Clarification/Follow-up by Ccl471 on 07/24/06 2:39 pm:
Dear tomder55:

Thanks for responding to my question. Well, didn't Pres. Bush, just before the US invasion, give Saddam 72 hrs. to leave Iraq? Shouldn't Saddam have known from that that America was serious about invading?


Thanks again,

C.L.

Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 07/25/06 3:09 am:
C.L.

you are correct ;Pres. Bush did issue the ultimatum . It was the reckless decision making and miscalculations on Saddam's part that many of the pro-war people took into consideration when considering the rational to invade . How difficult would he be to deter when sanctions failed and he reconstituted his nuclear program ? What was to prevent him from distributing the WMDs he still retained to terrorists ? Napoleon miscalulated when he invaded Russia, Hannibal when he attacked Rome.Saddam's history is full of simular miscalculations ;invading Iran;invading Kuwait etc.

Saddam's strategic calculus was his faith that France and Russia would prevent an invasion by the United States. According to Aziz, Saddam's confidence was firmly rooted in his belief in the nexus between the economic interests of France and Russia and his own strategic goals: "France and Russia each secured millions of dollars worth of trade and service contracts in Iraq, with the implied understanding that their political posture with regard to sanctions on Iraq would be pro-Iraqi. In addition, the French wanted sanctions lifted to safeguard their trade and service contracts in Iraq. Moreover, they wanted to prove their importance in the world as members of the Security Council -- that they could use their veto to show they still had power."

Ibrahim Ahmad Abd al-Sattar, the Iraqi army and armed forces chief of staff, claimed that Saddam believed that even if his international supporters failed him and the United States did launch a ground invasion, Washington would rapidly bow to international pressure to halt the war. According to his personal interpreter, Saddam also thought his "superior" forces would put up "a heroic resistance and . . . inflict such enormous losses on the Americans that they would stop their advance."

(Iraq Perspective Project (IPP) )published by he Pentagon's Joint Forces Command (JFCOM)

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/special/iraq/ipp.pdf

read the whole report ;it gives good insight into what Saddam and his Generals were thinking .