By Patricia H. Kushlis
You wouldn’t know it from The New York Times or, heaven forbid, The Wall Street Journal, but Jonathan Landay and John Walcott of the McClatchy news service’s Washington Bureau did us a favor Thursday by reporting some of the highlights of a recently-released major National Defense University (NDU) report. This 60 page document “Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath” strongly questions W’s projections of US victory in Iraq and blames the administration for a myriad of colossal errors.
Here’s the opening line: “Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle.”
What still gives this report heft – I note it was written November 2007 but only released in April 2008 - is foremost its high level Pentagon connections. First, Joseph Collins, a former senior Pentagon official, was the author. Second, it was based, in part, on interviews “with other former senior and defense and intelligence officials who played roles in prewar preparations.” And third, it was published by NDU’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research center. Why the report was held six months before it was released to the public, however, is a question that I hope someone in the know will, at some future point, answer.
Here are some of the major findings:
• The US has suffered serious political costs, with its standing in the world seriously diminished.
• The US now spends over $10 billion per month on Iraq, according to the Congressional Research Service, and all comes from deficit spending.
• “No one as yet has calculated the costs of long-term veterans’ benefits or the total impact on service personnel and material.” Note: Collins’ report was written before a RAND study was released last week that indicates over 300,000 returned US military personnel suffer from PTSD or depression and 50% of them are not being treated.
• Operations in Iraq have diverted “manpower, materiel and the attention of decision-makers” from “all other efforts in the war on terror” and severely strained the US armed forces.
• Our efforts in Iraq “were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at least temporarily an incubator for terrorism and have embolden Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East.”
• “Despite impressive progress in security, the outcome of the war is in doubt.” “Strong majorities of both Iraqis and Americans favor some sort of U.S. withdrawal. Intelligence analysts, however, remind us that the only thing worse than an Iraq with an American army may be an Iraq after a rapid withdrawal of that army.”
• Partially because Rumsfeld, who bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff to become “the direct supervisor of the combatant commanders,” the US was unprepared to fight “War B," e.g. the battle against insurgents and sectarian violence that began in mid-2003.
• This problem was compounded by the Bush administration’s top aides’ reliance upon false assumptions based on faulty information from Iraqi exiles that the Iraqis would be grateful for liberation from Saddam’s dictatorship.
• The report singles out the Bush administration’s national security apparatus (read W, Condi and Stephen Hadley in particular), as exhibiting “imperious attitudes – exerting power and pressure where diplomacy and bargaining might have had a better effect” not to mention their incompetence in managing interagency relations.
There’s much more of significance in this 60 page report than found in Landay and Walcott’s news article. So much so that I suggest taking the time to read it.
I don’t agree with Collins’ too easy absolution of the administration for misreading Saddam Hussein’s intentions and capabilities and Congress for playing Mary’s little lamb, but the Pentagon jargon is minimal, Collins’ insights into what happened once the invasion was launched and his recommendations designed to save future American administrations from blundering into a similar Vietnam or worse size quagmire in the future are well worth the hour or so needed to read them.