ell before hostilities started, special forces troops and intelligence agents paid sums of money to a number of Iraqi officers, whose support was deemed important to a swift, low-casualty victory. "Gen. Tommy Franks, the U.S. Army commander for the war, said these Iraqi officers had acknowledged their loyalties were no longer with the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, but with their American paymasters. As a result, many officers chose not to defend their positions as American and British forces pushed north from Kuwait.

"It is not clear which Iraqi officers were bribed, how many were bought off or at what cost. It is likely, however, that the U.S. focused on officers in control of Saddam's elite forces, which were expected to defend the capital.

The Pentagon said that bribing the senior officers was a cost-effective method of fighting and one that led to fewer casualties.

"The revelation by General Franks ... helps explain one of the enduring mysteries of the U.S.-led war against Iraq: Why Iraqi forces did not make a greater stand in their defense of Baghdad, in many cases melting away and changing into civilian clothes rather than forcing the allied troops to engage in bitter, street-to-street fighting.

"John Pike, director of the Washington-based military research group, GlobalSecurity.org, said: `It certainly strikes me that this is part of the mix. I don't think there is any way of discerning how big a part of the mix it is ... but it is part of the long queue of very interesting questions for which we do not yet have definitive answers.'...

"The confirmation [revealed in the current edition of {Defense News} by reporter Vago Muradian] that crucial senior officers were bribed, would explain why there was so little resistance in locations where it was anticipated that better-trained troops such as the Republican Guard would make a stand."

The {Jordan Times} referred to an article in the French weekly {Le Journal du Dimanche}, which said that "one of Saddam Hussein's cousins, Special Republican Guard chief Maher Sufian Al Tikriti, betrayed the deposed Iraqi leader by ordering his elite forces not to defend Baghdad after making a deal with the United States." Quoting an Iraqi source close to the former regime, the report said that the general responsible for defending the Iraqi capital, left Baghdad aboard a U.S. military transport plane, bound for a U.S. base outside Iraq.

[Source: NYT, May 26, page 1]

U.S. IRAQ ADMINISTRATOR PAUL BREMER DISSOLVED THE "FREE IRAQI FORCES" MILITIA OF AHMAD CHALABI THIS WEEK, comprising about 700 fighters, and also the "Badr Brigade" militia of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) Shi'ite organization.

The Times reports that the Iraqi "leadership council" organized earlier by the U.S. occupation forces, decided at a Saturday (May 24) night meeting, to submit a formal protest to the occupation authorities over the delay in putting an Iraqi government in place.

They also agreed to send delegations to Washington and London to press the case for organizing elections as soon as possible.

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