One of the 'liberated.'of Southern Iraq.
Rumsfeld's strategy under fire
Mar 25 11:44
KRT
Five days into the war, the optimistic assumptions of the Pentagon's
civilian war planners have yet to be realised.
The risks of the campaign are becoming increasingly apparent and some
current and retired military officials are warning there may be a mismatch
between Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld's strategy and the force he's
sent to carry it out.
The outcome of the war isn't in doubt: Iraq's forces are no match for
America and its allies.
But, so far, defeating them is proving to be harder, and it could prove to
be longer and costlier in American and Iraqi lives than the architects of
the American war plan expected.
And if weather, Iraqi resistance, chemical weapons or anything else turned
things suddenly and unexpectedly sour, the backup force, the Army's 4th
Infantry Division, is still in Texas with its equipment sailing around the
Arabian peninsula.
Despite the aerial pounding they've taken, it's not clear that Saddam
Hussein, his lieutenants or their praetorian guard are either shocked or
awed. Instead of capitulating, some regular Iraqi army units are harassing
American supply lines.
Contrary to American hopes - and some officials' expectations - no top
commander of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard has capitulated. Even some
ordinary Iraqis are greeting advancing American and British forces as
invaders, not as liberators.
"This is the ground war that was not going to happen in (Rumsfeld's) plan,"
said a Pentagon official. Because the Pentagon didn't commit overwhelming
force, "now we have three divisions strung out over 300-plus miles and the
follow-on division, our reserve, is probably three weeks away from landing."
Asked today about concerns that the coalition force isn't big enough,
Defence Department spokesperson Victoria Clarke replied: "... most people
with real information are saying we have the right mix of forces. We also
have a plan that allows it to adapt and to scale up and down as needed."
Knowledgeable defence and administration officials say Rumsfeld and his
civilian aides at first wanted to commit no more than 60,000 American
troops to the war on the assumption that the Iraqis would capitulate in two
days.
Intelligence officials say Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and other
Pentagon civilians ignored much of the advice of the Central Intelligence
Agency and the Defence Intelligence Agency in favour of reports from the
Iraqi opposition and from Israeli sources that predicted an immediate
uprising against Saddam once the Americans attacked.
The officials said Rumsfeld also made his disdain for the Army's heavy
divisions very clear when he argued about the war plan with Army General
Tommy Franks, the allied commander. Franks wanted more and more heavily
armed forces, said one senior administration official; Rumsfeld kept
pressing for smaller, lighter and more agile ones, with much bigger roles
for air power and special forces.
"Our force package is very light," said a retired senior general. "If
things don't happen exactly as you assumed, you get into a tangle, a
mismatch of your strategy and your force. Things like the pockets (of Iraqi
resistance) in Basra, Umm Qasr and Nasariyah need to be dealt with
forcefully, but we don't have the forces to do it."
"The Secretary of Defence cut off the flow of Army units, saying this thing
would be over in two days," said a retired senior general who has followed
the evolution of the war plan. "He shut down movement of the 1st Cavalry
Division and the 1st Armored Division. Now we don't even have a nominal
ground force."
He added ruefully: "As in Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan, we are using
concepts and methods that are entirely unproved. If your strategy and
assumptions are flawed, there is nothing in the well to draw from."
In addition, said senior administration officials, speaking on the
condition of anonymity, Rumsfeld and his civilian aides rewrote parts of
the military services' plans for shipping US forces to the Persian Gulf,
which they said resulted in a number of mistakes and delays, and also
changed plans for calling up some reserve and National Guard units.
"There was nothing too small for them to meddle with," said one senior
official. "It's caused no end of problems, but I think we've managed to
overcome them all."
Robin Dorff, the director of national security strategy at the US Army War
College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, said three things have gone wrong in the
campaign:
-A "mismatch between expectations and reality."
-The threat posed by irregular troops, especially the 60,000 strong Saddam
Fedayeen, who are harassing the 300-mile-long supply lines crucial to
fueling and resupplying the armor units barreling toward Baghdad.
-The Turks threatening to move more troops into northern Iraq, which could
trigger fighting between Turks and Kurds over Iraq's rich northern oilfields.
Dorff and others said that the nightmare scenario is that allied forces
might punch through to the Iraqi capital and then get bogged down in
house-to-house fighting in a crowded city.
"If these guys fight and fight hard for Baghdad, with embedded Baathists
stiffening their resistance at the point of a gun, then we are up the
creek," said one retired general.
