The Struggle for Iraq: Understanding the Defense Strategy of Saddam Hussein

Abstract

This article analyzes how the Iraq 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 a attrition was his best possible one, based on his hope that his enemies would lack the patience or courage to continue the war also that domestic and international pressures would force his opponents to let his regime survive.