Review State of Denial, Bush At War, Part III

Woodward, Bob, State of Denial, Bush At War, Part III, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Simon & Schuster, 2006

State of Denial, Bush At War, Part III as the title suggests was Bod Woodward’s third book on President Bush’s wars. This one covered how the occupation of Iraq went wrong. It is a longwinded affair starting with George Bush’s deciding to run for president. It takes 152 pages just to get to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Like his other releases it focuses upon top officials in the White House and their debates and decision making on the war based upon extensive interviews. Woodward’s main argument was that President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld were never honest with themselves and the American public about Iraq and that trickled down throughout the administration where no one ever admitted they made any mistakes.

How The United States Abandoned The Idea Of An Interim Government For Iraq After The 2003 Invasion

The United States suffered from poor planning when it came to preparing for post-war Iraq. There were always a number of different groups tasked with the job, but they were not coordinated. One of the few things that was agreed upon was the creation of an interim Iraqi government shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein. President Bush signed off on this idea just before the 2003 invasion. Iraqi exiles were consulted, and several meetings held, but then suddenly Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), scrapped the plan. Bremer reversed course from the U.S. wanting to quickly leave Iraq to launching a long-term occupation of the country.

There were two competing ideas about what the U.S. should do in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. One would be to quickly set up an interim government. Supporters of this idea said that the new authority should be made up of both Iraqi exiles and those who had stayed in the country. The other would be for the United States to run the country. President Bush, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, members of his staff, U.S. representative to Iraqi exiles Zalmay Khalilzad, and deputy head of the Central Command (CENTCOM) General John Abizaid all supported the first plan. Before the war, Bush told a meeting, “We need to give this to the Iraqis as quickly as possible to form a government.” This was in line with Bush’s statements when he ran for president when he stated that he was opposed to nation building. Bush campaigned on the fact that he would not be like President Clinton who got the United States involved in a series of humanitarian and failed state situations such as Haiti and the former Yugoslavia. Other members of his cabinet such as Rumsfeld were equally opposed to long-term overseas engagements. These ideas largely shaped the strategy in Afghanistan when the United States overthrew the Taliban, held a meeting of Afghans, and quickly set up a government, which allowed the Americans to draw down their forces. It seemed initially that Iraq would follow that exact same path.

Right before the invasion, National Security Advisor Rice tried to make an interim government official policy. Rice set up a postwar planning group within the National Security Council (NSC) under Frank Miller. On March 10 and 12, 2003, Miller briefed the NSC on postwar plans, which included putting Iraqis quickly in charge of their country after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The president signed off on the idea. The problem was that this had no actual affect. The administration was dysfunctional when it came to strategizing for post-war Iraq. It always had several organizations planning for the situation, but none of them were coordinated, and hardly anything was every operationalized. Miller’s group was just one of many.

The U.S. military actually did try to act upon this plan, but it fell apart. Deputy CENTCOM commander General Abizaid told Zalmay Khalilzad that he needed to meet with Iraqi exiles to prepare them for an interim government so that an Iraqi face could be placed upon the war. Khalilzad wanted internal Iraqis included in any new authority, but he didn’t know any. Abizaid was not concerned, and wanted exiles quickly brought to Um Qasr in Basra right behind the invasion force to announce that they were the new rulers of Iraq. As the war began, and the Coalition quickly moved towards Baghdad, the interim government idea was dropped. Some in the U.S. armed forces were concerned that the invasion could turn out to be a drawn out affair, and not proceed as quickly as Rumsfeld had envisioned. That was what led people like General Abizaid to push for an interim government being established even before the war was over. When the Iraqi forces began disintegrating before the U.S. and British armies however, it wasn’t deemed necessary to involve Iraqi exiles, because the conflict was going to come to an end quickly.

In April 2003 Khalilzad met with Iraqis in Nasiriyah and told them that the U.S. had “absolutely no interest in ruling Iraq.” (BBC)

After Saddam was deposed Jay Garner and the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs (ORHA) was placed in charge of Iraq. Garner envisioned turning over the country to an interim government in just a few weeks as well. On March 12, 2003, President Bush approved his plan at an NSC meeting. Garner later told two Senate staffers as he was waiting in Kuwait to enter Iraq that a new government would be created by August. Khalilzad assisted in this process by holding a meeting with both internal and external Iraqis in Nasiriyah just after Baghdad was taken. On April 22, Garner went to Kurdistan to meet with Massoud Barzani, Jalal Talabani, and exile leaders to continue the discussion. Many opposition groups had been trying to come up with a government in waiting since late-2002, but to no avail. Now it seemed within their grasp. The only problem was that Garner wanted to include some internal Iraqis. Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress and Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq objected, because they believed that would dilute their power in any new ruling coalition. With fewer parties involved, the more influence each would hold. Still, Chalabi told the press that an interim government would be in place by July. Garner always thought that his job would be a short one in Iraq. He originally thought that the war would lead to a humanitarian crisis with refugees and food shortages, but that the government would be up and running, and it would only be a few months before everything would return to normal. It would be his job then to just provide assistance, and then give Iraqis the reigns, and leave.

Officials from the Pentagon were pushing in the same direction. Rumsfeld’s spokesman Larry Di Rita was sent to Kuwait to watch over the ORHA before the war started. There he told a meeting of the organization that the State Department under Clinton had failed in Bosnia and Kosovo, and the Defense Department would not make the same mistakes this time. Di Rita stated, “We’re going to stand up an interim Iraqi government, hand power over to them, and get out of there in three to four months.” Harold Rhode of the Office of Special Plans in Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith’s office was in Kuwait at the same time, and pushed for Chalabi to be the new leader of Iraq. Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress were favorites of the neoconservatives in the United States, many of which held prominent positions within the Pentagon. Rhode expressed their belief that Chalabi was a Westernized Iraqi who could create a democracy in the country. Di Rita had the same view as his boss Rumsfeld, who did not want to get bogged down in any post-war situation. They both wanted to withdraw as quickly as possible after Saddam had been kicked out of office.

All of these ideas were thrown out the window when Paul Bremer assumed control of Iraq. On May 12, Bremer flew into Baghdad, and took over from Garner. At first, it was expected that he would follow in Garner’s footsteps, and continue with forming an interim government. That was not to be. Khalilzad thought that he was going to go with Bremer to Baghdad, so that he could introduce him to the Iraqis that he’d been talking to. He even set up a date for that event on May 15. Instead, Bremer dismissed Khalilzad’s plan. He was told right before the White House announced that Bremer was taking over Iraq that an interim government was no longer in the plans. When Secretary of State Colin Powell heard about that he called Rice warning that Khalilzad’s work should not be discarded. Rice said that one of Bremer’s prerequisites for taking the job was that he could run things the way he wanted. On May 16, Bremer announced his plan for Iraq. That did not include an interim government. Instead there would be a seven-step process to write a new constitution, get it ratified, and then form a government, which would take over a year. Iraqis immediately began complaining about the change. Followers of Moqtada al-Sadr held a demonstration in Baghdad on May 19 against the U.S. occupation. The next day, Iraqis met with the British representative to Iraq Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock demanding that sovereignty be returned to the country. Then on May 22, the United Nations passed Resolution 1483 that recognized the United States and the British as the occupying powers in Iraq. Bremer would use that document as another reason why he should be in charge, and that people should follow his strategy. Before Bremer departed for Iraq he met with President Bush who said that he had as much time as he needed to transform Iraq. Bremer took that promise literally, and completely changed America’s stance. No longer was Iraq to be like Afghanistan where the U.S. would quickly withdraw. Instead they were there for the long-term.

The decision to abandon an interim government was symbolic of America’s handling of post-war Iraq. The United States went to war with no real strategy for what should be done afterward. There had been planning for returning sovereignty to Iraqis as quickly as possible, and Bush signed off on the idea, but nothing substantive had really been done about it besides a few meetings with Iraqi exiles. When Jay Garner entered Iraq he thought he would have a straight forward humanitarian mission, but he never had the time to fulfill his vision. The White House didn’t like the way things were going in Iraq with the post-war chaos, and violence, and decided to replace him with Paul Bremer. Bremer wanted to be the viceroy of Iraq, and personally guide the country towards democracy. That could only be accomplished if the United States became the occupying power. Bush gave him his support even though it was the exact opposite of what had been discussed before the war. Since so many plans had come and gone with none of them ever coordinated this was just another example. There’s no telling how Iraq would have turned out if nationals were put in charge right after the invasion. Afghanistan for instance, is not close to stability, is considered even more corrupt than Iraq, and still has Coalition forces there, and it went down the path of early sovereignty. The difference is that Iraqis would have been in charge, bringing Iraqi sensibilities to things rather than trying to impose American norms as the Coalition Provisional Authority attempted with few successes.

SOURCES

BBC, “US begins shaping Iraq’s future,” 4/16/03

Chandrasekaran, Rajiv, “U.S. drops assembly idea for interim political council,” San Francisco Chronicle, 6/2/03

Diamond, Larry, Squandered Victory, The American Occupation And The Bungled Effort To Bring Democracy To Iraq, New York: Times Books, 2005

Gordon, Michael and Trainor, General Bernard, The Endgame, The Inside Story Of The Struggle For Iraq, From George W. Bush To Barack Obama, New York, Pantheon, 2012

Packer, George, The Assassins’ Gate: America In Iraq, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005

Special Inspector General For Iraq Reconstruction, “Hard Lessons,” 1/22/09

Walt, Vivienne, “Iraqis to take charge of country by July,” San Francisco Chronicle, 11/16/03

How Ambassador Khalilzad Walked Into A Turf War Between The State And Defense Departments As He Tried to Find A New Path For The United States In Iraq In 2005

In June 2005, Zalmay Khalilzad returned to Iraq as the new U.S. Ambassador replacing John Negroponte. Khalilzad originally worked on Iraq in 2003 as the special presidential envoy to the Iraqi opposition. When he came back to the country things were not going well. The opposition to the United States had turned into a full-blown insurgency, and America’s policy seemed adrift. The reconstruction effort was focused upon large infrastructure projects, which had not improved the lives of average Iraqis, while the military strategy was to get out as quickly as possible. The political rhetoric was about victory, but there was no actual ideas on how to achieve it, and was contradicted by the withdrawal plans. Khalilzad, like his predecessor ordered an immediate review of the situation, and came up with a new strategy. Unfortunately, because of in fighting back in Washington the ambassador’s ideas were not fully implemented until two years later. This pointed to the dysfunction and disconnect between the White House and those in the field in Iraq, which undermined what the U.S. was hoping to accomplish.

Ambassador Khalilzad entered Iraq during a time of transition for American policy. Both the State and Defense Departments were carrying out their own separate reviews. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sent retired General Gary Luck to Iraq to go over the training program for the Iraqi security forces. He said the program needed to be greatly expanded. As a result, the Iraq Security Forces Fund was given $5.7 billion. New Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dispatched Ambassador Richard Jones, who worked for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to Baghdad as well. He characterized Iraq as a failed state. The U.S. was not helping, because its staff had little interaction with Iraqis. After the CPA closed shop it shut down its regional offices, and withdrew its advisers from Iraq’s ministries. By 2005, most of the American civilian staff was holed up in the Green Zone with smaller contingents in four regional bases. Jones recommended that the reconstruction effort be shifted from the CPA’s emphasis upon large capital projects like power plants to capacity building within the Iraqi government. Those projects were not having an affect upon the daily lives of Iraqis either in terms of services, security or employment. Not only that, but also many facilities the U.S. was building were too large and advanced for the Iraqis to maintain. As a result, many were failing apart, because the locals did not have the skills, management, spare parts or supplies to run them. Jones also noted that the American embassy staff had to get out into the field, and work hand in hand with their Iraqi counterparts. These reviews pointed to the two separate policies that the United States was simultaneously following in Iraq. The Pentagon wanted to build up Iraqi forces, so that it could withdraw as soon as possible. The State Department on the other hand, was trying to finish the rebuilding job that the CPA had started; while at the same time was attempting to transform the American presence to a regular diplomatic one despite the on-going insurgency. The two agencies were also rivals dating back to the beginning of the Bush Administration, partially based upon the personal dislike between Rumsfeld and former Secretary of State Colin Powell. The Defense Secretary had even less respect for Rice, making him even more unwilling to cooperate with the diplomatic wing of the American government when she took over. Khalilzad walked into the middle of this bureaucratic turf war, and tried to find a middle ground that would help stabilize Iraq.

Khalilzad ordered his own review upon his return to Iraq in the summer of 2005. His major concern was defeating the insurgency. He thought that the Sunni community had been shut out of the new Iraq, because they were associated with the old regime. Instead of being excluded, he thought they needed to be involved in the political process as a way to reconcile with them, and help end the fighting. All of the political, economic, and reconstruction policies needed to be focused upon this sole priority. Khalilzad created the Civil Military Strategic Planning group to go over what was already in place in Iraq. It found that Gen. Casey’s plans to turn over security to the Iraqis and withdraw would fail. It also criticized the lack of cooperation between the American civilians and military, and the exclusion of Iraqis from much of their work. It advocated for a coordinated counterinsurgency strategy that would use all of the U.S. resources in the country, along with the Iraqi government. This became known as the oil spot approach, which was extrapolated upon by Andrew Krepinevich in a winter 2005 issue of Foreign Affairs. Krepinevich was a former Army officer who went on to become a defense analyst and Executive Director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and professor at George Mason University. One of his specialties was the Vietnam War. Based upon that history, he advocated a counterinsurgency plan for Iraq that would focus upon securing and rebuilding specific strategic locations in Iraq such as Baghdad to defeat local militants, and win over the support of the population. Once one area was secured, the oil spot would spread to the next, until eventually the whole country could be covered. Unfortunately for Khalilzad, he didn’t have the authority to remake Iraq policy, especially on the military side, but he could change the reconstruction plans. As a result of his new ideas, the ambassador ordered a freeze on all rebuilding work, and another review of each project to make sure that it would support his counterinsurgency plan. Parts of these ideas would be later taken up by the Surge in 2007. The problem as ever was the lack of coordination between the various U.S. agencies, and the inter-office rivalries, which made that so difficult to accomplish. 

Khalilzad moved ahead with his ideas anyway, and created two new organizations in Iraq to try to put them in action. The first was the Provincial Reconstruction Development Councils. These were started in the spring of 2005 and were Iraq-American working groups to build capacity in the country’s provincial governments. They were set up in 15 of Iraq’s 18 provinces, excluding the three in Kurdistan. They came up with lists of projects, which were meant to empower Iraqis, improve their living standards, and help turn local support to the government. The other group was the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). This was a concept that Khalilzad had helped implement when he was ambassador in Afghanistan from 2003-2005. These were joint American civilian-military organizations meant to help implement and support the plans created by the Councils. Immediately the PRTs ran into problems, because of the disputes between the State and Defense Departments. There were arguments over who would fund them, who would lead them, and how security would be provided. As a result, the first PRTs were put out in the field before they had the necessary budget, transportation, protection, and staff. The PRT in Ninewa for example, had no protection, housing or way to get around the province. It had to move into Forward Operating Base Marez, and rely upon the U.S. military unit there for almost everything. It took one year for lawyers from the Pentagon and State Department to work out an agreement about how the two departments would cooperate in Iraq. In the meantime, the PRTs would have to trudge ahead despite their limitations. Here was the first specific example of the difficulties Khalilzad would find trying to transform Iraq policy. He and his staff had come up with some good ideas, but implementing them would be another issue all together. Washington was divided, and the ambassador all the way in Baghdad would be a victim of their disagreements.

The differences between Sec of Def Rumsfeld (left) and Sec of State Rice (right) helped retard changing Iraq policy (AP)

Those differences over Iraq strategy within the White House immediately became apparent. Rumsfeld and General Casey were opposed to Khalilzad’s new ideas. Their top priority remained to get out of Iraq as quickly as possible. Secretary Rice on the other hand, became an advocate for her ambassador’s approach. On October 19, 2005, she testified to a Senate committee advocating for a Clear Hold Build plan, which was another name for the oil spot approach. Rumsfeld immediately contradicted and criticized her statements. He said, “Anyone who takes those three words and thinks it means the United States should clear and the United Sates should hold and the United should build doesn’t understand the situation. It is the Iraqis country. They’ve got 28 million people there. They are clearing, they are holding, they are building. They’re going to be the ones doing the reconstruction in that country.” Despite those objections, President Bush backed his Secretary of State as Clear Hold Build was included in the White House’s National Strategy for Victory in Iraq in November. That didn’t stop the bickering however, as Rice and Rumsfeld still battled over planning, and refused to cooperate in Iraq. It wouldn’t be until the Pentagon chief was pushed out at the end of 2006 that things would begin to change. Khalilzad’s new ideas would suffer as a result.

On the ground in Iraq there were small movements in a new direction. First, reconstruction funds began to be shifted away from the large capital projects once pushed by the CPA to smaller ones that would be more visible to Iraqis, and hopefully have an immediate impact upon their lives. This was to be accomplished by pushing for the employment of Iraqis, using Iraqi contractors wherever possible, and including local Iraqi officials and government in the planning and implementation. There were still major hurdles to overcome. Iraqis for example did not understand American contracting procedures, and much of the bidding was supposed to be done on line, which was difficult for many Iraqi businesses. There were still disputes in Washington over the PRTs as well, so they had to trudge ahead often lacking the right personnel and funding to carry out their tasks.

From 2003-2007 the United States followed an ad hoc and dysfunctional policy in Iraq. There was a lack of planning and innovative ideas in Washington, and a disconnect between what was said publicly by the Bush Administration, and what was actually happening on the ground. The President’s constant statements about victory in Iraq were not supported by the strategy being implemented on the ground. Rather then defeating the insurgency, the Pentagon was set on withdrawing, and the State Department was trying to pull back to the embassy in Baghdad. Ambassador Khalilzad immediately noted how things were failing in Iraq, and tried to right the ship. Unfortunately for him, his ideas were only supported by his superior Secretary Rice, who was unable to convince Secretary Rumsfeld to change course. The results were small changes on the ground like in the types of projects started, and the creation of two new organizations to work with the Iraqis more closely, but there was still not the full support, funding, nor coordination necessary from Washington to make it a success. Iraq would descend into further chaos and become a failed state for another year and a half before the Americans course would change.

SOURCES

Kakutani, Michiko, “Rumsfeld’s Defense of Known Decisions,” New York Times, 2/3/11

Krepinevich, Andrew, “How to Win in Iraq,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2005

PBS Frontline, “INTERVIEWS Elisabeth Bumiller,” Bush’s War, 3/24/08

Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Hard Lessons, 1/22/09

Weisman, Steven, “The Struggle For Iraq: Diplomacy; Rice, Testy Hearing, Cites Progress in Iraq,” New York Times, 10/20/05

VIDEO: The Iraq Chilcot Inquiry - Lord Goldsmith Involvement In The Iraq War

Special Inspector General For Iraq Reconstruction’s “Hard Lessons” Chapter 11 “Restoring Iraq’s Capacity to Govern”

Besides the reconstruction of Iraq, the other main priority of Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was to create a new democratic country. Before it could do that it had to get the government up and running. When the old regime fell, the administration disappeared as bureaucrats stopped going to work, and the ministries and offices were looted. What happened next would again highlight the dysfunctional nature of America’s post-war handling of Iraq. First, the U.S. believed that the government would be up and running the day after the fall of the regime, so it was completely surprised when it collapsed. Second, there were three separate groups working on governance, the U.S. military, the United States Agency of International Development (USAID), and the CPA. There was minimal coordination between the three. Last, the Iraqis were not included in any of the decision-making, which would come back and haunt Bremer and his ideas for Iraq’s future. Overall, America’s good intentions proved not enough when trying to create a new Iraqi society.

The first group that set about rebuilding Iraq’s government was the U.S. military. It created local, district, and provincial councils, so that it had Iraqis to work with in their areas of operation. The armed forces had no orders on how to create these new bodies, so they were all made in an ad hoc nature. In Ninewa governorate for example, General David Petraeus who was the commander of the 101^st Airborne Division was facing a chaotic situation. Insurgents were organizing, and trying to take control, while local politicians and leading figures were declaring themselves mayor of Mosul and governor of the province. Petraeus first secured Mosul, and then organized a convention that elected a city council, a mayor, and a governor in May 2003. In Najaf, General James Conway of the 1^st Marine Expeditionary Force set up elections for a new provincial council scheduled for June. The CPA stepped in and canceled them, claiming that Iraq had no election law, but was really acting out of fear that Moqtada al-Sadr’s followers might take power there. One positive that emerged from this situation was that the U.S. was trying to create grassroots democracy, inspired by its city councils and state assemblies. That was a move away from the centralized and repressive system that Saddam Hussein had imposed on the country where the Baath party ran everything. At the same time, the Army and Marines had no plan to follow when trying to accomplish this. Each commander basically followed his own initiative. The CPA also sometimes interfered in their work like what happened in Najaf. Basically there was little coordination, because the U.S. was caught completely by surprise by the situation they found on the ground in Iraq after the fall of the regime. Most importantly, the local and district councils that were created had no real power, were completely dependent upon the U.S. for funding, and mainly just consulted with American units. Many of the officials that came into power in 2003 are also still in office today. That meant this had the trappings of a new democratic Iraq, but fell far short in substance.

Gen. Petraeus was one of the many U.S. commanders who had to devise his own plans for a new Iraqi government at the local level when he was in charge of Ninewa province in 2003 (40th Public Affairs Detachment)

The second organization that entered the fray was USAID. In April, it hired a contractor to work with local governments, and help them with reconstruction projects. The company was first charged with helping city councils, but eventually set up 22 offices across Iraq, and assisted with the development of governance at all levels within the provinces. USAID also set up a grant system to help fund many of the bodies being created. It eventually signed five more contracts to aid in the process. USAID was most concerned with creating local institutions and projects that would employ Iraqis. They tried to work with the U.S. military, but had much grander plans for Iraq. At the same time, they disagreed with much of the CPA’s ideas, and constantly argued with them about the future of the country. This was another sign of the lack of cooperation between the different American groups working within Iraq.

The CPA played a role in the local and provincial governments as well. In the governorates, the CPA created a system of coordinators. They sometimes came into conflict with the military and USAID, because they didn’t have the same expertise or goals. The 2004 budget, which was drawn up by the Coalition didn’t include much for the provincial or local councils that emasculate them. Many Iraqis were not impressed with the new bodies either, because they couldn’t do much, and were seen as creatures of the American occupation. That meant the U.S. was creating new government entities that lacked legitimacy with the people.

Bremer flying over Iraq like the overseer he saw himself as (Time)

What Paul Bremer focused upon the most was creating a new democratic society in Iraq. The initial step in this process was creating a 25 member Iraqi Governing Council. At first there were some objections by Iraqis, but eventually the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the Dawa Party, the Iraqi National Congress, the Iraqi National List, and the Iraqi Communist Party, which comprised all the major exile and Kurdish opposition parties from the Saddam era, agreed to join it. The United Nations pushed for domestic Iraqis to serve on the council as well, and was responsible for finding them otherwise the CPA might not have included any. Another issue that arose was that Bremer carved up the Governing Council along ethnosectarian lines. 13 seats went to Shiites, 5 to Kurds, 5 to Sunnis, and one each for Assyrian Christians and Turkmen. In September, the council named a new cabinet, which was also divided the exact same way with 13 Shiite ministers, 5 Sunni and 5 Kurdish, and one Assyrian, and one Turkmen. While this had the trappings of a new Iraqi government and the return of sovereignty, the ministries proved to still be largely under U.S. control. A second issue was that the Governing Council had no real power. The United Nations pushed to change that, but Bremer refused. At the same time, many of the councilmen never showed up for work, the U.S. didn’t trust all of them, and some were considered corrupt. Finally, the ethnosectarian composition of the council and the ministries would set a trend that would continue on into the present Iraqi governments. The U.S. has been widely condemned for creating this system, but it was something that the Iraqi opposition had been doing since the 1990s. After the Gulf War it tried to create a series of umbrella organizations to unite them all, but because there were so many factions that needed to be included they turned to a quota system, very similar to what the U.S. did after 2003.

Bremer’s creation of a Governing Council was just the first step in a multi-stage process he had devised, but would later have to abandon, because of pressure from Iraqis and Washington. Previously, Jay Garner of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, which was the first American body in charge of post-war Iraq, wanted a quick transition to Iraqi control. Bremer came in with a long-term project that not only included caucuses to create a body that would draft a new constitution, a referendum on that document, and voting for a new national government, but also set out to establish a free press, and create a new judicial system. Bremer argued that this entire process would take several years, because it required creating a democratic culture, not just holding elections. In June, the CPA ran into its first impediment when Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa against Bremer’s ideas of how to write a constitution. Instead, the cleric called for early elections for an interim parliament to come up with a new constitution. Bremer tried to meet with Sistani in July in Najaf to work out their differences, but was refused. Next, Bremer wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post in September outlining his plans. This caused consternation back in the U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had initially approved the CPA’s ideas, but then changed his mind, and pushed for turning over power to the Iraqis sooner rather than later. Then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice set up the Iraq Stabilization Group that advocated a quicker transition to Iraqi sovereignty as well. Rice was frustrated with Bremer, because he answered to no one, and no one in Washington really knew what he was doing. Rice placed Robert Blackwill in charge of the Stabilization Group. He went to Iraq in September, and found that Bremer’s plan was not tenable, because it was not acceptable to Iraqis such as Ayatollah Sistani. In October, the United Nations passed a resolution saying that Iraqis should have control of their country as soon as possible. The next month, Bremer was called back to Washington for a policy meeting on the future of Iraq. There, Bremer was told to come up with a new timeline for returning sovereignty to the Iraqis. With all that pressure, Bremer relented and revised his strategy. He went on to announce that the CPA would cease to exist in June 2004 when an interim Iraqi government would take power, while a new constitution was constructed. United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi helped convince Ayatollah Sistani of this new plan. At first, Bremer and the CPA had great leeway to do what it wanted in Iraq, because the country was descending into chaos, and Washington was caught unprepared. The problem was that the CPA didn’t have the staff to follow through with its ideas, and didn’t listen to anyone, especially Iraqis on what the future of the nation should be. It made many decisions on the fly, and its long term plans either for reconstruction or governance all ended up falling apart.

The United States came into Iraq saying that it wanted to create a democracy, but it didn’t have the planning or time to accomplish that. Bremer thought that he could stay in Iraq for years running and building things until a new political culture was created, and then he would return sovereignty. That ran into the interests of Washington and Iraqis who wanted the U.S. out as soon as possible. Not only that, but the Americans were failing to create the institutions to make a new society, because almost all the bodies they created or put back together like the local councils to the ministries were all dependent upon the U.S., and largely under their control with limited autonomy. Bremer tried to create a system of stewardship that would walk the Iraqis through his multi-step program. The fact that he didn’t seem to take into consideration what the Iraqis wanted or take advice from other American agencies like USAID, which he was in constant conflict with, eventually sunk his ideas.

SOURCES

Al-Ahram, “Untying the knot,” 2/19/03

Baker, David, “Iraqis sample democracy in U.S.-sponsored councils,” San Francisco Chronicle, 9/4/03

Burns, John and Stevenson, Richard, “Frustrated top GI in Iraq talks tough,” San Francisco Chronicle, 11/12/03

Chandrasekaran, Rajiv, “U.S. drops assembly idea for interim political council,” San Francisco Chronicle, 6/2/03

Collier, Robert, “Shiite support for U.S. occupation of Iraq appears tenuous,” San Francisco Chronicle, 7/16/03

Elliott, Michael, “If At First You Don’t Succeed…,” Time, 11/24/03

Filkins, Dexter, “85 die in Iraq shrine blast – key ayatollah among slain,” San Francisco Chronicle, 8/30/03

Packer, George, “War After The War,” New Yorker, 11/24/03

PBS Frontline, “Interview Maj. Gen. David Petraeus,” Beyond Baghdad, 2/12/04

Powell, Bill and Ghosh, Aparism, “Paul Bremer’s Rough Ride,” Time, 6/28/04

Ricks, Thomas, Fiasco, New York: Penguin Press, 2006

Senor, Daniel, Martinez, Roman, “Donald Rumsfeld’s Iraq Revisionism,” Washington Post, 2/15/11

Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, “Hard Lessons,” 1/22/09

Tyler, Patrick, “Big step toward a new Iraq,” San Francisco Chronicle, 7/8/03

- “Iraq pieces together its first postwar governing council,” San Francisco Chronicle, 7/13/03

Vest, Jason, “The failures of occupation,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, 4/21/04

Walt, Vivienne, “Bombing at Baghdad police compound,” San Francisco Chronicle, 9/3/03

- “Iraqis take over Cabinet posts amid insecurity,” San Francisco Chronicle, 9/4/03

Wright, Robin and Williams, Daniel, “U.S. set to cede power to Iraqis quickly,” San Francisco Chronicle, 11/13/03

VIDEO: Leading To War

VIDEO: Colin Powell And Condoleezza Rice 2001: Iraq Has No WMDs/Is Not A Threat

How The Bush White House Used Leaked Intelligence To Launch A Media Campaign Against Iraq In September 2002

In early September 2002, the Bush White House unraveled a concerted propaganda campaign to convince the American public of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. The administration proved masterful at media manipulation, leaking a story about Iraq’s nuclear program to the press, and then quoting the story as proof of their claims. They then included the piece in an official release, which was reported on again. The news created about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, seemed to provide a convincing case against Saddam, when all along it was simply one administration claim repeated again and again by different outlets.

The administration unleashed its plan on September 8, 2002. It began with an article in the New York Times by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon entitled “U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest For A-Bomb Parts.” The piece started with the claim that Iraq had tried to buy thousands of aluminum tubes to build centrifuges for enriching uranium for an atomic bomb. It said that U.S. intelligence had found out that Saddam had met with his nuclear scientists and praised their work, defectors claimed that acquiring a nuclear bomb was a major goal of Baghdad, and that new construction was going on at suspected sites. Administration officials told the Times that Iraq’s nuclear program was making Saddam an even greater threat, claiming that he would be more likely to use his weapons of mass destruction if he had the protection of a nuclear bomb. War supporters within the White House went on to say that they were afraid that Iraq was even further along with its program than U.S. intelligence knew about. They did not want, “The first sign of a ‘smoking gun’” to “be a mushroom cloud.” The rest of the article went on to recount Iraq’s previous attempts to build a bomb, and claims about its chemical and biological arsenal. This was the opening shot in the White House’s propaganda campaign. Although the Times report included Iraqi defectors, and other sources, the major claims about Saddam’s nuclear operations came from the administration itself. The line about a “mushroom cloud” for example, came from one of Bush’s top speechwriters Michael Gerson, and was okayed for use by the White House Iraq Group on September 5. The next phase was to hit the Sunday news talk shows, and repeat these claims again and again.

(MSNBC)

That day, Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on NBC’s Meet The Press. He claimed that Iraq had restarted both its nuclear and weapons of mass destruction programs. He said that Baghdad was buying equipment to build a nuclear bomb such as the aluminum tubes. Cheney then quoted the New York Times article as proof of his argument. He went on to say that the U.S. did not know whether Iraq had a bomb or not, but that it was an immediate threat that America could act against in self-defense. He warned that if the Bush administration did not act, the United States would become a target of any atomic device Iraq could build in the future. The genius of the White House’s program was revealed in this interview. The Vice President was able to use the government’s own leak as proof of its claims against Iraq’s nuclear ambitions.

TV appearances by Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice followed. Powell was interviewed on Fox News Sunday saying that Iraq’s weapons programs and stocks were growing. (1) Later that day, Rice went on CNN’s Late Edition, and said that the aluminum tubes that Iraq attempted to buy were only good for centrifuges. She warned that the United States did not know how quickly Iraq could get a bomb, and used Gerson’s phrase that Washington did not want to find out through a “mushroom cloud.” Here again, administration officials were repeating the party line on Iraq, and using the phrase devised by the White House Iraq Group. The point was to flood he Sunday talk shows with the government's argument to create a media buzz about the threat posed by Saddam.

On September 12, the White House Group released a white paper on Iraq entitled, “A Decade of Deception and Defiance.” It was written by Jim Wilkerson, a deputy to White House communications chief Karen Hughes. It went over a number of Saddam’s crimes such as his human rights abuses and dictatorship, and then went through his weapons and nuclear programs. It mentioned a defector who claimed that Iraq had secret biological, chemical, and nuclear facilities. The next day, Miller and Gordon wrote about it in the Times. Along with going over a number of charges against Iraq’s WMD, it repeated many of the claims made by the Bush administration in the two reporters’ piece from September 8 such as the aluminum tubes Iraq tried to purchase, and that Saddam had recently met with his nuclear scientists. It did add that there was a debate within the U.S. intelligence community over the tubes with the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Oak Ridge nuclear facility all believing that they were for a nuclear program, while the State and Energy Departments were dissenting. With this white paper and article, the propaganda campaign had completed the circle. First, the government leaked the aluminum tubes story to the Times, then Cheney and others quoted the piece as proof of their charges against Saddam, the White House then wrote a paper partially based upon the Times article, and then the newspaper wrote about the nuclear story all over again. Suddenly, it seemed like everyone was talking about the threat Saddam would pose if he eventually acquired an atomic bomb when in fact, it was all started by one single claim the administration told to the New York Times.

(PBS)

President Bush topped off the campaign by addressing the United Nations on September 12. The President said that the world could not wait for Iraq to get a nuclear weapon. He warned that the international community would only know if Baghdad had a bomb when it used it. He went on to claim that the aluminum tubes were proof that Iraq was trying to enrich uranium. The rest of the speech was full of charges about how Iraq was expanding its WMD programs. Here the U.S. government was spreading its case from advocating to the American public to the world body, trying to convince it that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat that needed to be dealt with.

The American media always tends to follow the lead of the government. Whenever Washington makes announcements it gets noted, and officials are major sources for reporters. Thus, when the Bush White House leaked the story of the aluminum tubes to the New York Times, it was immediately reported. The administration then used that coverage to claim that their argument against Iraq was supported by the news. This was then repeated again and again, in a concerted propaganda campaign to convince the American public that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to the country because he was attempting to acquire a nuclear bomb. The White House proved adept at manipulating the media, but in the end, it had little affect upon the public at that time. In mid-August 2002, 53% of respondents in a Gallup Poll said they favored invading Iraq, while 41% were opposed. During the campaign, the numbers went up to 57-58% for a war, but by the beginning of October they were back to 53% in favor. The tubes story proved to be an important event for the administration to make its case against Iraq, but it was not the last. It would launch more campaigns, go to the Congress for an authorization for the use of force against Iraq, present to the United Nations again, and lobby allies to join its war plans. What it showed was how many in the media played along with the government, and helped promote the war. This is something that few have acknowledged since then. In May 2004 for example, the editors at the New York Times wrote a short piece on their pre-war Iraq coverage and mentioned the aluminum tubes reporting saying that they should have been more skeptical. They wrote that the story came from U.S. intelligence sources, when in fact, the White House orchestrated it. In the end, they promised more aggressive reporting on Iraq, yet to this day it, along with the rest of the America press continues to depend upon the government as a major source for its coverage. That gives little assurance that the next time an administration decides to launch a media offensive, the U.S. press will not fully comply, and repeat the official line rather than provide a critical source for the American public to decide the merits of the government’s decisions.

FOOTNOTES

1. Mukhopadhyay, Dipali, “The Bush Administration on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Capabilities,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004

SOURCES

Allen, Mike, “War Cabinet Argues for Iraq Attack: Bush Advisers Cite U.S. Danger,” Washington Post, 9/9/02

Dickinson, Tim, “West Wing Pipe Dream,” Mother Jones, 7/28/03

Gellman, Barton and Pincus, Walter, “Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence,” Washington Post, 8/10/03

Gordon, Michael and Miller, Judith, “Threats And Responses: The Iraqis; U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest For A-Bomb Parts,” New York Times, 9/8/02

Isikioff, Michael and Corn, David, Hubris, The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, New York: Crown Publishers, 2006

Landay, Jonathan, “Iraq has been unable to get materials needed for nuclear bomb, experts say,” Knight Ridder Newspapers, 9/13/02

Miller, Judith and Gordon, Michael, “White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons,” New York Times, 9/13/02

Mukhopadhyay, Dipali, “The Bush Administration on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Capabilities,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004

New York Times Editors, “The Times and Iraq,” New York Times, 5/26/04

Risen, James, State of War; The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Free Press, 2006

Saad, Lydia, “Top Ten Findings About Public Opinion and Iraq,” Gallup News Service, 10/8/02

How Dysfunction Within The Bush White House Undermined Planning For Iraq

Then National Security Adviser Rice and Pres. Bush did a poor job managing Iraq policy (Agence France Presse)

One of the major problems within the Bush White House was that it had a dysfunctional foreign policy apparatus. The National Security Council was created after World War II to manage military, intelligence, and foreign policy issues. Under the first Bush administration, the National Security Advisor was Condoleezza Rice. She had a close, personal relationship with the president, but proved incapable of managing the strong personalities within the White House. The president also often failed to make any choices between these differing opinions. That led to a haphazard approach to Iraq, which ultimately undermined planning, and helped lead to the chaos after the removal of Saddam Hussein.

Vice President Cheney, Sec. of Defense Rumsfeld, Pres. Bush, Sec. of State Powell. Bush's top officials were deeply divided on Iraq policy. Rumsfeld and Powell were rivals within the administration as well (Associated Press/Getty)

Both President Bush and Condoleezza Rice lacked strong management skills. That meant many times tough issues were never debated, nor even decided upon. Sometimes agencies were allowed to follow their own independent paths, with little to no coordination from above. After 9/11, the situation became worse. Instead of ideas coming slowly up from the bureaucracy, top officials like Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and others made decisions on the fly. That meant there was even less discussion within the administration. On top of that, many individuals within the White House did not like each other. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell for example, had a running battle with each other. The former also did not like Rice, and often denigrated her at meetings or ignored her completely. This belies the tendency to think of an administration as a single, unified entity. That was far from the truth for Bush’s time in office. Because of these internal rivalries and the fractured decision making process, Rice, who was supposed to manage foreign policy, often had to play catch-up on what was going on. Bush meanwhile, did little about these sharp differences.

Undersecretary of Defense Feith refused to coordinate with other agencies on post-war Iraq planning, a sign of the divisions within the Bush White House (Washington Post)

Iraq became a perfect example of this dysfunction. There were deep divisions within the White House over how to deal with Saddam Hussein. These came out on several occasions before the 2003 invasion. For example, the first national security meeting of the Bush administration in January 2001 focused upon creating a new Iraq policy. First, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz argued for a military confrontation with Saddam Hussein, and more support for the Iraqi opposition, specifically the Iraqi National Congress. Powell on the other hand, pushed for strengthening United Nations sanctions on Iraq, which would more strategically target military related goods heading for the country. Rather than work out these differences or select one approach over the other, no decision was made about Iraq. That left State and Defense to carry on separately with their individual policies. Another case was when initial planning started for post-war Iraq in late-2001. At one time, five different groups were working on the topic including the State Department’s Future of Iraq project, two steering groups within the National Security Council, two officers from the Central Command (CENTCOM), and the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans. Because the White House wanted to keep its plans secret, all of this work was compartmentalized meaning that none of these groups worked with each other, most didn’t know about one another, and few consulted with outside agencies that would be critical for any security and rebuilding effort after Saddam was overthrown. Later on, new groups replaced these initial ones, and ignored all their previous work. A specific example of this was a meeting held in January 2002 at the Old Executive Building in Washington to go over the basic war plan and aftermath. General Wayne Downing, the National Security Council’s top counterterrorism official, chaired the session, which was organized by the Vice President’s office. Rice was not informed however, and when she found out about it, she ordered all the papers that resulted from it destroyed. It wasn’t until January 2003, right before the invasion that Bush gave the Defense Department ultimate responsibility for post-war Iraq. Even then, the in fighting continued as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith was put in charge of post-war planning at the Office of Special Plans. He said there was no way that the Pentagon would discuss Iraq with other parts of the government even though they would be needed to help stabilize the country after the invasion. When it came to dealing with Iraq, planning for the war, and its aftermath things were haphazard at best within the White House. No agency wanted to work with another, Rice had no handle on managing these differences, and President Bush either didn’t know about all the machinations within his administration or never took the time to decide on one approach over another.

Years later, many of these divisions became public. In 2006, Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post wrote Soldier, The Life of Colin Powell in which he attacked Rice for not dealing with the differences within the administration. Powell told DeYoung there were plenty of White House meetings over policy, but nothing came of them. That left Powell wondering when or if the president would make a decision on matters. He also thought this lackadaisical atmosphere allowed Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney to do what they wanted. The next year, Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times released Condoleezza Rice, An American Life. She said that Rice’s power came from her relationship with the president. At the same time, she never pushed him on anything, and never managed the strong personalities in the cabinet. For example, Rumsfeld would often try to take over National Security Council meetings, and would never tell Rice what he was doing. She had to send members of her staff to the Pentagon to try to find out what was going on there. Cheney also showed her little respect. That led Bumiller to believe that Rice was a weak national security advisor. In 2008, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith’s book War and Decision came out. He wrote that Rice did a poor job because she didn’t coordinated policy. Feith also took his shots at the State Department and CIA, blaming them for most of the problems that occurred in Iraq. Finally, in February 2011, Donald Rumsfeld’s Known and Unknown came out. He stated that the Bush White House was dysfunctional, and that had a negative affect upon the Iraq war. Like Powell, Rumsfeld said that there were national security meetings, but no clear process on how to make decisions. He blamed Bush for not working out the disagreements amongst his senior staff, and for not always asking for or receiving options before he made a policy choice. He claimed that sometimes the government didn’t always follow through with the choices that he did make, and went on to accuse the other parts of the government for failing in Iraq. All of them shared a few common points. Namely, Bush and Rice failed at running a smooth administration, which was marked by in fighting.

In January 2007, President Bush declared, “I’m the decision-maker” when it came to Iraq policy. His record would contradict that statement. He didn’t pick a clear Iraq policy when he first came into office in 2001, instead allowing the State and Defense department’s to follow their own paths. At the end of that year, planning for the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath officially began, but there was no coordination, cooperation or management of the process. Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s National Security Advisor should’ve been in charge of bringing some order to this chaos, but utterly failed in that task. In the second Bush term, she was rewarded by being named Secretary of State. Many of these problems were leaked to the press at the time, but by 2006 they began to come out in the open more as the major figures within the administration either released books or had ones written about them. The common theme of all of them was that the Bush’s foreign policy process was deeply flawed, starting at the top with the president, going down to Rice, and then spreading to the other major figures who continually sniped at each other undermining any unity of effort from the administration. In the end, Iraq was the one that paid the ultimate price as immediately after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein looting broke out, militias tried to seize power in towns and cities, the government collapsed, services stopped, and small groups began attacking the Coalition. The U.S. was caught utterly unprepared to deal with any of these because the only clear decision it had made was to invade, while everything else was left up in the air because of its dysfunction.

SOURCES

Associated Press, “Bush: ‘I’m the decision-maker’ on Iraq troops,” 1/26/07

Benjamin, Daniel and Simon, Steven, The Next Attack; The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting It Right, New York: Times Books, 2005

Burrough, Bryan, Peretz, Evgenia, Rose, David and Wise, David, “Path To War,” Vanity Fair, May 2004

Duffy, Michael, “Theater of War,” Time, 8/12/02

Elliott, Michael and Calabresi, Massimo, “Is Condi The Problem?” Time, 4/5/04

Hersh, Seymour, “The Debate Within,” New Yorker, 3/11/02

Kakutani, Michiko, “Rumsfeld’s Defense of Known Decisions,” New York Times, 2/3/11

Kessler, Glenn, “Rice’s Management at Issue,” Washington Post, 11/10/07

Milbank, Dana, “Don Rumsfeld, playing a dead-end game in his memoir,” Washington Post, 2/6/11
- “Iraq War Is Everyone Else’s Fault, Feith Explains,” Washington Post, 4/25/08

Packer, George, “War After The War,” New Yorker, 11/24/03

PBS Frontline, “Chronology: The Evolution of the Bush Doctrine,” War Behind Closed Doors, 2/20/03
- “INTERVIEWS Elisabeth Bumiller,” Bush’s War, 3/24/08
- “INTERVIEWS Karen DeYoung,” Bush’s War, 3/24/08

Reuters, “Donald Rumsfeld memoirs reveal no regrets over Iraq,” 2/3/11

Ricks, Thomas and DeYoung, Karen, “Ex-Defense Official Assails Colleagues Over Run-Up to War,” Washington Post, 4/9/08

Risen, James, State of War; The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Free Press, 2006

Could The U.S. Have Done Better In Iraq?

In the October 2008 issue of the journal Security Studies, Daniel Byman of Georgetown University and the Brookings Institution, asked the question could the U.S. have done better with post-war Iraq? The article was entitled, “An Autopsy of the Iraq Debacle: Policy Failure or Bridge Too Far?” The conventional wisdom is that the U.S. didn’t have enough international support going into the war, didn’t commit enough troops, didn’t expect an insurgency, and then made bad policy choices like disbanding the Iraqi army. That was too many mistakes to be successful. The question then is if the U.S. made better decisions would post-war Iraq have turned out differently? Byman’s answer is no. There were too many structural barriers that limited choices to make things decidedly different immediately after the 2003 invasion.

Even before U.S. forces entered Iraq in March 2003, Byman believes the Bush administration faced three structural impediments to creating a stable Iraq. First, the U.S. knew little about the country. For example, when the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs, the first civilian group put in charge of post-war Iraq was making plans to run Iraq’s ministries, it didn’t even know how many there were. In light of facts about Iraq, Washington instead relied upon a best-case scenario for what the nation would be like after the war, which was that the U.S. would be greeted as liberators, the Iraqi government would still be up and running, reconstruction would be limited and paid for by Iraqi oil, democracy would sprout, and American forces would be out in a number of weeks. Second, many of these ideas of what Iraq would be like came from Iraqi exiles that were actively lobbying the administration for regime change. The liberators scenario for example came after three Iraqi exiles met with President Bush at the White House. This skewed America’s vision of the situation in Iraq, and what the likely outcomes of an invasion would be like. Finally, the U.S. lacked the resources and staff to conduct nation building. As Professor William Olson of the National Defense University recently wrote in an article for Small Wars Journal, the U.S. spent fifty years fighting the Cold War, which privileged spending on the Pentagon and the military over the civilian agencies of the U.S. government like the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The Pentagon was thus given control of post-war Iraq because the State Department couldn’t handle the job even if it wanted to. The Defense Department however didn’t have the expertise or personnel either to take on what the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has called the largest rebuilding project in American history. These three issues greatly limited the choices the U.S. could make before and after the war, and put the administration in a hole before it even entered Iraq.

To make the situation worse, the U.S. made several pre-war policy mistakes. First, the U.S. did not adequately plan for post-war Iraq. As reported before, the White House usually had at least two different organizations strategizing for Iraq after the invasion completely independently, and usually with no knowledge of what the other was doing. That meant there was no comprehensive or unified plan for what to do with Iraq. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice tried to coordinate this planning phase, but failed. The best-case view promulgated by the White House also meant that the various agencies tasked with thinking about post-war Iraq never really thought about serious contingencies. There were also some in the administration that didn’t want any detailed post-war planning because they thought it would cause political problems in convincing the country to go to war. Second, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld micromanaged the military planning, and whittled down the invasion force to match his plans for transforming the U.S. armed forces. That meant there were enough troops to overthrow Saddam, but not enough to deal with the country afterward. Third, the U.S. military had also rejected counterinsurgency strategy since the Vietnam war, which made them unprepared for the insurgency that quickly sprouted after the fall of the government. Byman doesn’t believe any of these choices were inevitable. The military for example is known for its in-depth planning, yet failed to do that with post-war Iraq. The U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki famously warned that Iraq would take several hundred thousand troops to run the country, but was ignored by policy makers. The U.S. thus set itself even farther back in dealing with the eventual occupation of Iraq through these decisions.

There were also structural barriers within Iraq. Most importantly, Iraq was a devastated country. In the 1970s it was a middle class and developing nation, but the costs of the Iran-Iraq War and the sanctions imposed after the Gulf War destroyed all that. The United Nations estimated that the standard of living dropped 2/3 from 1988 to 1995 as a result. Many political scientists believe that a middle class is necessary to support democracy, so any attempt by the U.S. to build one would be constrained by this factor. Second, occupations often create backlashes, and the American presence in Iraq caused resentment by both Sunnis and Shiites, some of which took up arms against the U.S. as a result. Third, Saddam’s divide and conquer policies created deep ethnosectarian divisions in Iraqi society, which would explode after the invasion. The fact that the U.S. knew nothing about these issues, and didn’t want to plan for them anyway because it expected everything to go well after the war, had devastating effects upon the country and the U.S. occupation.

As if these barriers within America and Iraq, and poor pre-war choices weren’t enough, the U.S. made more mistakes after the invasion. First, Paul Bremer decided to disband the Iraqi Army leaving thousands of angry and out of work ex-soldiers. Second, Bremer also set up a deBaathification program that went too deep and caused resentment amongst Sunnis. Third, the U.S. didn’t stop the looting, which cost millions of dollars in damages, slowed the administration of Iraq, and made the Americans look powerless. Fourth, the U.S. went back and forth on Iraq’s political future causing confusion and anger. Fifth, the Coalition Provisional Authority implemented a privatization and free trade policy, which failed at turning Iraq into a capitalist country, but did put many Iraqi enterprises out of business, and added to the unemployment problem. Sixth, the U.S. military refused to acknowledge and adapt to the insurgency. Seventh, reconstruction went slowly due to the post-war chaos and lack of security, which caused growing anti-Americanism amongst Iraqis. Eighth, the Coalition Provisional Authority lacked a trained and stable staff. Ninth the U.S. occupation lacked unity of command with Bremer and General Ricardo Sanchez both claiming authority over Iraq, and neither cooperating or liking each other. Finally, the military rotated units in and out of Iraq, which meant a loss of knowledge and local contacts each time a new set of troops replaced an old one. Again, policy makers had various alternative policies they could have pursued, and were often warned about the decisions they did make.

Byman believes the U.S. didn’t follow Sun Tzu’s axiom, “Know they self, know they enemy” when it went it decided to go to war. The U.S. knew next to nothing about Iraq, and didn’t understand the limits of the U.S. government’s capabilities either. That created too many structural barriers, which severely constrained the options open to the administration. To add to that the U.S. made bad choices again and again before and after the invasion. Byman believes that even if the U.S. had made some different decisions it would’ve only marginally improved the situation. For example, if the U.S. had sent more troops that didn’t mean they would’ve dealt with the looting or suddenly adopted counterinsurgency tactics. The results as everyone knows, were a burgeoning guerrilla war, the rise of Shiite militias, political fragmentation, sectarianism, mass unemployment, crime, and the growth of Iranian influence. Iraq quickly turned into a failed state as a result. The U.S. has been trying to make up for many of these mistakes since then. For all of these reasons Byman does not think post-war Iraq could’ve turned out any better.

SOURCES

Byman, Daniel, “An Autopsy of the Iraq Debacle: Policy Failure or Bridge Too Far?” Security Studies, October 2008

Collins, Joseph, “Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath,” Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, April 2008

Elliott, Michael, “So, What Went Wrong?” Time, 10/6/03

Fineman, Mark, Wright, Robin, and McManus, Doyle, “Preparing for War, Stumbling to Peace,” Los Angeles Times, 7/18/03

Government of Iraq, “Iraq National Report on the Status of Human Development 2008,” 12/31/08

Gordon, Michael, “Army Buried Study Faulting Iraq Planning,” New York Times, 2/11/08

McGeary, Johanna, “Looking Beyond Saddam,” Time, 3/10/03

Olson, Dr. William, “Mistakes Were Made, How Not to Conduct Post-Conflict Management and Counterinsurgency,” Small Wars Journal, 7/17/09

Parker, George, Assassins’ Gate, 2005

PBS Frontline, “INTERVIEWS Karen DeYoung,” Bush’s War, 3/24/08

Special Inspector General For Iraq Reconstruction, “Hard Lessons,” 1/22/09

Thompson, Mark and Duffy, Michael, “Pentagon Warlord,” Time, 1/19/03

Rice: We Didn’t Know How Bad Iraq’s Infrastructure Was Because Baghdad Looked So Modern

One of the major problems for the United States before the invasion was the complete lack of knowledge the administration had about Iraq. This was summed up perfectly in an interview with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on NBC’s Meet The Press on September 28, 2003. She said the U.S. didn’t know about the devastation of Iraq’s society because Baghdad looked so good. She told Tim Russert, “We did not have perfect foresight into what we were going to find in Iraq. The fact of the matter is that this deteriorated infrastructure, one that was completely covered and covered over by the gleaming picture of Baghdad that made it look like a first-world city.” It seems that Rice looked towards TV and pictures as her main source of information on Iraq, because there were several studies done beforehand by think tanks and experts on the problems with Iraq’s services and infrastructure, and the United Nations had a wealth of information as well. In December 2002 for example, the Council on Foreign Relations and the James Baker Institute at Rice University estimated that it would cost $20 billion to restore Iraq’s power system to its 1990s level, and $30-$40 billion to restore the oil industry. A 2002 U.N. report said that Iraq’s electrical network wasn’t meeting demand because of a lack of spare parts and maintenance. A military war college professor also briefed administration officials on the power system saying that it was likely to fall apart even if it wasn’t attacked during the war. None of this was considered because the White House believed in a best-case scenario for post-war Iraq where its ministries and services would all be up and running the day after the war ended. $24.42 billion later in U.S. reconstruction funds and Iraq’s services are still a mess.

SOURCES

Elliott, Michael, “So, What Went Wrong?” Time, 10/6/03

Fineman, Mark, Wright, Robin, and McManus, Doyle, “Preparing for War, Stumbling to Peace,” Los Angeles Times, 7/18/03

Meet The Press, “Transcript for Sep. 28 GUESTS: Dr. Condoleeza Rice, national security adviser Rep. Dick Gephardt, (D-Mo.), Democratic presidential candidate Tim Russert,” moderator,” NBC News, 9/28/03

Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, “Quarterly Report and Semiannual Report to the United States Congress,” 7/30/09