Iraq War: Recent articles

Retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, who was opposed to the Iraq War, gave an important speech recently listing 10 mistakes of the Iraq War:

Gen. Anthony Zinni, USMC (Ret.) Remarks at CDI Board of Directors Dinner, May 12, 2004

Some examples:

The third mistake, I think was one we repeated from Vietnam, we had to create a false rationale for going in to get public support.  The books were cooked, in my mind.  The intelligence was not there.  I testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee one month before the war, and Senator Lugar asked me: "General Zinni, do you feel the threat from Saddam Hussein is imminent?"  I said: "No, not at all.  It was not an imminent threat.  Not even close.  Not grave, gathering, imminent, serious, severe, mildly upsetting, none of those."

 

...  But the rationale that we faced an imminent threat, or a serious threat, was ridiculous.  Now, wherever history lays that, whether the intelligence was flawed or it was exaggerated, remains to be seen.  I have my own opinions.

 

The sixth mistake, and maybe the biggest one, was propping up and trusting the exiles, the infamous "Gucci Guerillas" from London [like Ahmed Chalabi - BM]. We bought into their intelligence reports.  To the credit of the CIA, they didn't buy into it, so I guess the Defense Department created its own boutique intelligence agency to vet them.  And we ended up with a group that fed us bad information.  That led us to believe that we would be welcomed with flowers in the streets; that led us to believe that this would be a cakewalk.

 

When I testified before Congress in 1998, after a grilling from Senator McCain and all those wonderful senators supported the Iraqi Liberation Act, and I told them that these guys are not credible and they are going to lead us into something they we will regret.  At that time, they were pushing a plan that Central Command would supply air support and special forces, and we would put it into Iraq, and they would pied piper their way up to Baghdad and the whole place would fall apart.  This plan was created by two senate staffers and a retired General. I happened to be the commander of central command, nobody bothered to ask me about how my troops would be used.  And they were a little bit upset about me being upset about this.  These exiles did not have credibility inside the country or in the region.  Not only did they not have credibility, it was clear that the information they were providing us many times was not correct and accurate. We believed in them.  We also brought them in with us and deemed them into the governing council and the reception by Iraqis has been, to say the least, has not been great.

Link via Mary at The Left Coaster, who highlights some of Zinni's comments referring to lessons that many military officers drew from the book Dereliction of Duty by H.R. McMaster.

Juan Cole, an authority on Shi'a Islam, isn't optimistic about the way things are going.  A Shiite International? 05/22/04.

I said the other day I thought Bush was pushing Europe to the left with his policies. I think he is at the same time pushing the Shiite world to the radical Right, and I fear my grandchildren will still be reaping the whirlwind that George W. Bush is sowing in the city of Imam Husain. I concluded in early April that Bush had lost Iraq. He has by now lost the entire Muslim world.

A couple good pieces on "Gucci guerrilla" Ahmed Chalabi:

Chalabi keeps network, could thwart U.S. goals despite fall from grace San Francisco Chronicle 05/21/04

But Chalabi's days in power may not be over. During the past year, he has amassed a large web of influence and control that stretches from the oil industry to the banking system to the purges of former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.

Analysts say that unless the Bush administration moves to dismantle his empire, Chalabi will continue controlling much of Iraq's politics from behind the scenes, and he could seriously disrupt American plans for turning over nominal sovereignty to a new Iraqi government on June 30.

Chalabi adviser accused of being paid spy for Iran / Party members also linked with kidnapping  San Francisco Chronicle 05/21/04

In interviews Friday, INC members, senior officers of the Iraqi police force and U.S. officials outlined three distinct investigations into the INC, which in addition to Defense Department funding received $33 million from the State Department over the past four years.

The inquiries are focusing on allegations of corruption, kidnapping and robbery, and on a U.S. suspicion that one of Chalabi's closest advisers is a paid agent of the Iranian intelligence service, according to U.S., INC and Iraqi police officials. Aras Habib, who has a long working relationship with the Defense Intelligence Agency, is now a fugitive.

Business Week in the 05/31/04 edition takes a look at the soldier-for-hire business, which the mutilation of corpses by insurgents in Fallujah and the Abu Ghuraib torture scandal have finally brought under more public and Congressional scrutiny: The Other U.S. Military.

The article reports: the inspector general of the US occupation authority (CPA) is auditing five "security contractors" for compliance with US laws and ethics rules: Fluor, Parsons, Washington Group International, Perini, and Halliburton subsidieary KBR; the industry is promoting a self-regulation scheme of the type dear to the hearts of the crony capitalism favored by the Bush dynasty; according to Rummy himself, there are around 20,000 soldier-for-hire (BW calls them "private security workers"), making them a larger component of the "coalition" than the British army; major defense contractors like Northrop Grumman are buying up soldier-for-hire businesses; the federal General Accounting Office found in 2003 that the Defense Department has no department-wide policies "on the use of contractors to support deployed forces"; and, Congress is at least making noises about cracking down on what BW calls this "Wild West of a business."

The end of the Cold War and Pentagon efforts to increase efficiency, speed the delivery of services, and free troops for purely military missions have triggered a boom in the outsourcing of work to private contractors. Indeed, with the strength of America's armed forces down 29%, to 1.5 million, since 1991, contractors have become a permanent part of the military machine, doing everything from providing food services to guarding Iraq Administrator L. Paul Bremer.

I don't buy this idea that the soldiers-for-hire are used for efficiency purposes, keeping in mind that efficiency in business is defined as the amount of output per dollar labor input.  How is it more efficient to be hiring loose-cannon private soldiers at prices per person well into the six figures per year than expanding the US Special Forces if there is more of a need than the Army can currently fill?  The advantage of the soldiers-for-hire is not "efficiency," it's secrecy and lack of accountability and therefore the ability to operate outside the law.

Like many businesses that have to staff up rapidly, some security contractors have cut corners in the rush to expand. On the ground in Iraq, contractors appear to have operated with little or no supervision. Mercenaries are not choirboys, but some outfits have signed up hired guns trained by repressive regimes. And revelations that civilians are performing sensitive tasks such as interrogation have jolted Congress and the public. "This outsourcing thing has gone crazy," says Gary D. Solis, a former Marine Corps judge advocate and now adjunct law professor at Georgetown University. "You have a lot of people with heavy weaponry answerable to no one." ...

"Why the hell were contractors there [at Abu Ghuraib] in the first place?" asks John D. Hutson, a former Rear Admiral and Navy judge advocate general who is now dean of the Franklin Pierce Law Center. "I have a problem with people carrying weapons in an offensive way. And I have a serious problem with people in sensitive positions, like interrogators."