http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/30/in...st/30PLAN.html

Iraqi Leaders Say U.S. Was Warned of Disorder After Hussein, but Little Was
Done
By JOEL BRINKLEY and ERIC SCHMITT

Published: November 30, 2003


BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 29 - In the months before the Iraq invasion, Iraqi exile
leaders trooped through the White House, the Pentagon and the State
Department carrying a message about the future of their homeland: without a
strong plan for managing Iraq after toppling Saddam Hussein, widespread
looting and violence would erupt.

"On many occasions, I told the Americans that from the very moment the
regime fell, if an alternative government was not ready there would be a
power vacuum and there would be chaos and looting," said Massoud Barzani,
leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and a longtime ally of the United
States. "Given our history, it is very obvious this would occur."

Similar warnings came from international relief experts and from within the
United States government. In 1999 the same military command that was
preparing to attack Iraq conducted a detailed war game that found that
toppling Mr. Hussein risked creating a major security void, said Gen.
Anthony C. Zinni, who headed the command.

But as Pentagon officials hurriedly prepared for war last winter, they
envisioned Iraq after the fall of Mr. Hussein's government as far more
manageable.

That miscalculation and the low priority given to planning for the aftermath
of Mr. Hussein's fall have taken on new significance with the recent wave of
deadly attacks and the Bush administration's abrupt decision this month to
accelerate its timetable for transferring control to the kind of Iraqi
authority that leading exiles were calling for a year ago.

The exiles were among the most energetic cheerleaders for the war, and
critics of the Bush administration have accused some of them of skewing the
facts in the process. But more than a dozen of the leaders who have returned
to Iraq said in interviews here that they had also warned about the chaos
that could follow.

The fact that the administration embraced their encouragement to go to war
but apparently discounted their warnings is an insight into the Pentagon's
prewar planning.

"I told them, `Let there not be a political vacuum,' " said Kanan Makiya, an
Iraqi author and college professor who said he had consulted with several
senior administration officials and met twice with President Bush.

In many ways the war plan drove the postwar plan, senior military officials
said. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the invasion force
be kept as small as possible, prompting his commanders to build an attack
plan based on speed and surprise. Any recommendations for sending more
troops to maintain order afterward would probably have collided with the war
plan, the officials said.

Besides, the plan for after the Iraqi government fell assumed that Iraqi
troops and police officers would stay on the job - an assumption that proved
wrong. "The political leadership bought its own spin," said one senior
Defense Department official involved in the planning, in part because it
"made selling the war easier."

Senior administration officials acknowledged that they had considered these
warnings before the war, but defended their judgments.

"The United States government did extensive, detailed contingency planning
for post-Saddam Iraq," said Sean McCormack, a spokesman for the National
Security Council.

The Pentagon developed plans to cope with catastrophes that did not occur,
like widespread oil field fires and large-scale refugee flows.

The shortcomings in the planning became immediately apparent to some exile
leaders after Baghdad fell. Rend Rahim Francke, who on Nov. 23 was appointed
Iraq's ambassador to Washington, said: "When people started looting and the
Americans just watched, what it did was legitimize lawlessness. `It's O.K.
No problem.' And we are still suffering from it now."

Iyad Alawi, leader of the Iraqi National Accord exile group, said, "I am not
sure there was any strategy."

In fact, the Army's Third Infantry Division said in an after-action report
that when it arrived in Baghdad it had no instructions, no mission
statement.

"Despite the virtual certainty that the military would accomplish the regime
change, there was no plan for oversight and reconstruction, even after the
division arrived in Baghdad," the report said.

For years the passion of Iraqi exile leaders was not just freeing Iraq from
Mr. Hussein but also figuring out what would become of Iraq after he was
gone.

They wrote papers and held conferences. Most of them had not visited Baghdad
for decades, and they carried on their work from the United States, Britain
or Kurdish-controlled areas of Iraq.

Starting in the fall of 2002 they received calls to meet with officials in
the State Department, the Defense Department, the Central Intelligence
Agency and the White House, including Mr. Bush.

They hardly spoke with a unified voice, or presented a single clear strategy
for how to avoid the current conditions in Iraq. Some of them were
self-interested, promoting a war that could bring them new power. Critics of
the Bush administration have pointed to Ahmad Chalabi, the leader of the
Iraqi National Congress, as an exile who fed the officials exaggerated
information to encourage the invasion.

But Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, said in an
interview that "while there's been a caricature of D.O.D. talking to
Chalabi, the fact is we talked to lots of Iraqis."

The common warnings of unrest from the exile leaders were partly drawn from
Iraq's history.

Some made the point, for example, that looting had accompanied other
leadership crises in Iraq. After the Persian Gulf war of 1991, looting was
rampant in "liberated" areas, Iraqi officials said. "The pillaging and
looting was unbelievable," said Barham Salih, premier of the southeastern
part of the Kurdish-controlled region of Iraq.

The exile leaders were hardly a lone voice. Leaders of aid groups said they
also warned about a lack of security in Iraq after the fall of the
government. Kenneth H. Bacon, president of Refugees International and a
former Pentagon spokesman, said, "It should have been expected."

In fact, it had been. The 1999 war-game exercise, which envisioned an
American-led military overthrow of Mr. Hussein, "surfaced a lot of
problems," said General Zinni, the former chief of the United States Central
Command. But none perhaps as serious, he said, as the security void that
would follow the collapse of Mr. Hussein's rule in Baghdad.

Some of the exiles said they told American officials that the void would be
partly filled by the Iraqi police officers and elements of the Iraqi Army,
which they said would remain in place, but only if an Iraqi-led provisional
government was appointed. "The people would see that another government had
been established, and they would have had confidence to stay in their jobs,"
said Mr. Barzani, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council.

The American-led occupation authority appointed the Iraqi Governing Council
instead, but United States officials have said that one reason it has not
been more effective is discord among representatives of various factions of
Iraqi society.

But to Iraqis, one reason for the troubled occupation is discord within the
United States government. "This country fell victim to the intense struggle
within the U.S. government over Iraq policy," Mr. Makiya said.

Last fall, experts from the State, Defense and Treasury Departments and
other agencies began writing the outlines of plans for dealing with
potential civilian crises in postwar Iraq, establishing a new government and
other issues. But, officials said, the White House failed to resolve a feud
between the State Department and the Pentagon over which department would
oversee the mission, a fight that was settled only in January when Mr. Bush
chose the Pentagon.

One issue in the feud was what kind of provisional government would be
established. The Pentagon favored an authority led by Iraqi exiles, but the
State Department was skeptical that exiles like Mr. Chalabi, who had not
lived in Iraq in decades, could lead effectively.

The planning that did occur for Iraq after the Hussein government fell
relied on several pivotal assumptions that turned out to be wrong, including
the expectation that parts of the Iraqi Army and police force would remain
intact. Mr. Feith, the Pentagon under secretary, said the assumptions about
the police were based partly on a C.I.A. assessment that predicted that the
force would "have respect even after the regime went away." The police never
showed up.

Within the military, planning for the peace was a low priority. An early
team assigned to that mission, Joint Task Force 4, was an understaffed
orphan among the war-plotting teams churning out battle plans, military
aides said.

In the end, administration officials appeared to have formed their views by
picking and choosing from the advice offered. Mr. Makiya cautioned about the
political vacuum, but also told Mr. Bush that American troops entering
Baghdad would be greeted with "sweets and flowers."

In a speech just days before the war began, Vice President Dick Cheney said
American troops would "be greeted as liberators."

The dangers of the political vacuum were real, Mr. Makiya said. As for the
sweets and flowers message, he now says, "I admit I was wrong."

__________________________________________
Gee, and look at all those RAO bugeaters last March who repeated here FOX's
propaganda that we'd be greeted throughout Iraq as "liberators" and Iraqis
would be "throwing flowers" at us. Unfortunately, the only "flowers" that
have been thrown at us have been armed with explosives.

On Sun, 30 Nov 2003 09:43:08 GMT, "Sandman"
wrote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/30/in...st/30PLAN.html

Iraqi Leaders Say U.S. Was Warned of Disorder After Hussein, but Little Was
Done
By JOEL BRINKLEY and ERIC SCHMITT

It's interesting too because the problem in Vietnam of course was not
installing a sympethetic regime. In fact a sympathetic regime was
there all along. The problem was fighting the insurgency against it.

--

Jacob Kramer