The New York Times has drawn our attention to the PowerPoint (the language of the DOD) presentation drawn up by the military prior to the invasion of Iraq:
WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 — When Gen. Tommy R. Franks and his top officers gathered in August 2002 to review an invasion plan for Iraq, it reflected a decidedly upbeat vision of what the country would look like four years after Saddam Hussein was ousted from power.
A broadly representative Iraqi government would be in place. The Iraqi Army would be working to keep the peace. And the United States would have as few as 5,000 troops in the country.
Military slides obtained by the National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act outline the command’s PowerPoint projection of the stable, pro-American and democratic Iraq that was to be.
The general optimism and some details of General Franks’s planning session have been disclosed in the copious postwar literature. But the slides from the once classified briefing provide a firsthand look at how far the violent reality of Iraq today has deviated from assumptions that once laid the basis for an exercise in pre-emptive war.
Click on the graphic above for a larger image. You can find the entire slide show here.
Notable in the assumptions which didn’t prove out are that “opposition groups†existed and would work with us, that the Iraqi military would continue to occupy garrisons, and that the Department of State (DoS) would have a provisional government in waiting at the time of the invasion.
Congressional investigations are beginning and will presumably be in the works for some time to come. What I would hope that investigations might uncover include why and how so many of these assumptions failed, either why they assumed that the Iraqi military would hold or how they failed to see that it wouldn’t, why State didn’t have a provisional government ready, and the role that political considerations had in forming the assumptions.
Ah, memories!
It’s strange to be reading those slides sitting here on my couch with my laptop.
Actually, we did have support from opposition groups, most notably the Kurds. We had initial support from Shia groups, but that started fading with the rise of al Sadr and our inability to protect Shias from AQI attacks.
Could it be that the level of support we had from any and all groups was never effectively gauged? Once it’s on the power point, it tends to be writ in stone. Also, I wonder how much reality was wished away based upon revised mission parameters coming from the top? After all, it’s not the military’s job to dictate the political parameters of the mission. Nor DOS’s. That’s what the civilian leadership gets elected or appointed and paid to do.
Note the title of the slide says “key PLANNING assumptions.” Any plan requires assumptions and this one was no different.
Since the slide does not specify what groups it’s impossible to tell. Certainly the Kurds could be counted on. If there’s any controversy in that bullet, it could relate to Iraqi exile groups who consistently failed to deliver on their promises of support.
Also, a high-level Pentagon brief like this would have been coordinated with other agencies – so some of those planning assumptions are based on assessments and information from other agencies.
Well, let’s see.
Primo, support from the Kurds is something of a low-value proposition if one is looking to keep the Iraqi state together c. 2002-2003. Certainly better than non-support, but not a key driver. Shia support – well there was limited Shia ‘gratitude’ – among urban Shia, it faded quickly than the timeline Andy suggests; my Iraqi Shia maid, a woman I knew from before the war and in my service for years, was already anti-US when the parachuting of the very unpopular Chalabi was being attempted. Sadr rose on the back of frustration and fundemental underlying dislike of the US, he did not create it.
As for the inputs of other US agencies, given what I saw with the CPA-Iraq, the American defence department wasn’t listening to anyone. Pity really, since they proved to be so profoundly incompetent, but there it is.
No, the assumptions of having a welcoming reception and a political environment where a Chalabi would succeed were profound misreads, and things old MENA hands like meself could see before hand, so no excuses there either.
Lounsbury,
Your points are well taken, however I believe the jist of the slide is geared more toward the actual operational portion of the campaign and its immediate aftermath. The slide title suggests this, but as with any executive level powerpoint slide divorced of the context provided by the actual briefing and/or notes pages, it’s hard to say for sure. For the operational portion of the campaign, however, the Kurds proved to be capable military allies in the north and Kurdish units with US SOF support and airpower were capable of pushing back Saddam’s forces in the north.