US News
Pentagon says Russia aided Iraq during US-led invasion
By Mike McCarthy
Mar 24, 2006, 19:00 GMT

Washington - The Russian government obtained information about US troop movements in Iraq from sources inside the US military and passed the intelligence on to Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a Pentagon study about the early stages of the war declassified on Friday.

The Russian embassy in Baghdad gave the information to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry that also described how the Americans intended to assault the capital city, said the report, citing Iraqi documents seized after Saddam's regime was toppled.

'The information that the Russians have collected from their sources inside the American Central Command in Doha is that the United States is convinced that occupying Iraqi cities is impossible,' said the Iraqi document sent to Saddam on March 24 2003, only days after the US-led invasion began.

US Central Command oversees US military operations in the Middle East, and set up headquarters for running the war from Doha, the capital of Qatar.

The Pentagon report, called 'Iraq Perspectives Project,' is a US military study assessing the strategy employed by Saddam Hussein and his top military officials on how to defend the country. There was no other source in the study to corroborate the Iraqi document, which went on to explain the US strategy to bypass the cities on the US thrust to Baghdad.

'Sure, I was surprised,' Brigadier General Anthony Cucolo said when asked about Russian assistance to the Iraqis. Cucolo heads the Pentagon's Joint Centre for Operation Analysis in Joint Forces Command.

The report focuses on the weeks between March 2003, when the invasion was launched, and May, after Saddam's regime was toppled and the heaviest combat had ended.

Cucolo attributed Russia's willingness to help Iraq to economic interests.

The report was compiled by Joint Forces Command to learn about the effectiveness of US tactics. It did not shed light on reports in The New York Times in recent weeks outlining Germany's assistance to the US military.

According to the newspaper, Germany intelligence agents acquired Saddam's plan to defend Baghdad and helped the US military target sites in Baghdad. The German government denies providing the Americans with the Baghdad defence plan and insists the targeting information was meant to prevent humanitarian sites from being bombed.

The Joint Forces Command study was the source for The New York Times stories, but the release of the unclassified version on Friday did not confirm the newspaper's reports, which cited classified information.

Cucolo refused to confirm or deny the reports, saying he cannot discuss classified information.

The New York Times accounts published in late February and early March stirred controversy because former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government did not disclose the alleged assistance to the public while maintaining a policy strongly opposed to the US-led invasion.

The German parliament has launched an investigation into what role Schroeder's government might have played. Chancellor Angela Merkel succeeded Schroeder in November.

The Pentagon study, based on seized documents and interviews with top Iraq regime officials, provides insight into how Saddam sought to protect his reign as US forces prepared to invade, and indicated that the ousted dictator now on trial for human rights abuses was more determined to protect his rule than rebuff the coalition.

It describes a regime hampered by miscommunication that relied on false assumptions about the intentions and weaknesses of the US military, based on a perception the United States did not have the stomach to endure combat deaths.

'Saddam believed that the United States was casualty adverse to an incredible degree,' Cucolo said.

On weapons of mass destruction, the report said US intelligence analysts misinterpreted Iraqi attempts to comply with international inspections as an act of deception because that had been Saddam's practise for more than a decade.

The report said that US analysts had no way of knowing Saddam Hussein was trying to comply, since Iraq had spent a decade trying to hide evidence of biological and chemical arms.

According to the report, Saddam was insisting that full access be given to weapons inspectors to not to give US President George W. Bush 'any excuses to start a war.'

Allegations that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was Bush's chief reason for launching the invasion, but no evidence has been found that the Baghdad regime was stockpiling illegal weapons.

Kevin Woods, a Pentagon official and primary author of the report, said he was repeatedly told during interviews with former Iraqi generals that they knew of no weapons of mass destruction.