On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign
Occupation Plan for Iraq Faulted in Army History - Michael Gordon, New York Times
Quote:
... The story of the American occupation of Iraq has been the subject of numerous books, studies and memoirs. But now the Army has waded into the highly charged debate with its own nearly 700-page account: “
On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign.”
The unclassified study, the second volume in a continuing history of the Iraq conflict, is as noteworthy for who prepared it as for what it says. In essence, the study is an attempt by the Army to tell the story of one of the most contentious periods in its history to military experts - and to itself.
It adds to a growing body of literature about the problems the United States encountered in Iraq, not all of which has been embraced by Army leaders.
Lt. Col. Paul Yingling of the Army ignited a debate when he wrote a
magazine article that criticized American generals for failing to prepare a coherent plan to stabilize postwar Iraq.
In 2005, the RAND Corporation
submitted a report to the Army, called “Rebuilding Iraq,” that identified problems with virtually every government agency that played a role in planning the postwar phase. After a long delay, the report is scheduled to be made public on Monday.
But the “On Point” report carries the imprimatur of the Army’s
Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth. The study is based on 200 interviews conducted by military historians and includes long quotations from active or recently retired officers...
Army's History of After Hussein Faults Pentagon - Josh White, Washington Post
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A new Army history of the service's performance in Iraq immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein faults military and civilian leaders for their planning for the war's aftermath, and it suggests that the Pentagon's current way of using troops is breaking the Army National Guard and Army Reserve.
The study, "
On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign," is an unclassified and unhindered look at US Army operations in Iraq from May 2003 to January 2005. That critical era of the war has drawn widespread criticism because of a failure to anticipate the rise of an Iraqi insurgency and because policymakers provided too few US troops and no strategy to maintain order after Iraq's decades-old regime was overthrown.
Donald P. Wright and Col. Timothy R. Reese, who authored the report along with the Army's
Contemporary Operations Study Team, conclude that US commanders and civilian leaders were too focused on only the military victory and lacked a realistic vision of what Iraq would look like following that triumph...
Download On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign
Order On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign
Update on Studies to Follow
Contemporary Operations StudyTeam
Quote:
The Contemporary Operations Study Team of the Combat Studies Institute conducts original research and publishes monographs that examine the US Army’s current campaigns in the Global War on Terrorism. The team conducts a variety of oral interviews and collects an extensive range of primary documents in order to provide the Army historical accounts of these campaigns at the operational and tactical levels of war.
Upcoming COST publications:
- Operation ENDURING FREEDOM from September 2001 through September 2005
- On Point III: Operation IRAQI FREEDOM from February 2005 through January 2007
Summer and Fall Reading...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Sargent
Well that ought to make for some fun summer reading!
Just from the brief description from the end of the second article, the study findings seem to support the problems encountered by Mattis on his second deployment, where he kept asking about what his objectives were supposed to be, what they wanted him to do.
I know a bunch of the historians out at Leavenworth, and they are a pretty strong group, so I'm expecting this first "official" cut on the history to be pretty good.
Jill,
103 MB and 720 pages. I was thinking I'd give it a quick read this morning prior to actually down-loading the document...
Holy moly. I guess I'll go to Kinkos for a hard copy.
But as you said and I'll echo, this should be an honest assessment and be about as on point as any "recent history" can possbily be. We'll see.
Dave
Not sure on assumption regarding reading
A routine aspect of releasing a document such as On Point II, is the pre-release to folks who are likely to opine on the document. Given that first to "print" is important its often sent early, with caveat, that they can't publish critiques until official release. Its better that way than to have them guess what is written. I "assume" that happened in this case, but cannot confirm.
Jim Lehrer News Hour Report
the Jim Lehrer News Hour on PBS did a short story on the study last night and interview one of the book's authors Dr Wright along with Gen McCaffrey and Doug Macgreggor. Here is the trasncript to the show.
I downloaded it this weekend and read the intro, conclusion, and chapter 3 on the rise of the insurgency.
