Saddam and His Winning Strategy
Saddam Hussein used his dreams to guide policy, some times to the befuddlement of his closest advisers. The dictator's personal secretary told U.S. military investigators in an in terview in 2003 that Hussein would sleep on difficult prob lems and report the solutions the next morning. One time that his dream got it right: During the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, Hussein dreamed that the Iranians would launch an offensive through a large marshland, so he ordered more troops there. His generals thought the move illogical but acquiesced. The Iranians attacked there, and the Iraqis prevailed.
This story appears in the May 15, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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