HOW THE IRAQI ARMY ALSO COLLAPSED FROM WITHIN.

Great Washington Post article.

During the war, the lack of communication and coordination hastened the defeat of the Iraqi forces. A regular-army general in charge of an air defense unit in Baghdad said he was ordered not to activate his weapons because the Republican Guard was responsible for the city's defense.

The favoritism heaped on the special militias widened the gap between them and the regular army, whose soldiers received one-third as much pay, whose officers were accorded much less respect and whose units received inferior equipment, commanders said.

"We didn't work for Saddam Hussein, we worked for the country," said Col. Jamal Salem, 41, who headed operations at a major supply base about 15 miles outside Baghdad. "It was our job. I loved the army."

As a result, he said, "we had no fight with the Americans. When we heard they were in Baghdad, it was over for us."...

Hussein's system of rewards also spawned an atmosphere of deceit that deluded the president into believing his armed forces went into the war far better equipped and militarily capable than they really were, senior officers said.

Gen. Yasin Mohammad Taha Joubouri, an artillery specialist with 38 years in the regular army, said he was summoned to a meeting with the president in 1999, who ordered him to help the Defense Ministry build one of the largest artillery pieces in the world.

The army, with assistance from specialists, designed a cannon with a barrel 210 millimeters -- more than eight inches -- in diameter, a weapon so cumbersome that Joubouri and the other specialists knew it could not work. Still, Joubouri helped build a full-scale model and drafted fake performance records to convince the president that the project was progressing.

"No one could tell him it couldn't work," said Joubouri, who said he was still working on the cannon when he left the army six months ago. "He was giving us awards and presents."...

Twenty days before the United States attacked Iraq, his men and equipment moved from military bases to warehouses, schools and private homes.