<p>Baghdad -- In the final days before Baghdad fell, Saddam Hussein's son Qusai issued a series of military orders that sent thousands of elite Republican Guard troops to their certain death in the open countryside.</p>
<p>According to accounts provided to The Chronicle by more than a dozen Iraqi military officials -- some of them still hiding from American forces -- the orders exposed the core of the Iraqi military to devastating U.S. air attacks and left the capital's defenses markedly weakened.</p>