoming president of the country; survived a gunshot wound received as a youth during a bungled attempt to assassinate the prime minister of Iraq; survived the enormously bloody and expensive war against Iran that he launched in 1980; weathered defeat at the hands of coalition forces in 1991, the bloody uprising that followed and a decade of sanctions; and averted numerous coup attempts. His remarkable skills as a survivor may have imbued him with an unshakable belief in his own abilities and in his destiny to lead Iraq to greatness.

Moreover, Saddam appears to have once again greatly overestimated Iraq's military capabilities and underestimated those of his enemies, repeating mistakes he made in 1980 (when Iraq invaded Iran) and in 1991. This comes through clearly in his pre-war pep-talks with his generals. He appears to have deceived himself about the willingness of the Iraqi army to fight at the behest of the regime (curious, in light of his distrust of the military and his persistent fears of a military coup) and its ability to stand up to the U.S. military. He likewise underestimated the technological prowess of the U.S. armed forces, Washington's willingness to assume risk by driving on to Baghdad with a relatively small force dependent on long and vulnerable supply lines, and the audacity of a war plan that called for the invasion and occupation of Iraq with some four-plus divisions (after all, the Iraqi army, with 23 divisions, was unable to completely control the country). In light of the war's messy aftermath, it is hard to fault Saddam's judgment on this last point.

But what of claims that Saddam planned from the outset to go to ground and lead an insurgency that would return him to power after the Americans left? Saddam apparently intended to orchestrate, from the relative safety of Baghdad (or so he thought), irregular warfare by Iraqi militias against invading coalition forces in southern Iraq. He also seems to have anticipated the possibility that a coup or uprising might occur during the war. To this end, arms were distributed to regime supporters and stockpiled at schools, mosques and hospitals before the war. But there is no evidence that Saddam planned, prior to the war, to lead a postwar resistance movement, although the aforementioned pre-war preparations almost certainly abetted the emergence of the insurgency following the fall of the regime.¹ Efforts to organize an insurgency seem very much to have been ad hoc, rather than carefully planned, and Saddam appears to have been improvising life on the run when he was captured in a "spider hole" near his hometown of Tikrit in December 2003.

It is truly remarkable that the United States and Iraq so grievously misread each other's capabilities and intentions after devoting more than a decade to taking the measure of the adversary. In particular, it is astounding that Saddam did not seem to take seriously the U.S. threat to topple him, despite the military buildup on Iraq's borders and numerous media leaks indicating that the looming U.S. military campaign aimed to take Baghdad and unseat the regime. Ironically, the relatively small size of the invasion force may have contributed to Saddam's confusion about U.S. intentions, and thus to the defeat of the Iraqi army and the overthrow of his regime.

Ghost Images

But the United States and Iraq were not the only ones that erred. How does one account for the fact that so many foreign intelligence services were also apparently wrong about Iraq's pre-war WMD capabilities and programs? No Western or Middle Eastern intelligence service is known to have dissented from Washington's assessment of Iraq's WMD capabilities and potential before the war. One explanation is that there were in fact (and perhaps still are) small quantities of CBW hidden in Iraq. Another explanation is that the same analytic biases and group-think that affected U.S. intelligence analysts and policymakers afflicted their foreign counterparts.

Yet another possibility is that Iraq engaged in deliberate deception prior to and during the war. It is possible that Saddam Hussein hoped the deniable threat of CBW use would deter a coalition attack on Iraq, without undermining subsequent efforts to have sanctions lifted. Thus, prior to the war, Iraq created stockpiles of chemical protective gear and equipment--perhaps to make such a threat credible (the stockpiles were later discovered by advancing coalition forces)--and may have fed foreign intelligence services false reports that it retained WMD, thereby misleading Iraqi personnel who learned of these reports from unwitting relatives in the intelligence services. This may be why senior Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard commanders still believed that Iraq had WMD, in spite of the fact that their own units had not been issued chemical munitions and Saddam had told senior officers in December 2002 that Iraq no longer had WMD. And the Iraqis may have taken steps to appear as if they were preparing aircraft (including unmanned drones, Sukhoi strike aircraft and Tu-16 bombers) for chemical weapons missions against Israel--which may account for postwar Israeli claims to this effect. The possibility of deception merits additional scrutiny.

The explanation offered here also raises doubts about reports that before the war Saddam sent stockpiles of WMD outside the country--perhaps to Syria--for "safekeeping" (assuming, for the moment, that Iraq had retained stocks of WMD). If Saddam was optimistic about his prospects, why would he have done so? Just as he ordered the Iraqi air force in February 2003 to dismantle and bury several dozen of its most advanced combat aircraft to protect them from air attacks (rather than sending them abroad as he did in 1991), why wouldn't he have ordered that retained stocks of WMD--if any indeed existed--be buried or otherwise hidden in Iraq?

Thus, whether due to folly (Saddam's misplaced optimism and misreading of U.S. capabilities and intentions), realism (his belief in the limited utility of CBW in such a war), prudence (the fear of massive retaliation), or a combination of the above, Saddam viewed CBW as neither weapons of first nor last resort, but rather as "weapons of no resort" in a war with the United States. He apparently believed that Iraq's conventional and paramilitary forces, the threat to demolish Iraq's oil fields (thereby denying the United States access to Iraq's vast oil wealth), and his Franco-Russian diplomatic "safety net", not CBW, were his ultimate trump cards in facing down the United States. Once again, Saddam appears to have miscalculated, this time with likely fatal consequences for him and his regime.²

Lessons Learned?

What are the intelligence and policy implications of this assessment? First, Saddam seemed to discount the seriousness of U.S. preparations to topple him, despite a military buildup on Iraq's borders and numerous leaks to the media that accurately described American plans. There was no failure to communicate clearly; U.S. intentions were neither veiled nor ambiguous. The problem was how to convince an insular, isolated leader, captive to entrenched attitudes and deeply ingrained habits of thought, of the credibility of U.S. threats (not that war could have otherwise been averted). How does one assess an enemy leader's state of mind and influence deep-seated attitudes and mindsets, in order to avert miscalculation during crises and wars? And what does this say about the potential for miscalculation in an increasingly proliferated and dangerous world?

Second, the invasion of Iraq demonstrated a paradox of postmodern war: The force needed to invade a foreign country and overthrow its regime may be much smaller than that required to convince the regime's leadership that it faces a threat to its survival. Thus, when tailoring a force package for purposes of deterring or compelling an adversary, U.S. policymakers and military planners should not only consider objective planning factors, but should also take into account the expectations of foreign leaders regarding the kind of force that it would take to threaten the regime's vital interests or pose a threat to its survival. Information operations may have an important role to play in influencing enemy assumptions and bridging this perception gap.

Third, intelligence analysts and policymakers need to understand better how proliferators think about and plan to use WMD and to re-evaluate their own fundamental assumptions on the subject. In both 1991 and 2003, it was widely assumed that Iraq would assign a central role to WMD in deterrence and warfighting. In both cases, however, Iraq sought to deter or thwart the designs of the United States by a combination of political and conventional military means and perhaps, in the latter case, by deceiving its enemies regarding its WMD capabilities. Furthermore, how does one factor the possibility of deception into intelligence assessments and policy discussions, without succumbing to the type of systematic overestimation of an adversary's WMD capabilities that led to the intelligence failures that preceded Operation Iraqi Freedom (where lack of evidence regarding WMD was seen as proof of the effectiveness of Iraqi denial and deception measures)?

Finally, intelligence analysts and policymakers need to understand better how Iraq's political and military leadership perceived events leading up to and during the invasion and what actually happened during the war. They need to come to some kind of understanding about whether decision-making images and processes in Saddam Hussein's Iraq were unique or whether they reflected pathologies typical of decision-making in other authoritarian or totalitarian regimes. And they need to understand how such pathologies may affect adversary perceptions and behavior during crises and wars.

These questions are not just of academic interest but are highly relevant to the challenges the United States faces in Iran and North Korea--and therefore must be answered. If U.S. intelligence analysts and policymakers fail to understand the assumptions and choices of enemies in past wars, they will almost surely be surprised again by enemies in future wars.

1 The regime likewise had long-standing contingency plans to deal with the possibility that it might be ousted by domestic rivals, and would once again have to go underground, reorganize and seize power, as it did between 1963 and 1968. Such planning may have also facilitated the emergence of the Sunni Arab insurgency following the conclusion of major combat operations in May 2003.

2  See also Michael Eisenstadt, "Iraq and After: Taking the Right Lessons for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction", Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction, National Defense University, May 2005.