Study Critical of War Planning and Administration Buried by Army

Following eighteen months of research on post-war Iraq, the RAND Corporation produced a detailed report in 2005 that was critical of "nearly every organization that had a role in planning the war." The Army, however, buried the study -- RAND produced a classified and unclassified versions -- until the New York Times obtained a copy.

But the study’s wide-ranging critique of the White House, the Defense Department and other government agencies was a concern for Army generals, and the Army has sought to keep the report under lock and key. [...]

That assessment parallels the verdicts of numerous former officials and independent analysts.

The study chided President Bush — and by implication Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who served as national security adviser when the war was planned — as having failed to resolve differences among rival agencies. “Throughout the planning process, tensions between the Defense Department and the State Department were never mediated by the president or his staff,” it said.

The report takes the Defense and State departments to task. From the Times article:

The Defense Department led by Donald H. Rumsfeld was given the lead in overseeing the postwar period in Iraq despite its "lack of capacity for civilian reconstruction planning and execution."

The State Department led by Colin L. Powell produced a voluminous study on the future of Iraq that identified important issues but was of "uneven quality" and “did not constitute an actionable plan.”

The report listed numerous failures and major mistakes that compounded problems, among these were:

Bush administration officials underestimated the requirements to rebuild Iraq and "[t]here was also little incentive to challenge that assumption, the report said."

There was a "general lack of coordination" and "'[T]here was never an attempt to develop a single national plan that integrated humanitarian assistance, reconstruction, governance, infrastructure development and postwar security,' the study said."

The military under Gen. Tommy Franks' command "assumed that Iraq’s police and civil bureaucracy would stay on the job and had no fallback option in case that expectation proved wrong."

There was a "shortfall" of forces that was "exacerbated" when General Franks and Rumsfeld withheld a division as U.S. forces entered Baghdad, reflecting their "assessment that the war had been won."

These blunders, notes the report, had "'the inadvertent effort of strengthening the insurgency,' as Iraqis experienced a lack of security and essential services and focused on 'negative effects of the U.S. security presence.'"

Senior Army officials, unhappy about the findings, questioned the study and resisted a response from RAND seeking publication. One of the study's formal sponsors said in a statement that "it lacked the perspective needed for future planning by the U.S. Army."

A Pentagon official who is familiar with the episode offered a different interpretation: Army officials were concerned that the report would strain relations with a powerful defense secretary and become caught up in the political debate over the war. “The Army leaders who were involved did not want to take the chance of increasing the friction with Secretary Rumsfeld,” said the official, who asked not to be identified because he did not want to alienate senior military officials.

The Army asked RAND to resubmit their study.

Also in the Times today: Secretary Robert Gates publicly endorsed "pausing" troop reductions.

Comments (2) «

What do you expect? The current top leadership of the military are the yes-men who kissed Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld butt instead of standing up and telling the truth about our military and their capacity to go into Iraq.
They will cover for themselves and for the Bushiato before they will allow anything approaching reality get to the news media, even the right wing corporate media.

1

Butte on February 11, 2008 at 11:48 AM

They lost the war before they started saying they won it. The same thing is going on five years later. They reached a stalemate before they started saying it is working.

There are no miliary objectives. There is no military strategy. There is only this vauge idea that if we stay there long enough the Iraqis will give in to our demands to hand over the oil fields and allow us to have permanent bases there forever.

Vauge ideas are for faith healers not professional miliary men and women. We can't continue stretching our troops and not replacing worn equipment while draining the nation of resources that should be spent at home.

Praying that an occupied population will suddenly like the idea of having a foreign nation impose its will on it is not realistic.

Won't happen. We will leave at some point having to write this off as a lesson learned. Never, ever allow Republicans to conduct invasions. They are incompetent and irresponsible by nature.

2

SandyH on February 11, 2008 at 12:44 PM

« Hide Comments

Comments are now closed for this entry.