Last Days in the Bunker

The NYT has a couple of interesting articles out, based on leaks from a secret Pentagon after-action report "Iraqi Perspectives on Operation Iraqi Freedom, Major Combat Operations," completed in April 2005 and slated for public release soon in a de-classified version. Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor have written the articles, and two have been published so far:

• The first piece, originally published in Friday's International Herald Tribune, focussed on Saddam's improvised efforts to (successfully) escape from the US forces surrounding Baghdad. (A lightly edited version of this piece is in today's NYT here.)
  
  
• The second piece, in today's NYT, focuses on the strategic military and diplomatic mis-steps of Saddam and his inner circle in the months leading up to the US invasion. Essentially, Saddam was more concerned about the threat of a coup or a Shiite uprising than he was of a conventional military threat from the US. He expected the US to bomb and perhaps sieze the southern oil fields, but not to risk the US casualties an attack on Baghdad would entail.

The accounts are pretty interesting, and the NYT's competitors must be gnashing their teeth about the Times' scoop.