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Middle East Review of International Affairs
The Struggle for Iraq: Understanding the Defense Strategy of Saddam Hussein
by Ibrahim al-Marashi
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Abstract
This article analyzes how the Iraqi regime portrayed the war to its people and conducted it on both a military and political level. Using earlier captured Iraqi documents it analyzes the regime's strategies and techniques for both controlling and mobilizing the population. Saddam's choice of a defensive strategy to force a lengthy war of attrition was his best possible one, based on his hope that his enemies would lack the patience or courage to continue the war and also that domestic and international pressures would force his opponents to let his regime survive.
Full PDF Document, 10 pages, 59 kb
Note *: Ibrahim al-Marashi is a research associate at the Center for Non-Proliferation Studies in Monterey, California as well as a lecturer at the US Naval Postgraduate School. He is currently working on a project on Iraqi intelligence operations in northern Iraq and Kuwait. He is also the author of "How Iraq Conceals And Obtains Its Weapons Of Mass Destruction" which appeared in the March 2003 issue of MERIA. Back