Replies

Well, if you want to avoid the shredder ride at Saddam World, you may not wish to be entirely candid with the boss in regard to that armored division camped in his eponymous airport. Nevertheless, his behavior suggests to me more that he thought that the invasion could be prevented diplomatically than that he felt it could be defeated in the field. If the latter, somebody with a Slavic surname deserves credit as the best con man since Newman's character in The Sting. If the former, that surname is likely to be Gallic, not Slavic.

A guess on top of a guess, but it seems likely enough to me at this point - somebody told our boy that the U.S. would never take gross military action alone, and in the absence of UN sanction, and that the latter could be prevented by the use of a veto on the part of...let's see, Great Britain is eliminated, so, France, Russia, China? Three powerful pieces, any one of which could checkmate the U.S. in the UN...unless somebody from Texas kicked over the board. International diplomacy's much more like poker than chess anyhow...

You've left out a tiny piece to the puzzle. Saddam's army was being coached by old Russian generals. He and they had planned a new " STAINGRAD ". The only thing they didn't consider, was that Baghdad isn't Stalingrad, his army would rather emulate the French, and WE don't rely on " old " war plans...we invent NEW ones.

Speaking of the UN. Now the UN is trying to play games with the Sanctions.

This is almost as dangerous (for the UN) as what Saddam was trying to do.

The UN is on a DOWNWARD SPIRAL.

They're going to push and push until they force the United States to bypass the Sanctions and buy Iraqi Oil directly.

Then the United Nations is DONE!

Agreed, but my feeling is that, on that first night, two bunker busters followed by 24 Tomahawks down a hole in the ground ended this deal. The latest media word is that the WMDs were moved east into Syria for safekeeping; this would make sense if Saddam's Russian handlers told him he would need to show he was complying with UN regulators, hoping the war would drag on and the US "invaders" would find nothing. The bunker busters were more than a wake-up call IMO.

And, as the some other posters mentioned, even if he was alive, there is no way he could have believed that all of his defenses were that vunerable. Therefore, nobody who has ever seen this guy shoot people in the head for bad news is going to tell him that things are even worse than that.