Iraq: "Recent History"

6 Jan. Reuters - Bremer says US did not expect insurgency in Iraq.

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Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. civilian occupation authority in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, has admitted the United States did not anticipate the insurgency in the country, NBC Television said on Friday.

Bremer, interviewed by the network in connection with release of his book on Iraq, recounted the decision to disband the Iraqi army quickly after arriving in Baghdad, a move many experts consider a major miscalculation.

When asked who was to blame for the subsequent Iraqi rebellion, in which thousands of Iraqis and Americans have died, Bremer said "we really didn't see the insurgency coming," the network said in a news release...

Bremer also said he was deeply concerned about fighting insurgents and "became increasingly worried about the Pentagon's push to downsize the number of U.S. forces in Iraq by spring 2004," the network said.

..."there was a tendency by people in the Pentagon to exaggerate the capability of the Iraqi forces and I felt it was not likely we would have professionally trained forces to allow us to withdraw American forces in the spring of 2004."...

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That they did not predict the insurgency is obvious, it is also obvious that they ignored/denied it early on. The question is why such lack of foresight?

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Originally Posted by Stu-6

The question is why such lack of foresight?

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Groupthink. This was during an election.

The insurgency started well before the 2004 election and was going strong during the election. The war itself did not start until several months after the 2002 election.

It is possible that planners were misled by the weak response of the Islamic terrorist in Afghanistan, which is still something of a puzzle to me when you consider how strong their opposition was to the Soviet occupation.

Much of the insurgency in Iraq is just the Saddamites doing what they were doing before he was deposed. That they did not anticipate the Saddamites would continue to do their thing is a failure of the intelligence analyst. Perhaps that is why they are trying to distract attention with all their other leaks. It should be considered another failure of the CIA in the lead up to the war.

This AP story tells what happened with Bremer's request:

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Bremer said in an NBC News interview Sunday that his memo to Rumsfeld suggested half a million troops were needed — more than three times the number there at the time. Bremer served as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority from May 2003, shortly after the fall of Baghdad, until June 2004 when Iraq's sovereignty was restored.

Di Rita said that after Bremer made his recommendation, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, Gen. Richard B. Myers, consulted with senior military commanders to consider changes. They then told Rumsfeld that they preferred to stay at the existing level of 18 brigades, or about 145,000 troops, Di Rita said.

"And that was the end of the matter," the spokesman added.

Many critics, including some leading members of Congress, continued to urge President Bush to increase the number of troops in Iraq as the insurgency persisted. Bush stuck to the military's plan to add forces by training Iraqis rather than sending more American troops. There are now more than 210,000 trained Iraqis, although debate continues on how effective they are and how soon they can take over security responsibilities. (Emphasis added.)

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Bush stuck to the military's plan to add forces by training Iraqis rather than sending more American troops.

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Ahhh “staying the course” . . .right into the iceberg.

Let's keep it going - that said this board requires more than one-liner responses - "zinger" debate. Please add details and / or links to replies. Most of us are not mind readers. Thanks - and this is not directed to any one poster - just trying to insure we maintain the high level of serious debate and civil discussion this board has displayed so far...

9 Jan. Associated Press - Bremer Plea on Troops Was Rejected.

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Defense Department officials acknowledged Monday that L. Paul Bremer 3d, the senior U.S. official in Iraq during the first year of the war, told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in May 2004 that a far larger number of U.S. troops was needed to fight the insurgency but his advice was rejected.

Larry Di Rita, a spokesman for Rumsfeld, said that Bremer made the recommendation in a memorandum and that it was the only time during his 13 months as head of the U.S. civilian occupation authority in Baghdad that he offered advice on troop levels.

Di Rita said that on many occasions Bremer "demurred when asked what the proper levels of forces were during the course of his tenure there," and this was appropriate because troop levels were not his direct responsibility.

Bremer said in an NBC News interview Sunday that his memo to Rumsfeld suggested half a million troops were needed - more than three times the number there at the time. Bremer was head of the Coalition Provisional Authority from May 2003, shortly after the fall of Baghdad, until June 2004, when Iraq's sovereignty was restored.

Di Rita said that after Bremer made his recommendation, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, General Richard Myers, consulted with senior military commanders to consider changes. They then told Rumsfeld that they preferred to stay at the existing level of 18 brigades, or about 145,000 troops, Di Rita said...

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Originally Posted by Merv Benson

The insurgency started well before the 2004 election and was going strong during the election. The war itself did not start until several months after the 2002 election.

It is possible that planners were misled by the weak response of the Islamic terrorist in Afghanistan, which is still something of a puzzle to me when you consider how strong their opposition was to the Soviet occupation.

Much of the insurgency in Iraq is just the Saddamites doing what they were doing before he was deposed. That they did not anticipate the Saddamites would continue to do their thing is a failure of the intelligence analyst. Perhaps that is why they are trying to distract attention with all their other leaks. It should be considered another failure of the CIA in the lead up to the war.

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If memory serves me correctly, everyone was more concerned with electing/re-electing their idiot into office at a critical time. Should anyone criticise or support the war plan they were instantly earmarked in the "us vs them"(or pinko vs warmongerer) mudslinging. Certain political entities used the debate to rally voters while others exploited the divisiveness; I fell for it too. The military was also so far stuck on its jominian/clausewitzian hubris that it did give a f&%$ either way. From hindsight, I cannot remember any logical debate during this year.

Apologies for my earlier bit of sarcasm, it was unnecessary.

I am very disturbed by the administrations failure to plan for the possibility of guerrilla conflict. It shows, in my mind, not a failure of intelligence, though there were plenty of those, but a failure of history. What I mean by that is that any student of resent military history could have told them that while the Iraqi army would stand a snowballs chance in Miami against US forces a guerrilla conflict would be different. Also any student of nationalism could tell them that few people appreciate outside interference in “their country”.

All of Mr. Bremer's comments were made in relation to his book tour. I think it is interesting that he claims, whether correct or incorrect, that military planners and the administration did not anticipate the insurgency, and that his call for more troops were ignored. Whether or not this is true or false, Mr. Bremer is responsible for disbanding the Iraqi Military, and establishing the de-Ba'athification parameters. Neither initiative was particularly well thought out, and contributed mightily to the growing insurgency. I also believe that both retired Marine Generals Zinni and Van Riper expressed concerns about the post-conflict planning, as well as Army General Shinseki.

National Review - An American in Baghdad.

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... Lopez: In the book you talk about the go-slow approach you took, and that the president encouraged you to take. You wanted to get yourself and everyone else you could back home as soon as possible, not move in as a long-term occupier — but while not rushing Iraqis, for whom this running-a-country-thing was all new. Was that a mistake? Why was it not possible to establish an interim Iraqi government immediately, as was done in Afghanistan?

Bremer: I certainly didn’t want to prolong the occupation a day longer than necessary. And I wanted to get a representative and responsible group of Iraqi leaders in place as quickly as possible. Some people thought that we should simply hand over right after Liberation to a small group of exiles we had been talking to during the war. But as I explain in my book, this group was clearly unrepresentative of Iraqi society. Of seven leaders, only one had lived and suffered directly in Iraq under Saddam. Sunnis were unrepresented and the group contained no women, no Christians and no Turkomens. I even gave the group time to broaden itself into a more representative organization which we would designate as the Iraqi government, but they were unable to do so. So instead, our Coalition experts worked for two months to come up with a more representative Iraqi government, which was appointed two months after I arrived. I don’t see how it could have been done any more quickly.

Lopez: You say we didn't see the "insurgency" coming? Is the insurgency our fault?

Bremer: No, the insurgency is the fault of the insurgents and the terrorism is the fault of the terrorists. But it is true that I felt we took quite a while to develop intelligence about the insurgency...

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Originally Posted by SWJED

National Review - An American in Baghdad.

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The insurgency is the fault of the insurgents? I was of the impression that for an insurgency to develop, grow, and become self-sustaining, that there were several conditions necessary, one of which was the presence of a grievance or grievances. Another is always the abuse of force which inflames a dormant grievance, regardless of whether real of perceived. If these are true, I would ask, who over promised and under-delievered on the re-establishment of basic services? Who dissolved the Iraqi military? Who failed to develop a program to give amnesty to former regime elements, or mechanism by which they had a way out other than joining the insurgency?

In the end, I hope Mr. Bremer's book receives the same treatment as Robert McNamara's In Retrospect.

Major,

I agree on the McNamara parallel. This all reads like a comic confession, "I confess, he did it" scene out of a Mel Brooks movie. Maybe Wolfowitz will spare us from offering yet another version.

Tom

In an interview with the Telegraph in London Bremer said some interesting things about Syria's contribution to violence in Iraq.

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria secretly incited Iraq's top Shia leader to declare holy war against US and British forces, according to Washington's former administrator in the country.

In his new book, My Year in Iraq, Paul Bremer said he heard the explosive intelligence in October 2003 as sectarian tensions soared across the country following the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The report came from an extremely senior source, the supreme leader of Iraq's majority Shia community, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

According to Mr Bremer, the news was passed to him by Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a senior Shia politician involved in negotiations with the ayatollah. The Syrian leader had apparently recalled the Shia-led uprising against the British in 1920 and urged the Shia to repeat history.

This suggest some outside forces were behind some aspects of the insurgency. The question about disbanding teh Army is raised from time to time, but the Iraqi Army pretty much disbanded itself before the war was over. It was a top heavy, corrupt organization when it did exist. It most effective action in the last 20 years was the genocide against the Kurds and Shia. Speculation about how it could have helped prevent the insurgency is still just speculation. There is little, to no, evidence it could have helped prevent the insurgency.

I think Bremer's biggest mistake was agreeing to stop the original clearing operation in Fallujah. That one act probably extended the war by a year.

I do not disagree with the assertion that outside forces such as Syrian or North African jihaadists have contributed to the insurgency in Iraq. I do however take exception with the fact that no one seems to want to address or concede the fact that the overwhelming majority of suicide bombers are Saudi Arabian. No one wants to address the fact that Saudi Arabia is run by the most fundamentalist muslim sect - Wahabbism - in the Middle East. The Saudis and Wahabbi Islam are the elephants in the room that everyone wants to ignore, not the Syrians.

A major part of the problem with disbanding the Iraqi army is that left thousands unemployed, which meant they had nothing better to do than join the insurgency. People who are employed have less time to plant bombs.

The problem with the "soldiers became unemployed, so they joined the insurgency" theory is that it relegates Iraqi insurgents to the level of violent teenagers - people who's antisocial tendencies would be curbed if only someone would show an interest in them and mentor them.

For one thing, there is no "insurgency." There are many rebellious tribes, terrorist cells, bandits and sectarian militias. Any of these people would happily wear Iraqi uniforms and continue to fight us and each other - only we'd be funding them and costing the central government credibility.

The great majority of the current insurgents are Sunni Muslims who seek a loosely defined goal of advancing the interests of their tribes and their religion while exacting revenge against the US and expelling its troops from their homelands. They are motivated by a complex brew of revenge, tribal loyalty, national pride, religious anger and various personal indignities and injuries afforded them by coalition forces. Employment in the Iraqi army would not eliminate these motivators and it would provide them with excellent intelligence, weaponry, training and the legal cover to move from place to place unhindered.

I suspect that given the ham handed way in which occupation and reconstruction were run, maintaining the standing Iraqi army as it existed in 2003 would merely have resulted in US forces facing a rebellion by that army rather than the current insurgency - violence would not be prevented.

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Originally Posted by Jones_RE

The problem with the "soldiers became unemployed, so they joined the insurgency" theory is that it relegates Iraqi insurgents to the level of violent teenagers - people who's antisocial tendencies would be curbed if only someone would show an interest in them and mentor them.

For one thing, there is no "insurgency." There are many rebellious tribes, terrorist cells, bandits and sectarian militias. Any of these people would happily wear Iraqi uniforms and continue to fight us and each other - only we'd be funding them and costing the central government credibility.

The great majority of the current insurgents are Sunni Muslims who seek a loosely defined goal of advancing the interests of their tribes and their religion while exacting revenge against the US and expelling its troops from their homelands. They are motivated by a complex brew of revenge, tribal loyalty, national pride, religious anger and various personal indignities and injuries afforded them by coalition forces. Employment in the Iraqi army would not eliminate these motivators and it would provide them with excellent intelligence, weaponry, training and the legal cover to move from place to place unhindered.

I suspect that given the ham handed way in which occupation and reconstruction were run, maintaining the standing Iraqi army as it existed in 2003 would merely have resulted in US forces facing a rebellion by that army rather than the current insurgency - violence would not be prevented.

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I respect all the opinions posted by individuals on this discussion board; however, must admit I could not disagree more with this assertion that there is no insurgency, and that the disbanding of the Iraqi military was a positive course of action. My personal experiences in Iraq, and subsequent studies do not support this assertion.

Apologies for my terminology. I should rather say that there is no insurgency - because there are many insurgencies. And I don't mean to be definite about the positive or negative impact of disbanding the Iraqi army - I merely mean to say that I feel this action by itself is not what got us here. That is, that the cause of the insurgency (to revert to common usage) is far greater, more robust and more complex than a mere surplus of unemployed soldiers.

I should state up front that I have no personal experience of warfare or of the Middle East - so to the extent anyone's experience informs them of a view contrary to mine I would certainly appreciate the opportunity to learn from it.

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Originally Posted by Merv Benson

I think Bremer's biggest mistake was agreeing to stop the original clearing operation in Fallujah.

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Fallujah was a mistake in-itself.

There could not have been a more perfect way to throw gasoline on the fire and alienate Sunnis than by forcing us to destroy one of their cities. There is evidence of Shias defending Fallujah; some with outside help from Iran and Syria(Syrian camps hosted by Hamas and Hezbollah-proxies of Iran)!

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Originally Posted by Jones_RE

Apologies for my terminology. I should rather say that there is no insurgency - because there are many insurgencies. And I don't mean to be definite about the positive or negative impact of disbanding the Iraqi army - I merely mean to say that I feel this action by itself is not what got us here. That is, that the cause of the insurgency (to revert to common usage) is far greater, more robust and more complex than a mere surplus of unemployed soldiers.

I should state up front that I have no personal experience of warfare or of the Middle East - so to the extent anyone's experience informs them of a view contrary to mine I would certainly appreciate the opportunity to learn from it.

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I could not AGREE more with the assertion that there are MANY insurgencies in Iraq. This is entirely consistent with my personal experience, and all that I have read.

I don’t mean to compare the insurgency with violent teenagers; rather I am trying to suggest that an unemployed army creates a ready pool for insurgents to recruit from. Some of those soldiers would have joined the insurgency no mater what and some would not no mater what but some only would if they had nothing better to do. Sometimes every little bit helps.

12 Jan. New York Times - A View From the Center of the Iraq Maelstrom.

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... "My Year in Iraq," an amalgam of spin and sincerity, is partly an explanation (or rationalization) of actions Mr. Bremer took as America's man in Baghdad, partly an effort to issue some "I told you so's" to administration colleagues, and partly an attempt to spread (or reassign) responsibility (or blame) by tracing just who in the White House, Pentagon and State Department signed off on or ordered critical decisions made during his tenure.

Mr. Bremer deals with some issues like prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in an extremely cursory fashion, while explicating others, like the debate over the timetable for sovereignty, in considerable detail, and he cavalierly dismisses the State Department's Future of Iraq Project, which critics say was sidelined because of tensions with the Pentagon, as not offering a practical plan for postwar Iraq.

While the book is studded with familiar administration sound bites about the importance of deposing Mr. Hussein, it paints a troubling portrait of the administration's handling of the occupation. It is a portrait that in many respects ratifies what critics of the war and postwar have long been saying: that there were not enough American troops to provide security and contain a spreading insurgency; that, as Mr. Bremer told Vice President Dick Cheney in the fall of 2003, the United States did not have a practical "military strategy for victory" in the postwar; and that, as he told Condoleezza Rice in May 2004, the United States had become "the worst of all things - an ineffective occupier." ...

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I think it's interesting to see the emphasis Ambassador Bremer places on different events in his narrative. It seems intuitive to me that his particular focus was on domestic Iraqi politics - and thus he might be less informed concerning other matters. To the extent that he didn't see, and wasn't responsible for, the whole picture it's inappropriate to criticize the entire war effort based on his experiences.

However, I think this shows something revealing about the nature of counterinsurgency warfare as practiced by the United States - we do not mirror our enemies efforts. An insurgent force proceeds with social/political, economic and military agendas (to some extent or another). US counterinsurgency efforts divide those responsibilities among many agencies and individuals - with apparently little coordination. Hence, we can pour billions of dollars and thousands of men into destroying a city like Ramadi or Fallujah but suddenly falter when it comes to establishing a local government or turning the water back on - the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing.

Of course, by this theory the various insurgent groups in Iraq (particularly Al Qaeda in Iraq) fail as well. They perform none of the humanitarian or political indoctrination functions that say, Hamas, undertakes. Hence, their level of support is more limited than it might be.

13 Jan. Washington Post - U.S. Studied Bremer's '04 Bid for More Troops.

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Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that he seriously considered a 2004 memo from L. Paul Bremer, then the senior U.S. official in Iraq, calling for tens of thousands more U.S. troops to quell the insurgency. But he said military commanders and service chiefs disagreed with Bremer.

Bremer's memo, dated May 18, 2004, urged Rumsfeld to dispatch as many as two additional divisions -- or about 30,000 troops -- to Iraq, to meet myriad demands, including fighting insurgents, border control and securing convoy routes. The request, disclosed in Bremer's new book on his year-long tenure in Iraq, reflected what he said was his fear that the United States was becoming "the worst of all things -- an ineffective occupier."

Rumsfeld, speaking yesterday at a Pentagon news briefing, recalled that he showed the Bremer memo to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff then, Gen. Richard B. Myers, saying: "This is a reasonable proposal from a reasonable person; let's look at it."

But after evaluating the proposal, the Joint Chiefs of Staff concurred with U.S. commanders responsible for Iraq that troop levels were adequate, said Gen. Peter Pace, who succeeded Myers as chairman of the Joint Chiefs and appeared with Rumsfeld at yesterday's briefing...

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