During the 2003 war that ended Saddam Hussein s regime, coalition forces captured thousands of hours of secret recordings of meetings, phone calls, and conferences. Originally prepared by the Institute for Defense Analyses for the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, this study presents annotated transcripts of Iraqi audio recordings of meetings between Saddam Hussein and his inner circle. The Saddam Tapes, along with the much larger digital collection of captured records at the National Defense University s Conflict Records Research Center, will provide researchers with important insights into the inner workings of the regime and, it is hoped, the nature of authoritarian regimes more generally. The collection has implications for a range of historical questions. How did Saddam react to the pressures of his wars? How did he manage the Machiavellian world he created? How did he react to the signals and actions of the international community on matters of war and peace? Was there a difference between the public and the private Saddam on critical matters of state? A close examination of this material in the context of events and other available evidence will address these and other questions.

Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) overthrew Saddam's regime and opened up one of the world's most secretive governments to outside analysis, presenting a once-in-a-generation opportunity for military leaders and historians to delve deep into the decision-making processes of a former adversary. For the first time since a similar project at the end of World War II, we have an opportunity to evaluate military events from not only our own vantage point but also from the perspective of the opposing political and military leadership. Admiral Edmund P. Giambastiani originated this vital and interesting work when he was Commander, United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM). As part of a major effort to ensure we fully understood the lessons of OIF, he commissioned a comprehensive analysis of US strengths and weaknesses. This first-of-its-kind venture was led by Brigadier General Robert W. Cone, the then-Director of USJFCOM's Joint Center for Operational Analysis and Lessons Learned (JCOA). Almost as soon as this effort got underway in the spring of 2003, Admiral Giambastiani realized that the study would not be complete unless information about what drove the Iraqis to make the decisions they did was fully integrated into the analysis. To accomplish this, project leader Kevin Woods led a small team of professionals in a systematic two-year study of the former Iraqi regime and military. This book is the fi rst major product of that effort. It presents a comprehensive historical analysis of the forces and motivations that drove our opponent's decisions through dozens of interviews with senior Iraqi military and political leaders and by making extensive use of thousands of official Iraqi documents. Kevin and his team have crafted a substantive examination of Saddam Hussein's leadership and its effect on the Iraqi military decision-making process. Moreover, it goes a long way towards revealing the inner workings of a closed regime from the insiders' point of view. Presented herein is crucial information currently missing from still ongoing analyses of OIF, and much of its content will counter currently accepted wisdom. While the practice of self-critique and gathering lessons learned are distinguishing features of the US military, in almost every past instance our understanding of events remained incomplete because any assessment was limited to a "blue" only view of the situation. While we often had a relatively complete picture of what our adversary did, we remained in the dark as to what motivated his actions. At the conclusion of past conflicts, we were left to speculate which of our actions were causing specific enemy responses and why. Expert analysts and "red team" assessments attempt to make this speculation as informed as possible, but because of the impenetrability of closed regimes, even their usefulness is somewhat limited. In this case, however, by adding the actual "red team's view" to the compilation of multiple, differing viewpoints, this study hopes to contribute to a more fully developed history of the war, and allow all concerned to get closer to "ground truth." General Lance Smith, the current USJFCOM Commander, and the JCOA team remain committed to this and similar projects as part of an ongoing process of learning and improving through the sharing of "ground truth." Though this project is an important initial step, we acknowledge the history of OIF is far from complete. Researchers continue to locate, translate, and analyze information that will shed new light on our former adversary's perspective of the conflict. It is in the interest of getting as much accurate information as possible into the hands of those already studying Operation Iraqi Freedom that we release this book.

During the 2003 war that ended Saddam Hussein s regime, coalition forces captured thousands of hours of secret recordings of meetings, phone calls, and conferences. Originally prepared by the Institute for Defense Analyses for the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, this study presents annotated transcripts of Iraqi audio recordings of meetings between Saddam Hussein and his inner circle. The Saddam Tapes, along with the much larger digital collection of captured records at the National Defense University s Conflict Records Research Center, will provide researchers with important insights into the inner workings of the regime and, it is hoped, the nature of authoritarian regimes more generally. The collection has implications for a range of historical questions. How did Saddam react to the pressures of his wars? How did he manage the Machiavellian world he created? How did he react to the signals and actions of the international community on matters of war and peace? Was there a difference between the public and the private Saddam on critical matters of state? A close examination of this material in the context of events and other available evidence will address these and other questions.