US military and intelligence agencies, in collaboration with Iraqi exiles, began a covert effort inside Iraq at least three months before the war to undermine the Iraqi military, The New York Times reported Sunday.
The report, quoting "people involved in the effort," said even after the war began in late March, the Bush administration received word that top Iraqi officials, including Defense Minister Gen. Sultan Hashem Ahmed, might be willing to cooperate to bring the war to a quick end.
Hashem's ministry was not bombed by the United States during the war, and the Pentagon's decision not to knock Iraqi broadcasting off the air permitted him to appear on television with what some Iraqi exiles have called a veiled signal to troops that they should not fight the invading allies, the report said.
People behind the effort, the report said, claimed they had succeeded in persuading hundreds of Iraqi officers to quit the war and to send their subordinates away, and some Iraqi officers confirmed that after Americans and Iraqis made contact with them, they carried out acts of sabotage and helped disband their units as the war began.
Citing American officials and two Iraqi exiles who played central roles, the report said the American military spirited out of the country several high-level Iraqi military and intelligence officers who had cooperated with the United States and its allies.
As the war approached, the US government was skeptical of the idea of cutting a lasting deal with high-level Iraqi officials, and was reluctant to leave any high-ranking officials from the government of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in power after the war, American and Arab officials were quoted as saying.
Hashem remains No. 27 on the 55-member American list of most-wanted Iraqis, but he is wanted only as a "material witness" rather than as a possible defendant in any war crimes trial, senior officials said.
At the outset of the war, US government officials said publicly that the United States was working to win surrenders from Iraqi commanders.
(Xinhua News Agency August 11, 2003)
