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Leave it to Uncle Sam to need 5 years and a 700 page study to figure out what any of the troops on the ground could have told them from the outset.
A nearly 700-page study released Sunday by the Army found that “in the euphoria of early 2003,” U.S.-based commanders prematurely believed their goals in Iraq had been reached and did not send enough troops to handle the occupation.
President George W. Bush’s statement on May 1, 2003, that major combat operations were over reinforced that view, the study said.
It was written by Donald P. Wright and Col. Timothy R. Reese of the Contemporary Operations Study Team at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., who said that planners who requested more troops were ignored and that commanders in Baghdad were replaced without enough of a transition and lacked enough staff.
Gen. William S. Wallace, commanding general of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, said in a foreword that it’s no surprise that a report with these conclusions was written.
“One of the great and least understood qualities of the United States Army is its culture of introspection and self-examination,” he wrote.
The report said that the civilian and military planning for a post-Saddam Iraq was inadequate, and that the Army should have pushed the Joint Chiefs of Staff for better planning and preparation.
This news really comes as no shock- given the numerous military figures and civilian analysts who have all come to that same conclusion long before this report was written.
Also according to the report, former Sec. of State Colin Powell warned former coalition commander Gen. Tommy Franks that he was underestimating the situation in Iraq and the number of troops that would be needed. He wasn’t the only one.
Some commanders told the authors they asked about plans for making the country stable and got no answers.
The “post-war situation in Iraq was severely out of line with the suppositions made at nearly every level before the war,” the report said.
There’s a good reason no one was getting any answers…
During an April 16, 2003, visit to Baghdad, coalition commander Gen. Tommy Franks told his subordinate leaders to prepare to move most of their forces out of Iraq by September of that year, the report noted.
“In line with the prewar planning and general euphoria at the rapid crumbling of the Saddam regime, Franks continued to plan for a very limited role for U.S. ground forces in Iraq,” the report said.
So experienced voices were overlooked in favor of blind optimisim resulting in a poorly planned, poorly executed occupation and rebuilding process. Since 2003- 4,113 members of the U.S. armed forces have died in the Iraq conflict and occupation.
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