On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign
Occupation Plan for Iraq Faulted in Army History - Michael Gordon, New York Times
Army's History of After Hussein Faults Pentagon - Josh White, Washington Post... 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...
Download On Point II: Transition to the New CampaignA 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...
Order On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign
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.
Update on Studies to Follow
Contemporary Operations StudyTeam
Upcoming COST publications: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.
- Operation ENDURING FREEDOM from September 2001 through September 2005
- On Point III: Operation IRAQI FREEDOM from February 2005 through January 2007
Last edited by SWJED; 06-29-2008 at 01:13 PM.
Summer and Fall Reading...
Jill,Originally Posted by Sargent
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
With COL Tim Reese as head of the team, I am confident it will be. I was not pleased with some aspects of the first On Point. There was some political cheerleading going on up front that bothered me and the description of Op Support Hope was pablum. Overall I found the narrative very choppy.
These studies are hard to do and harder to get released. Everyone with a chihuahua thinks he has a dog in the fight. When we wrote Certain Victory, its release was delayed by 6 months because the "good ideas" just kept coming. That leaves a writer or a writing team challenged to work in such ideas when they were never part of the intended narrative.
It is good to note, they are getting around to OEF. "Bout time!
Tom
Surf's Up
720 pages, 103 mb. Been surfing several sites concerning CAC's new study. As it has just been posted and is such a large document I've found it interesting that there are so may definitive opinions on what the study says.
It seems assumption trumps reading and digesting...
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.
Hacksaw
Say hello to my 2 x 4
I've been downloading it all morning. 39% complete with 3 hours left.
Example is better than precept.
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.
From Doug Macgregor's interview
So the starts the scramble to be the man who saved Iraq?There is this myth that Petraeus invented something entirely new and changed everything. The truth is that our forces adapted fairly early at the lowest levels to new circumstances. This book makes that very clear, and I think that's a good thing, because our forces at lower levels are adaptive, much more than they get credit for being.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
I am Spartacus
Kirk Douglas (Taylor)
Hacksaw
Say hello to my 2 x 4
Spartacus??????
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