Army study: Iraq occupation was understaffed

[Penn]

Army study: Iraq occupation was understaffed
By ROBERT WELLER – 4 hours ago

DENVER (AP) — 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 Combat 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.

Retired military leaders, members of Congress, think tanks and others have already concluded that the occupation was understaffed.

At least 4,113 U.S. military members have died in Iraq, according to a count by The Associated Press.

Hundreds of commanders and other soldiers and officials were interviewed for the report released Sunday. The Army ordered the study to review what happened in the 18 months after the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime. A report on the invasion was released earlier.

The report said that after Saddam's regime was removed from power, most commanders and units expected to transition to stability and support operations, similar to what was seen in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Commanders with the mindset that victory had already been achieved believed that a post-combat Iraq would require "only a limited commitment by the U.S. military and would be relatively peaceful and short as Iraqis quickly assumed responsibility," the study said.

"Few commanders foresaw that full spectrum operations in Iraq would entail the simultaneous employment of offense, defense, stability, and support operations by units at all echelons of command to defeat new, vicious, and effective enemies," it added.

The report said the first Bush administration and its advisers had assumed incorrectly that the Saddam regime would collapse after the first Gulf War.

When Saddam was so quickly defeated in 2003, there was an absence of authority that led to widespread looting and violence, the report said. Soldiers initially had no plan to deal with that. The administration's decision to remove Saddam's followers entirely from power caused governmental services to collapse, "fostering a huge unemployment problem," it said.

Planners in the Iraq headquarters said 300,000 troops would be needed for the occupation. Even before the invasion, some planners had called for 300,000 troops to be sent for the invasion and occupation.

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.

The report said it wasn't until July 16, 2003, that Franks' successor, Gen. John Abizaid, said coalition forces were facing a classic guerrilla insurgency.

Even so, the coalition made some progress, only to have its optimism dashed after the insurgency boiled over in April 2004, when Sunni Arab insurgents and Shiite militias launched violent assaults in many parts of Iraq, the report said.

The authors said the Army had considerable experience and training for guerrilla wars but had not been in one like Iraq since 1992 in Somalia. They said former Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Franks "that he thought too few troops were envisioned in the (invasion) plan."

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.

Its writers said it was clear in January 2005 that the Army would remain in Iraq for some time, the writers concluded. The report covered the period from May 2003 to January 2005.

On the Net:
Army report: http://tinyurl.com/56dyob

[Penn]

April 13, 2006 PBS NEWS HOUR WITH JIM LEHRER

Anthony Zinni, called for the dismissal of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over critical mistakes made in the Iraq war.

ZINNI: There’s a series of disastrous mistakes. We just heard the Secretary of State say these were tactical mistakes. These were not tactical mistakes. These were strategic mistakes, mistakes of policies made back here. Don’t blame the troops. They’ve been magnificent. If anything saves us, it will be them.

MAJ. GEN. JOHN BATISTE: I suspect, going way back five years to the beginning of this whole war, there were ample times when people said to him, as General Shinseki did, "We need more." In the case of General Shinseki, he was retired early. And as I recall, the secretary didn't even go to his retirement ceremony; I have never forgotten that.

I think the current administration repeatedly ignored sound military advice and counsel with respect to the war plans. I think that the principles of war are fundamental, and we violate those at our own peril. And military leaders of all ranks, particularly the senior military, have an obligation in a democracy to say something about it.
JIM LEHRER: Now, General Pace, as we just played, said that you and other military officers had plenty of opportunity to speak out. Did you, in fact, speak out while you were on active duty?
MAJ. GEN. JOHN BATISTE: Of course. We all do. Within the military, it's a very special culture, and you stay within your chain of command.
There are times that you're told to do things that you don't agree with and you're given an opportunity to rebut, to give reasons why it shouldn't be that way. And at the end of the day, you either salute and execute or you make a decision to retire or resign; that's the way it is. There's always that dialogue.
JIM LEHRER: And you took the option to salute and go ahead, correct?
MAJ. GEN. JOHN BATISTE: Up until a point. In November of 2005, I retired from the Army. I transitioned. By all accounts, I had a very promising career ahead of me, but I was not willing to compromise further the principles of war.

[Penn]

By THOM SHANKER
Published: January 12, 2007

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 — After President Bush told the nation on Wednesday night that he was ordering a rapid increase of American forces in Iraq, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki was not among the retired officers to offer instant analysis on television.


But the president’s new strategy, with its explicit acknowledgment that not enough troops had been sent to Iraq to establish control, was a vindication for General Shinseki, who as Army chief of staff publicly told Congress as much just before the war began in 2003.

First vilified, then marginalized by the Bush administration after those comments, General Shinseki retired and faded away, even as lawmakers, pundits and politicians increasingly cited his prescience.

“We never had enough troops to begin with,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said just before the president’s televised address. “A month or two ago we found out the Army is broken, and they agreed that General Shinseki was right.”

Gen. John P. Abizaid, the departing commander of American forces in the Middle East, told Congress late last year, “General Shinseki was right that a greater international force contribution, U.S. force contribution and Iraqi force contribution should have been available immediately after major combat operations.”

In his prime-time address on Wednesday, even President Bush said the main reason past efforts to stabilize Baghdad had failed was that “there were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents.”

The acknowledgment was far different from the harsh administration rebuttals after General Shinseki electrified Washington with his blunt warning that victory in Iraq would require more troops than were being deployed for the invasion.

He was the target of immediate rebuke from the Pentagon leadership, in particular from Donald H. Rumsfeld, then secretary of defense, and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz. Mr. Wolfowitz dismissed the testimony as “wildly off the mark.”
Some civilians in government and military officers say General Shinseki’s treatment intimidated other top officers.

“It sent a very clear signal to the military leadership about how that kind of military judgment was going to be valued,” said Kori Schake, the director for defense strategy on the National Security Council staff from 2002 to 2005, now a fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at West Point. “So it served to silence critics just at the point in time when, internal to the process, you most wanted critical judgment.”
General Shinseki has kept a strict public silence since retiring in June 2003 and would often say to his associates, “I do not want to criticize while my soldiers are still bleeding and dying in Iraq.”

He now splits his time between his suburban Washington home and his native Hawaii, consulting with academic organizations, private companies and military support groups. He declined to comment for this article.

“This is a man who is totally loyal to the Army, which was his life,” said David R. Gergen, director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Mr. Gergen works with General Shinseki on the center’s advisory board, and the general regularly meets with students there.

“General Shinseki draws an enormous crowd, especially of former and active-duty military,” said Mr. Gergen, who was an adviser to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton. “They hold General Shinseki in awe.”

“He has been very discreet in his comments about what happened,” Mr. Gergen added. “Just as he has been in public, he is reluctant in private to say anything that would disparage the commander in chief.”

The general, who throughout his career was known for his selfless, or at least self-effacing, bearing, did not go before Congress on that day in February 2003 planning to stir things up. But he is also not one who backs down easily; he had risen to the top of the Army after surviving grievous injury in Vietnam, and under withering cross-examination by Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, he spoke matter-of-factly.
“Something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required” to stabilize Iraq after an invasion, he said.
“We’re talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that’s fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems,” he added. “And so it takes a significant ground force presence to maintain a safe and secure environment, to ensure that people are fed, that water is distributed, all the normal responsibilities that go along with administering a situation like this.”

His comments brought to a boil long-simmering tensions with Mr. Rumsfeld, who had been scrubbing the war plans to reduce the number of invading troops. And they were politically explosive, coming less than a month before the start of the war, which proponents were saying confidently would be anything but a quagmire.

Former aides to the general said his estimate summarized back-of-the-envelope calculations but had been based on experiences as a commander in postwar Bosnia, where the United States sent 50,000 troops to quiet five million people, a population one-fifth that of Iraq. American troops in Iraq reached a peak of more than 160,000 in December 2005. There are now about 132,000.

General Shinseki was not fired for his comments, but his influence as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff certainly was never the same. He retired as scheduled.
During a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was asked specifically why General Shinseki’s recommendation of more troops had not been adopted, and he replied: “General Shinseki was not advocating for that number as an answer. He gave that as a guesstimate of what it might take. So I just want to put that in historical context.”

Some critics say General Shinseki should have spoken out more after his Senate testimony, and others ask why he did not resign to protest the war plan if he thought it would not assure victory. Even in retirement he declined to join the so-called generals’ revolt of retired officers calling for Mr. Rumsfeld to resign last year.
These days, Army officers are pointing to another instance of his impolitic remarks coming true years later.

In his retirement speech, General Shinseki warned against trying to carry out a “12-division strategy” with a “10-division army,” counsel that the Pentagon’s leaders rejected.

In his speech on Wednesday night, Mr. Bush vowed “to increase the size of the active Army and Marine Corps, so that America has the armed forces we need for the 21st century.” That, too, could be heard as an affirmation of the general’s long-held view.

[Penn]

Excer from Wikipedia
Regarding the 2003 Invasion of Iraq
Personality clashes apart, Shinseki and Rumsfeld had significantly different approaches to military doctrine. For example, following September 11, 2001, Rumsfeld was in a meeting whose subject was the review of the Department of Defense's (Contingency) Plan in the event of a war with Iraq (U.S. Central Command OPLAN 1003-98).[11] The plan (as it was then conceived) contemplated troop levels of up to 500,000, which Rumsfeld opined was far too many. Gordon and Trainor wrote:

As [General] Newbold outlined the plan … it was clear that Rumsfeld was growing increasingly irritated. For Rumsfeld, the plan required too many troops and supplies and took far too long to execute. It was, Rumsfeld declared, the "product of old thinking and the embodiment of everything that was wrong with the military."

***
[T]he Plan . . . reflected long-standing military principles about the force levels that were needed to defeat Iraq, control a population of more than 24 million, and secure a nation the size of California with porous borders. Rumsfeld's numbers, in contrast, seemed to be pulled out of thin air. He had dismissed one of the military's long-standing plans, and suggested his own force level without any of the generals raising a cautionary flag.

Id.[12]

While Shinseki was not at the OPLAN 1003-98 review mentioned above, he no doubt hewed to the traditional military view concerning force levels necessary for an Iraq invasion. It is, however, unclear how strongly Shinseki communicated to the DOD head views which diverged from those which Rumsfeld had forcefully communicated to the military command structure. While Shinseki's reticence to publicly speak on the questions of possible conflicts between himself and the Bush administration is well-known, he is on record as stating that it is "probably fair" to say that he should have banged on the table and pushed harder to stop Rumsfeld from going into Iraq with too few troops.[13]


General Shinseki revealing his estimates of several hundred thousand men for the required complement to occupy Iraq. Senate hearing, February 2003.On February 25, 2003, four months before the end of his term as Chief of Staff of the Army, Shinseki told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he thought an occupying force of several hundred thousand men would be needed to stabilize postwar Iraq. He was pressed to provide a range by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI). Below is an excerpt from the exchange:[14]

SEN. LEVIN: General Shinseki, could you give us some idea as to the magnitude of the Army's force requirement for an occupation of Iraq following a successful completion of the war?

GEN. SHINSEKI: In specific numbers, I would have to rely on combatant commanders' exact requirements. But I think --

SEN. LEVIN: How about a range?

GEN. SHINSEKI: I would say that what's been mobilized to this point -- something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required. We're talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that's fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems. And so it takes a significant ground- force presence.

In a public rebuke to Shinseki, Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, called Shinseki's estimate "far off the mark"[15] and "wildly off the mark". Wolfowitz said it would be "hard to believe" more troops would be required for post-war Iraq than to remove Saddam Hussein from power.[1] Specifically, Wolfowitz said to the House Budget Committee on February 27, 2003:

DEP. SEC. WOLFOWITZ: There has been a good deal of comment - some of it quite outlandish - about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. Some of the higher end predictions we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark. It is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army - hard to imagine.

On November 15, 2006, Gen. John P. Abizaid, chief of the U.S. Central Command, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, acknowledged that in his view, and with hindsight, Shinseki had been correct in his view that a larger post-war force was needed. Abizaid noted that this force could have included Iraqi or international forces in addition to American force:[16][17]

SEN. Lindsay GRAHAM (Republican, S. C.): Was General Shinseki correct when you look backward that we needed more troops to secure the country, General Abizaid? GEN. ABIZAID: General Shinseki was right that a greater international force contribution, U.S. force contribution, and Iraqi force contribution should have been available immediately after major combat operations.

Contrary to Democratic candidate John Kerry's claim, in the first debate of the 2004 presidential election, Shinseki was not "retired" for his testimony before Congress. His official term as Chief of the Army ended four months later and he retired as scheduled.[18] However, the tension between the civilians in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Shinseki were apparent. No senior civilians attended Shinseki's retirement ceremony. Some Army officers, such as Major General Batiste (ret.) who called for Rumsfeld's resignation, saw this as an intentional slight and sign of disrespect directed toward Shinseki by the civilian leadership.[19]

Secretary Rumsfeld, on the other hand, suggests that Shinseki did not invite any civilians to his retirement ceremony, although that claim cannot be verified since Shinseki has not commented on the issue.[20]

Douglas Feith, the former United States Under Secretary of Defense was interviewed by the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes in a segment that was aired on April 6, 2008. [21] During his interview Feith conceded that he and his colleagues didn’t realize that sending a smaller, mobile force to topple Saddam would make it difficult to establish order after he fell. "The looting that arose in the immediate aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam … was a problem that the coalition forces had to deal with. I think we paid a very large price for the fact that, you know, our forces did not get that problem under control." In his memoirs, Feith writes, "The small force strategy for major combat operations, while it saved American lives, limited the number of forces we had to deal with the looting.”


[edit] Show of support by Army officers
Shinseki has been cited by numerous retired Army officers as a prime example of Secretary Rumsfeld's disregard for military advice and abrasive treatment of senior officers. Newsweek magazine reports "ERIC WAS RIGHT" caps were on display at the 40th annual reunion of the West Point Class of 1965 (Shinseki's class).[13] Retired generals such as John Batiste who called for Rumsfeld's resignation have cited the treatment of Shinseki.

Shinseki, for his part, is not comfortable with this "martyr's" role. He has declined to make public comments on the Iraq war, Rumsfeld, or troop levels since his retirement. But at his retirement, Shinseki said of the administration's policy on troop strength, "Beware the 12-division strategy for a 10-division Army. Our soldiers and families bear the risk and the hardship of carrying a mission load that exceeds what force capabilities we can sustain, so we must alleviate risk and hardship by our willingness to resource the mission requirements."[22]

The professional military consensus of some military officers is that the United States did not send enough troops to Iraq to secure the country after the invasion.[23] The apparent success that even the relatively modest troop surge has had in abating violence in Iraq seems to validate the accuracy of Shinseki's opinion on the number of troops that should have been deployed.[24] In an interview with leading field-grade officers at the US Army's elite Combined Arms Center,[25] admiration of Shinseki's professional judgement and willingness to speak out was evident:

No, Major Montague shot back, it was more complicated: the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the top commanders were part of the decision to send in a small invasion force and not enough troops for the occupation. Only Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff who was sidelined after he told Congress that it would take several hundred thousand troops in Iraq, spoke up in public. “You didn’t hear any of them at the time, other than General Shinseki, screaming, saying that this was untenable,” Major Montague said.

However it's also clear to these officers that publicly stating contrary opinions comes with a high cost:

Yet, Major Hardaway said, General Shinseki had shown there was a great cost, at least under Mr. Rumsfeld. “Evidence shows that when you do that in uniform, bad things can happen,” he said. “So, it’s sort of a dichotomy of, should I do the right thing, even if I get punished?”

[AngelsSix]

The talking heads have spoken...........does it change anything? NO

Stop spending so much time listening to the media.

You will be better off in the long run.

[JMI]

Originally Posted by AngelsSix

The talking heads have spoken...........does it change anything? NO

Stop spending so much time listening to the media.

You will be better off in the long run.

So even if the people speaking up are teaching the citizens what was the wrong way to approach the War in Iraq, and even though it doesn;t change a thing, they should not speak up? Why, because they don't support your opinion? How do you know what changes anything??

The absolute necessity in 2008 is to read, listen and gather as much info as possible. If that bothers you I am sorry for you as a citizen. Thank you very much for you service, Angel. But I'll be damned if I will sit in one spot as a republican looking through Myopic glasses.

Dont listen to the media? Is that the message? Sure they are distorted and left leaning, but FOX is right leaning as well.

I lean in the middle. And to tell a person they are better off not reading or watching any news organizations is ludicrous and idiotic. So now we should only learn from conservatives?

Lame. Maybe looking through Republican glasses does it for you. Not me.

Sigi.

[echoes]

Originally Posted by Penn

Army study: Iraq occupation was understaffed
By ROBERT WELLER – 4 hours ago

DENVER (AP) — 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.

Penn,

Thank you for posting this article. Do not feel qualified to comment as to its content, rather am trying to learn from it, for the future.

Am hopeful that those qualified will share their thoughts or opinions.

Respectfully,

Holly

[Guy]

How about:

US military restrained from "monkey" stomping the enemy during a declared war?

Stay safe.

[Penn]

I did not post this article to promote talking heads. I posted it because Rumfield and Wolfwitz F'd up!!!! The General that looked them in the eye and said no was Shinseki. He got railroaded. And if proof is in the pudding...it sure is amazing how Iraq turned around after Bush started listening to his JCOS.

And the reason I posted the 03', 06', 07' follow up articles is that once they are read and understood in context to the power sturggle that was going on in the DOD they prove onve again how important solid leadershind moral courage is. And from the tone of the Generals comments, particularly Zinni, you can see the dislike for Rumfields civilian leadership and his I know better than you attitude. That prick cause a lot of damage.

[Guy]

Originally Posted by Penn

I did not post this article to promote talking heads. I posted it because Rumfield and Wolfwitz F'd up!!!! The General that looked them in the eye and said no was Shinseki. He got railroaded. And if proof is in the pudding...it sure is amazing how Iraq turned around after Bush started listening to his JCOS.

And the reason I posted the 03', 06', 07' follow up articles is that once they are read and understood in context to the power sturggle that was going on in the DOD they prove onve again how important solid leadershind moral courage is. And from the tone of the Generals comments, particularly Zinni, you can see the dislike for Rumfields civilian leadership and his I know better than you attitude. That prick cause a lot of damage.

It was not because of the troop strength we supposedly needed on the ground!

"It's the way we engaged the enemy!" Anyone that tells you: the US "troop" surge was successful? I'll counter argue with...

1. Increase in IA (Iraqi Army).
2. Increase in IP (Iraqi Police).
3. Employment/Support of the SOI (Sons of Iraq).

Stay safe.

[The Reaper]

Originally Posted by JMI

Sure they are distorted and left leaning, but FOX is right leaning as well.

Please cite your source for this.

When I watch Fox, they almost always cover both sides. I do not see this with the other networks.

What is this statement based on? The Huffington Post? Moveon.org?

TR

[Guy]

Take a look at the # of personnel eating lobster tail, steak and Baskin-Robbins ice cream that don't "EVER" step outside wire -vs- personnel that go into harms way...

They oughtta put tracking devices on troops...PTSD claims would decrease dramatically! I wonder how much money we spent on 700 pages?

Stay safe.

[Guy]

Originally Posted by Penn

I did not post this article to promote talking heads. I posted it because Rumfield and Wolfwitz F'd up!!!!

If these two screwed the "proverbial" pooch; every General Officer should have resigned immediately? HA! Did they? Nope...they waited until they retired then; and only then! Did they decide to speak up...I guess "moral" courage is only to be displayed when retired?

Stay safe.

[echoes]

Originally Posted by Guy

If these two screwed the "proverbial" pooch; every General Officer should have resigned immediately? HA! Did they? Nope...they waited until they retired then; and only then! Did they decide to speak up...I guess "moral" courage is only to be displayed when retired?

Stay safe.

Sir,

This is a very valuable learning tool for some of us (civilian folks), to gain a better understanding of what those "in-the-know", think.

Wanted to say thank you.

Respectfully,

Holly

[Penn]

Guy,
With all due respect I am going to answer you, but I want to put my ducks in order before doing so; as the answer requires more that a sentence or two.
If you think General Shinseki was not on point with his estimates before congress, and that he did willing take the hit, you are sadly mistaken.
As for the other GO's...yes, they punched they're ticket saluted and moved out.
What I am referencing is civilian leadership with an idealogical agenda that subverted the military ability to execute its charge.
I will submit my point by way of comparison ASAP...as I have a few business issues this time of year.