IRAQ

SFgate: Behind Baghdad's fall
INSIDE STORY: Hussein son's wild orders led to Iraq military collapse

Baghdad -- In the final days before Baghdad fell, Saddam Hussein's son Qusai issued a series of military orders that sent thousands of elite Republican Guard troops to their certain death in the open countryside.
According to accounts provided to The Chronicle by more than a dozen Iraqi military officials -- some of them still hiding from American forces -- the orders exposed the core of the Iraqi military to devastating U.S. air attacks and left the capital's defenses markedly weakened.
Several officers said the increasing irrationality of these orders, which were widely believed to carry the approval of Saddam Hussein himself, baffled high-ranking officers and helped enable the Americans to enter Baghdad virtually unchallenged.