WASHINGTON, May 24 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Senior Iraqi officers in command of troops defending key Iraqi cities against the U.S.-led invasion were bribed not to fight American forces, a top U.S. army chief said on Saturday, May 24.

“These Iraqi officers had acknowledged their loyalties were no longer with the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, but with their American paymasters,” said General Tommy Franks, the U.S. army commander for the invasion, which opened its salvoes on March 20, according to British daily the Independent.

Well before hostilities started, special forces troops and intelligence agents paid sums of money to a number of Iraqi officers, whose support was deemed important to a swift, low-casualty victory, the Independent reported.

"I had letters from Iraqi generals saying: 'I now work for you'," the paper quoted Franks as saying.

It is not clear which Iraqi officers were bribed, how many were bought off or at what cost, said the British daily.

It added that it is likely, however, that the U.S. focused on officers in control of Saddam's elite forces, which were expected to defend the capital, citing the Pentagon statements that bribing the senior officers was a cost-effective method of fighting and one that led to fewer casualties.

"What is the effect you want?" a senior Pentagon official told the Independent.

"How much does a cruise missile cost? Between $1m and $2.5m. Well, a bribe is a PGM [precision guided missile), ­it achieves the aim but it's bloodless and there's zero collateral damage,” the official added.

He said that this part of the operation “was as important as the shooting part; maybe more important.”

“We knew that some units would fight out of a sense of duty and patriotism, and they did. But it didn't change the outcome because we knew how many of these [Iraqi generals] were going to call in sick," he added.

The revelations by General Franks helps explain one of the enduring mysteries of the U.S.-led invasion against Iraq: why the U.S. forces rolled into Baghdad to no resistance from Iraqi forces, in many cases “melting away and changing into civilian clothes,” rather than forcing the invading troops to engage in bitter, street-to-street fighting.

"It certainly strikes me that this is part of the mix. I don't think there is any way of discerning how big a part of the mix it is ... but it is part of the long queue of very interesting questions for which we do not yet have definitive answers,” John Pike, director of the Washington-based military research group, GlobalSecurity.Org, was quoted by the Independent as saying.

In the run-up to the invasion against Iraq, the Pentagon revealed its ambitious attempts to encourage Iraqi soldiers and officers to lay down their weapons rather than stand and fight.

As American and British troops massed in northern Kuwait in preparation, millions of leaflets printed in Arabic were dropped over towns and cities where troops were thought to be concentrated, urging them not to support Saddam.

Senior Iraqi officers were also targeted by U.S. psy-ops officers using e-mails and telephone calls to their private addresses and mobile phones.

As a result, while some Iraqi forces, especially those supported by militias, ­put up staunch resistance in several cities as the U.S.-led forces marched north, many thousands of Iraqi soldiers chose not to fight, in most cases simply throwing off their uniforms and going home to their families, according to the Independent.

But the confirmation, ­revealed in the current edition of Defense News by reporter Vago Muradian that crucial senior officers were bribed, would explain why there was so little resistance in locations where it was anticipated that better-trained troops such as the Republican Guard would make a stand.