SADDAM PULLS BACK ELITE FORCES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: STARGATE
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP96-00789R000800020002-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 4, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 10, 2000
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: November 5, 1990
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2000/Od$!0-RDP9a-007$800020002-0
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JACK ANDERSON and DALE VAN ATTA
Saddam Pulls Back Elite Forces'
Classified Pentagon reports predict that
thousands of Iraqi soldiers-scared young
men being used as cannon fodder on the front
lines-would surrender in the first days of a war in
the Persian Gulf.
That information has not trimmed the
Pentagon's casualty estimates, which say that tens
of thousands of Americans could die in the first few
weeks of the conflict.
But the classified reports say many of the Iraqi
troops in or near Kuwait have no heart for a fight.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has put his
youngest and least trained troops in Kuwait while
he saved the best to protect Iraq.
Central Intelligence Agency reports indicate
these low-level troops are easily bribed by the-
Kuwaiti resistance. The going rate to drive a car
across the Saudi Arabia-Kuwait border without
being searched is $5. The possibility that the car
carries a gun doesn't worry an Iraqi soldier enough
to turn away the bribe.
He is more worried about the 200,000-plus U.S.
troops massing outside Kuwait. It is not so much
the numbers, but the wild stories that have spooked
these teenage Iraqi defenders.
The Kuwaiti rebels have been feeding those
soldiers a line about America breeding a special
race of men who are more than seven feet tall and
have eyes to see in the dark and through walls.
The Iraqi draftees may not be that gullible, but
they are afraid. Some have confided to Kuwaitis
that a have a" " to c ted recently, the
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them in the air. These boys are "the lowest; class of
reservists that Saddam Hussein has put on" the:
tripwire against opposing forces," one intelligence
source told us.
Saddam's crack troops are his Republican Guard
divisions, numbering about 140,000 men. They are
battle tested and formidable. But they are not in
Kuwait. Saddam used 80,000 of the guards'to
invade Kuwait Aug. 2 and had planned to keep
them there. When the United States responded .
with troops, Iraqi military strategists looked at
their maps and realized they didn't want t~gir best
and brightest on the front lines in Kuwait where
they could be decimated in the opening days.of a
About two weeks after the invasion, Saddam
pulled the Republican Guards back to Iraq. About
80,000 of them are fanned out in a line of defense,
and another 60,000 are in Baghdad to protect
Saddam from a coup or from a U.S. paratrooper
assault.
Iraq boasts of 955,000 soldiers, but intelligence
reports say most have never seen battle and are
roughly equivalent in readiness to U.S. National
Guard forces. Saddam said he would raise at least;
nation of 16 million people simply does not,have.
enough men to keep that promise.
Although the Iraqi claim of having nearly 1
million men under arms and battle hardened is a lie,
U.S. military planners don't think a war with Iraq
white handkerchiefs from their pockets and wave Americans could die in the first 20 days of a war.