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By Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott |<\/p>\nBy Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott |<\/p>\n
The war in Iraq has become \u201ca major debacle\u201d and the outcome \u201cis in doubt\u201d despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon\u2019s premier military educational institute.<\/p>\n
The report released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about President Bush\u2019s projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions.<\/p>\n
The report carries considerable weight because it was written by Joseph Collins, a former senior Pentagon official, and was based in part on interviews with other former senior defense and intelligence officials who played roles in prewar preparations.<\/p>\n
It was published by the university\u2019s National Institute for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research center.<\/p>\n
\u201cMeasured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle,\u201d says the report\u2019s opening line.<\/p>\n
At the time the report was written last fall, more than 4,000 U.S. and foreign troops, more than 7,500 Iraqi security forces and as many as 82,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed and tens of thousands of others wounded, while the cost of the war since March 2003 was estimated at $450 billion.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one as yet has calculated the costs of long-term veterans\u2019 benefits or the total impact on service personnel and materiel,\u201d wrote Collins, who was involved in planning post-invasion humanitarian operations.<\/p>\n
The report said that the United States has suffered serious political costs, with its standing in the world seriously diminished. Moreover, operations in Iraq have diverted \u201cmanpower, materiel and the attention of decision-makers\u201d from \u201call other efforts in the war on terror\u201d and severely strained the U.S. armed forces.<\/p>\n
\u201cCompounding all of these problems, our efforts there (in Iraq) were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East,\u201d the report continued.<\/p>\n
The addition of 30,000 U.S. troops to Iraq last year to halt the country\u2019s descent into all-out civil war has improved security, but not enough to ensure that the country emerges as a stable democracy at peace with its neighbors, the report said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite impressive progress in security, the outcome of the war is in doubt,\u201d said the report. \u201cStrong majorities of both Iraqis and Americans favor some sort of U.S. withdrawal. Intelligence analysts, however, remind us that the only thing worse than an Iraq with an American army may be an Iraq after a rapid withdrawal of that army.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor many analysts (including this one), Iraq remains a \u2018must win,\u2019 but for many others, despite obvious progress under General David Petraeus and the surge, it now looks like a \u2018can\u2019t win.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The report lays much of the blame for what went wrong in Iraq after the initial U.S. victory at the feet of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. It says that in November 2001, before the war in Afghanistan was over, President Bush asked Rumsfeld \u201cto begin planning in secret for potential military operations against Iraq.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rumsfeld, who was closely allied with Vice President Dick Cheney, bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the report says, and became \u201cthe direct supervisor of the combatant commanders.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201d \u2026 the aggressive, hands-on Rumsfeld,\u201d it continues, \u201ccajoled and pushed his way toward a small force and a lightning fast operation.\u201d Later, he shut down the military\u2019s computerized deployment system, \u201cquestioning, delaying or deleting units on the numerous deployment orders that came across his desk.\u201d<\/p>\n
In part because \u201clong, costly, manpower-intensive post-combat operations were anathema to Rumsfeld,\u201d the report says, the U.S. was unprepared to fight what Collins calls \u201cWar B,\u201d the battle against insurgents and sectarian violence that began in mid-2003, shortly after \u201cWar A,\u201d the fight against Saddam Hussein\u2019s forces, ended.<\/p>\n
Compounding the problem was a series of faulty assumptions made by Bush\u2019s top aides, among them an expectation fed by Iraqi exiles that Iraqis would be grateful to America for liberating them from Saddam\u2019s dictatorship. The administration also expected that \u201cIraq without Saddam could manage and fund its own reconstruction.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report also singles out the Bush administration\u2019s national security apparatus and implicitly President Bush and both of his national security advisers, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, saying that \u201csenior national security officials exhibited in many instances an imperious attitude, exerting power and pressure where diplomacy and bargaining might have had a better effect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Collins ends his report by quoting Winston Churchill, who said: \u201cLet us learn our lessons. Never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. \u2026 Always remember, however sure you are that you can easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think that he also had a chance.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2008 McClatchy Newspapers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott | The war in Iraq has become \u201ca major debacle\u201d and the outcome \u201cis in doubt\u201d despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon\u2019s premier military educational institute. The report released by the National Defense […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,1616,16],"tags":[38,49,76],"class_list":{"0":"post-3027","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-general","7":"category-usa-news","8":"category-war-terrorism","9":"tag-iraq","10":"tag-usa-news","11":"tag-warfare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}