Conquering Iraq - American Strategies
by Tom Holsinger's
June 27, 2002

Inspiring Saddam Hussein's own people to assassinate him is the safest opening move for the American conquest of Iraq. Deploying overpowering force is the most effective way to this, as that would phenomenally enhance a psychological warfare campaign against Saddam?s regime-protection services. The bodyguard standing behind Saddam is in a better position to kill him than we are, can do it earlier, and only needs tacit motivation from us.

A reinforced corps in Kuwait, with a Marine division-equivalent off-shore, could conquer Iraq fast, while also being such a psych-war force multiplier that a reasonable chance exists that forcible conquest would not be necessary. This psych-war campaign would likewise be a force multiplier for invasion if that is required.

A large deployment would also deter nearby terrorist-supporting states from causing trouble while we eliminate Saddam's regime. These are good reasons for giving CentCom's commander, General Tommy Franks, most everything he wants.

But we shouldn't twaddle getting it there. The time for delay is after we're ready to invade, to concentrate the minds of Saddam's henchmen on their fates while fostering related deception plans.

Understanding the differing objectives of the participants is crucial to strategy formulation. Ours conflict only a little with those of Saddam's deputies.

Our goals require occupation and control of Iraq, to secure Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD - biological, nuclear and chemical) plus production infrastructure and personnel, and to track any which escape our conquest. We also want the complete records of Saddam's many intelligence services plus the intelligence personnel themselves. This prospect worries guilty consciences around the world.

We therefore want Saddam's minions alive and safe, which cheers them immensely. Keeping their loot can also be arranged.

Saddam's goal is his own survival (losing power means he dies). Al Qaeda cares nothing for either - they want to kill Americans, and will use whatever WMD Saddam gives them on their schedule, not his. Giving them WMD means Saddam loses control of the sequence, timing and extent of WMD attacks on the U.S. just when he most needs that to influence American policy. It would be more in Saddam's interest to use the threat of giving WMD to Al Qaeda as a deterrent to invasion.

Further anthrax attacks on America, before or shortly after we invade Iraq, would far more likely be done by Iraqi agents directly than by Al Qaeda. While Saddam will give anthrax to Al Qaeda after the invasion starts, it will take them months to use it in America. Our best protection from Iraqi anthrax is to kill Saddam before he orders its use or delivers more to Al Qaeda.

Coordinated psychological warfare and deception plans could produce everything we want while enabling a fallback speedy conquest with reduced risk of anthrax attack on our homeland. Here is one way to do that. There are others.

Mission - motivate Saddam's henchmen to kill him. Solution - convince them that they'll be killed if they don't. Means of doing that - convince them that our conquest of Iraq is inevitable and that, if they don't kill Saddam first, we'll disarm them after the conquest and let their victims kill them. Communication technique - send the corps to Kuwait.

Simultaneous means - convince them that paradise awaits if they kill Saddam and then surrender to us unconditionally. That really would be a best-case scenario for Iraq. Throw in a few billion dollars in bribes which we can easily afford (this is not the time to be stingy), plus protection, and this would be true for the henchmen too. Communication technique - Congressional screams about the bribes.

Mission - motivate Saddam's people to kill him immediately if he orders anthrax use on us, and also make Saddam fear that will happen. Solution - convince the henchmen that their families will be killed if they don't (threatening the henchmen, alone, with postwar trial is laughable). Means - genocidal nuclear retaliatory strike on the areas populated by Iraq's 20% Sunni Arab minority (almost all the henchmen are Sunni Arab - most are from Tikrit), including blanketing the area with fallout plume lethal zones from megaton-yield groundbursts. Communication technique - loud credible threats with well-publicized movement of the delivery capability to the Gulf, and training of invasion forces for NBC combat.

Mission - convince Saddam that he has a chance to survive without using anthrax. Here it gets complicated. Getting Saddam to believe he has any chance at all, while simultaneously convincing his henchmen to believe precisely the opposite, could be a problem.

Solution - be insincere. Blatantly insincere. Joe Isuzu insincere.

Saddam, you see, wants to believe. As long as we tell Saddam what he wants to hear, he'll likely believe that and ignore all evidence to the contrary. He did in 1990-91, and we have his then intelligence chief advising us now on what Saddam wants to hear. The man defected.

So here's a possible deception plan. Convince Saddam that a pre-emptive chemical weapons attack on our forces in Kuwait, notably with persistent agents on our vehicle parks, would delay our invasion for months. And convince him that such would not result in a nuclear response, i.e., raise the nuclear threshold for this while conspicuously lowering it for anthrax.

The idea is to give Saddam both hope and a means of realizing it, in order to distract him from doing something really dangerous. Saddam has reason to believe that his forces got off some scattered chemical attacks in 1991 without any retaliation by us, and will act on what he wants to believe happened regardless of what actually did happen.

Iraq's WMD mandate a decapitation attack as part of America's strategy for conquest. We as yet lack the political will to do this with nuclear weapons, and so must use accomplices. This is one way to do that. Failure could kill millions, both here and in Iraq.