| |
Rummy's flawed war
plan
By Jason Leopold
Last
October, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered
the military's regional commanders to rewrite all of
their war plans to capitalize on precision weapons,
better intelligence and speedier deployment in the event
the United States decided to invade Iraq. That war plan,
which Rumsfeld helped shape, has now failed and has led
to deep divisions between military commanders and the
defense secretary, according to news reports.
Despite Rumsfeld's recent denials that he did
not override requests by military brass to deploy more
ground troops in Iraq, he told the New York Times last
year that the cornerstone of the war plan against Iraq
was to use fewer ground troops, a move that caused
consternation among some in the military who said
concern for the troops requires overwhelming numerical
superiority to assure victory, the Times reported in its
October 13, 2002, edition.
These officers said
they viewed Rumsfeld's approach as injecting too much
risk into war planning and have said it could result in
US casualties that might have been prevented by amassing
larger forces.
But Rumsfeld refused to listen to
his military commanders, Pentagon officials told the
Washington Post on Saturday.
Rumsfeld said last
year that his plan would allow "the military to begin
combat operations on less notice and with far fewer
troops than thought possible - or thought wise - before
the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks", the Times
reported.
"Looking at what was overwhelming
force a decade or two decades ago, today you can have
overwhelming force, conceivably, with lesser numbers
because the lethality is equal to or greater than
before," Rumsfeld told the Times.
The speedier
use of smaller and more agile forces also could provide
the US president with time to order an offensive against
Iraq that could be carried out this winter, the optimal
season for combat in the desert, which is exactly what
President George W Bush did.
The new approach
for how the United States might go to war, Rumsfeld said
last year, reflects an assessment of the need after
September 11 to refresh war plans continuously and to
respond faster to threats from terrorists and nations
possessing biological, chemical or nuclear weapons,
according to the Times.
Rumsfeld first laid the
groundwork for a US-led invasion of Iraq shortly after
the September 11 attacks. Like his well-known
"Rumsfeld's rules",
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2001/rumsfeldsrules.pdf
a collection of wisdom he has compiled over three
decades on how to succeed in Washington, Rumsfeld's
checklist used the same methodical approach to
determining when US military force should be used in the
event of war against Iraq.
Rumsfeld kept the
checklist tucked away in his desk drawer at the
Pentagon. Since March last year, when it became clear
that the Bush administration was leaning toward using
military force to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein's regime, Rumsfeld added what he said were
important elements to the checklist to ensure that the
United States would be prepared for a full-scale war.
But Rumsfeld and the Bush administration never lived up
to the promises laid out in the checklist when the US
military bombed Baghdad. For example:
Casualties. Rumsfeld says the public "should
not be allowed to believe an engagement could be
executed ... with few casualties". Yet the president and
Rumsfeld didn't prepare Americans for major casualties.
Bush warned in an October 7 speech in Cincinnati that
"military action could be difficult" and that there is
no "easy or risk-free course of action".
Risks. Rumsfeld warns that the risks of
taking action "must be carefully considered" along with
the dangers of doing nothing. The administration has
repeatedly made the case against inaction - the
possibility that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons and
strike the United States. But it has not been equally
candid about the dangers of action.
Honesty. Rumsfeld urges US leadership to be
"brutally honest with itself, Congress, the public and
coalition partners". Yet the administration has not
produced compelling evidence to support its claims that
Saddam is linked to al-Qaeda terrorists, is on the verge
of acquiring nuclear weapons or intends to strike the
United States. To the contrary, the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) has played down Iraq's ties to al-Qaeda and
a possible first strike.
Rumsfeld said too many
of the military plans on the shelves of the regional
war-fighting commanders were freighted with outdated
assumptions and military requirements, which have
changed with the advent of new weapons and doctrines.
It has been a mistake, he said, to measure the
quantity of forces required for a mission and "fail to
look at lethality, where you end up with
precision-guided munitions, which can give you 10 times
the lethality that a dumb weapon might, as an example",
according to the Times report.
Through a
combination of pre-deployments, faster cargo ships and a
larger fleet of transport aircraft, the military would
be able to deliver "fewer troops but in a faster time
that would allow you to have concentrated power that
would have the same effect as waiting longer with what a
bigger force might have", Rumsfeld said.
Critics
in the military said last year that there were several
reasons to deploy a force of overwhelming numbers before
starting any offensive with Iraq. Large numbers would
illustrate US resolve and could intimidate Iraqi forces
into laying down their arms or even turning against
Saddam's government.
Large numbers in the region
also would be required should the initial offensive go
badly. Also, once victory was at hand, it might require
an even larger force to pacify Iraq and search for
weapons of mass destruction than it took to topple
Saddam.
According to Defense Department sources,
Rumsfeld at first insisted that vast air superiority and
a degraded Iraqi military would enable 75,000 US troops
to win the war. General Tommy Franks, the theater
commander-in-chief, persuaded Rumsfeld to send 250,000
(augmented by 45,000 British). However, the US Army
would have preferred a much deeper force, leading to
anxiety inside the Pentagon in the first week of war,
conservative columnist Bob Novak reported last week.
While army officers would have preferred a
larger commitment, even what was finally approved for
Operation Iraqi Freedom was reduced when the 4th
Infantry Division was denied Turkey as a base to invade
northern Iraq. The Defense and State departments are
pointing fingers at each other now. Secretary of State
Colin Powell is criticized for not flying to Ankara to
convince the Turkish government. The Pentagon is
criticized for not immediately dispatching the division
via the Red Sea, Novak reported.
To the critics
who said last year that Rumsfeld was accepting too much
risk in US war planning, Rumsfeld said he had ordered
rigorous reviews and was satisfied. "We are prepared for
the worst case," he told the Times.
Jason
Leopold is the former Los Angeles bureau chief of
Dow Jones Newswires. He is currently finishing a book on
California's energy crisis.
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
