AND WE THOUGHT OUR INTEL WAS POOR...

This report makes Baghdad Bob look positively sane when compared with Saddam, his generals and his allies.

According to newly uncovered secret documents, the former Iraqi regime never contemplated its imminent defeat and continued to function normally under Saddam's direct control, even as American tanks were closing in on Baghdad.

While much has been made about intelligence failures in the West, it seems that Saddam's own senior officials, diplomats and spies offered him such a warped vision of the outside world that warnings went unheeded and the power of France and Russia to prevent the conflict took on mythical proportions...

On instructions from Saddam, Lt. Gen. Abed Hamid Hamoud, the head of the presidential office, ordered Naji Sabri, the foreign minister, to contact the French and Russian governments and tell them that Iraq would accept only an "unconditional withdrawal" of U.S. forces.

"Tell them that Iraq is now winning and that the U.S. has sunk in the mud of defeat," said the letter, written on March 30 - 10 days into the war and less than two weeks before U.S. tanks entered the capital.

The letter was in response to a message the day before from Sabri, who had met the Russian ambassador to Baghdad and reported that Moscow believed "U.S. aggression has no future."