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Gen. Franks: U.S. Agent Tricked Saddam Over Iraqi Defense

(London Times) Tony Allen-Mills - America's Iraq war commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, has disclosed that a double agent tricked Saddam Hussein into fatally bungling the defense of his country. As a result, while American armored columns raced to Baghdad from southern Iraq, Saddam held back many of his best divisions to fight expected attacks from the north and west, which never came. In Franks' memoirs, to be published Tuesday, he reveals that an American officer working with Franks' knowledge, who was approached by an Iraqi intelligence operative working undercover as a diplomat, sold the Iraqi false "top secret" invasion plans created by central command. Interrogations after the war confirmed the success of the deception, Franks said last week. Franks insists he was never in any doubt that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Shortly before the war Franks visited Jordan's King Abdullah and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. Both said they had been told by Saddam that he had WMD which he would use against the Americans. Franks also revealed that he steered clear of Israel and told Arab leaders that he was sympathetic to their issues: "For years, I had told my Arab friends that I had 'no Israeli visa' in my passport. This was an unofficial way of letting them know that I understood their side of the story."
2004-08-02 00:00:00
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