Saddam's Post Gulf War Plans

Feb. 19 -- As Saddam Hussein proved so memorably during the Gulf War, a dictator can prove to be a dismal failure as a general.

Military experts say Saddam followed an old script from the Iran-Iraq war when he went up against the U.S. and its allies in the Gulf War. Along the way, he underestimated American airpower and sent half of his army to open stretches of Kuwait, where they became sitting ducks.

"He is neither a strategist nor is he schooled in the operational art, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general," said Gulf War military commander, former Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf in 1991.

"Based upon the Iran-Iraq campaigns, we came up with a lot of assumptions of what they would do, and we weren't wrong a single time," Schwarzkopf said.

Studying U.S. Playbooks

But the Iraqi leader has had the last 10 years to learn from his mistakes and to study the U.S. playbook.

Joseph Wilson, the acting U.S. ambassador to Iraq in the early 1990s, says a U.S. battle with Saddam wouldn't be as clear-cut more than a decade after the Gulf War.

"This time it's going to be completely different," Wilson said. "He's going to deploy his forces in the cities, and the U.S. will have to go in and root them out, especially in Baghdad," he said.

Experts say Saddam is not positioning his forces along the borders as the potential for war looms. They say Baghdad is the key. Urban warfare will be unavoidable and experts say progress for U.S. troops could be slow, and the risk of civilian casualties could be high. Experts caution that intelligence has shown Saddam is likely to use chemical and biological weapons.

"He can use weapons of mass destruction," said Harlan Ullman from the Center for Strategic and International studies. "He can lay out barriers and say 'look, I've got chemical, I've got biological weapons' to prevent us [the U.S.]from seizing territory."

U.S. troops are taking the threat of biological and chemical weapons very seriously in preparing for a possible war with Iraq. They've been trained to follow a nine-second drill during which they must get all of their protective gear on to avoid contamination.