No End In Sight Review

No End in Sight Bush issued NSPD-24 (National Security Planning Directive #24) in January 2003. It created the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs (ORHA) to provide humanitarian assistance and to oversee reconstruction in Iraq. Lt. General Jay Garner headed it. ORHA was placed under the control of the Defense Department, which basically meant that Donald Rumsfeld controlled postwar Iraq. Before the 2003 Iraq invasion, Lawrence Di Rita—Rumsfeld’s main Pentagon press secretary— told a group of leaders that 80% of U.S. troops would be out of Iraq by August 2003. Rumsfeld also promised no long-term U.S. occupation of Iraq [keep in mind, the U.S. still has permanent bases housing large numbers of troops and weapons in Germany, Japan, and South Korea, but none of these countries are said to be “occupied” by America]. The White House did not plan for, anticipate or want the current situation in which the U.S. maintained invasion-level troop strength for five years afterwards. They seriously assumed that, after the fall of Saddam, peace, order and democracy would quickly and easily come to Iraq and most of the U.S. troops could come home. [I assume that the Second Gulf War was conceived as an easy way for America to create a puppet state in Iraq from which a few thousand American troops could be permanently stationed in bases to credibly threaten Syria and Iran, from which democracy could emanate to the rest of the Middle East, and from which cheap oil could flow preferentially to the U.S.] The Bush team also had to make the case for war palatable to the American people to gain popular support, which meant lowballing the duration of the occupation and the necessary number of troops. The politically moderate State Department under Colin Powell issued an exhaustive set of prewar reports pertaining to the postwar reconstruction of Iraq. The White House totally ignored them and went with their own plans. ORHA was formed only two months before the Iraq invasion. People who worked in ORHA described it as chaotic and lacking structure. The amount of time they were given to get organized and to plan for the Iraq reconstruction was totally insufficient. The widespread looting within Iraq immediately following the fall of Saddam cost the country up to $12 billion. Looting grew to unbelievable proportions. ORHA had given the White House a report in which it insisted that Iraqi government buildings in Baghdad be protected to prevent looting. In part this was because ORHA intended to occupy the buildings and to use them as logical headquarters for postwar reconstruction and administration. The White House ignored this, and all of the buildings were left unguarded except the Oil Ministry building. The government offices were consequently totally stripped of all furniture, telephones, computers, lights, bathroom fixtures, and even wiring by looters. Many important records were also destroyed or stolen. After the war ended, ORHA arrived in Baghdad and found the buildings almost impossible to work in due to the looting. Immediately after the fall of Saddam, there was very little fighting throughout Iraq and most of the American troops were totally idle. ORHA and lower-level generals pleaded with Bush and Rumsfeld to deploy the troops to act as a police force to stop the looting and lawlessness, but their requests were ignored. There were many instances in which American units would stand by and watch as Iraqi criminals looted buildings. The soldiers could not intervene unless ordered to do so. Many museums in Baghdad were completely looted, including the esteemed National Museum of Iraq. Some of the oldest human artifacts known to man were stolen, along with artwork that

formed the core of Iraq’s cultural heritage. Museum curators begged American units to protect their sites, but they were denied. Iraqi military commanders approached U.S. commanders and offered the services of Iraqi army units to restore order and to seal the borders. They were ignored. The lawlessness that prevailed in the month after the fall of Saddam provided an opportunity for radical groups to seize power. It was during this time that the Shi’ite Madhi Army under Muqtada al-Sadr took power in Baghdad’s Sadr City and in much of southern Iraq. Al-Sadr’s forces provided security and services to beleaguered Iraqis within the group’s zones of control. Other Shi’ite and Sunni groups arose elsewhere to perform the same function. In effect, the month of chaos that followed the end of Saddam’s regime allowed the insurgents to gain a toehold in Iraq. The failure of the U.S. military forces to provide security during this critical time was one of the worst mistakes of the war. General Eric Shinseki—who had previous command experience over U.S. occupation forces in Bosnia—had told Congress before the Iraq war that securing Iraq would require “several hundred thousand troops.” Rumsfeld—who was a strong advocate of transforming the military into a leaner, more technology-driven force and who believed American forces would not need to occupy Iraq—immediately fired back in official news conferences. 263,000 American and coalition forces took part in the Iraq invasion, including support troops in theater. As a consequence of insufficient U.S. troop numbers, known Iraqi army weapons storage depots could not be secured by American troops as ORHA had recommended. The sites were looted, and enormous amounts of guns, ammunition and explosives were stolen. These weapons went directly into the hands of the insurgency, and the explosives were fashioned into IED’s. On May 11th, 2003, Jay Garner—who had refused Bush administration requests to institute deBaathification of the Iraqi government—was replaced by the less experienced Paul Bremer (Garner had been a commander during the Gulf War and had led U.S. assistance efforts in northern Iraq under Operation Provide Comfort while Bremer had no direct Mideast experience), and ORHA was also replaced with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Bremer’s first act (CPA Order #1) was to kick all Baathists out of the government. Bremer placed Ahmad Chalabi—head of the INC and a Shi’ite—in charge of de-Baathification. Chalabi abused his power to ban political rivals and personal enemies from government. Bremer excluded Iraqi leaders from the new government in the early phases of the occupation, which was a huge mistake. Bremer’s CPA Order #2 disbanded the Iraqi army and put hundreds of thousands of young men with military training out onto the streets without any job prospects. Many ended up joining the insurgency. Bremer, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz together decided to take this step without consulting with any U.S. military commanders in Iraq or with any mainstream advisors. Even high-ranking U.S. generals in Iraq never heard of CPA Order #2 until they watched it being broadcast over CNN. Worst of all, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Rich Armitage were not told of the decision and also learned about it from watching CNN. The State Department was tasked with a huge portion of the Iraq reconstruction. Some of the CPA’s staff were straight out of their undergraduate studies. Some had no experience with performing the tasks (like managing Iraq’s road system) that they were assigned. Reconstruction projects were assigned to American companies when using Iraqi companies would have been much cheaper and faster and would have provided the Iraqis with jobs. During the remainder of 2003, the coalition’s main focus was to find Iraq’s WMD’s and to destroy the insurgency without calling media attention to the fact that an insurgency existed. U.S.

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and British forces frequently did mass arrests of military-aged men throughout Iraq for questioning. This had the effect of further angering the Iraqi men and depriving their families of the breadwinner. President Bush did not read the 2004 NIC report on the growing insurgency [O’Neill also talks about how Bush infrequently read official reports, sometimes not even looking at the Executive Summaries]. The Shi’ite insurgency primarily consists of two large groups: The first is the Maadi Army under Muqtada al-Sadr and the second is the Badr Organization (Badr Brigades) under Hadi al-Amiri and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. An underreported major problem in postwar Iraq is widespread kidnappings. Local criminals will often kidnap people (including children) and then demand ransom from the families. This is usually a phenomenon unconnected from political or sectarian issues. While the world has focused on the sectarian violence in Iraq, much of the violence in the country simply results from criminals taking advantage of a lawless situation. George W. Bush turned over the war planning and execution to his top advisors. [Confirms O’Neill’s close observations, the widely reported claim that Bush liked to “delegate” responsibility among his staff, and my own observations of Bush during public events in which he doesn’t appear intelligent enough to handle extremely complex tasks.] It is estimated that the total American cost of the Iraq War will amount to at least $1.86 trillion.

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