The Secret History of the Iraq War

579 Pages·2004·3.05 MB·English

by  Yossef Bodansky

The SECRET HISTORY OF THE

IRAQ WAR

YOSSEF BODANSKY
Contents
Introduction 1
1 Early Steps—The Loss of Deterrence 13
2 The Gathering Storm 34
3 Casus Belli 51
4 Advance Preparations 85
5 End Run 113
6 The Die Is Cast 137
7 The Race to Baghdad, Part 1 163
8 The Race to Baghdad, Part 2 186
9 The Race to Baghdad, Part 3 213
10 The Real War Begins 242
11 The Shiite Factor and the Launch of Jihad 266
12 The Ascent of Iran and the Return 292
of Osama bin Laden
13 Disastrous Diversion 314
14 Only the Beginning 338
15 Into the Cauldron 366
16 The Iran Factor 389
17 The Historic Transformation 416
18 Beyond the Ramadan Offensive 441
19 Endgame 468
Conclusion 492
Postscript 517
Notes: The Historical Record 531
Note on Sources and Methods 539
Guide to Periodical Sources 547
Acknowledgments 555
Searchable Terms 558
About the Author
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
Introduction
H
ad it not been for the bravery, commitment, professionalism, and re-
silience of America’s fighting forces, the United States would have suffered
an embarrassing debacle in its war against Saddam Hussein’s regime. His
Iraq was a developing country emaciated by a previous destructive war, a
decade of debilitating sanctions, and popular discontent. This kind of war,
which found a uniquely mighty superpower embroiled in the Middle East-
ern quicksand, need not have happened.
There is no doubt that America had a viable, urgent imperative to go to
war against Iraq when it did. The primary reason was the ongoing cooper-
ation between Saddam Hussein’s intelligence services and Osama bin
Laden’s terrorists, which began in earnest in the early 1990s when the ji-
hadist forces in Somalia, under the command of Ayman al-Zawahiri, re-
ceived extensive military assistance from the Iraqis via Sudan. That
alliance was solidified in 1998–99, as Saddam and bin Laden realized that
they needed each other’s resources in order to confront the United States.
Moreover, Iraq (working in conjunction with Yasser Arafat) had resolved
to throw the Middle East into chaos—a move that threatened to imperil
the vital interests of America and its allies. The war Saddam Hussein con-
templated, which included the use of weapons of mass destruction, would
have caused inestimable damage to the global economy by disrupting en-
ergy supplies from the Persian Gulf.
In the fall of 2002 Iraq crossed an unacceptable threshold, supplying
operational weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to bin Laden’s terrorists.
These developments were confirmed to the Western intelligence services
after several terrorists—graduates of WMD training programs—were
captured in Israel, Chechnya, Turkey, and France, along with documents
related to their activities. On the basis of pure threat analysis, the United
2 The Secret History of the Iraq War
States should have gone to war against Iraq, as well as its partners Syria and
Iran, in fall 2002. By then there was already unambiguous evidence indi-
cating the urgency of defusing the imminent danger posed by Iraq and its
primary allies in the growing terrorist conspiracy.
As mighty as it is, however, America does not exist in a vacuum. Not
without reason, the Bush administration elected to first attempt to build
wider support for an American-led war, an undertaking that pushed the
opening of hostilities to spring 2003.
The quintessence of American government emerges when the nation
goes to war. Americans elect their presidents, senators, and congressmen
believing that they have sound judgment and, far more important,
vision—that is, ability to chart the country’s course, make tough decisions
on behalf of the people, and lead the country at times of need and chal-
lenge. Americans do not elect their leaders believing that they know every-
thing, nor do they expect them to. For that knowledge, the leaders are
served by a comprehensive and well-funded system of experts that in-
cludes the intelligence community and senior officials in the National Se-
curity Council, the Defense Department, and the Department of State. The
essence of policy formulation is the practical, real-life melding of vision
with the facts on the ground. It is only natural that the elected leaders
would prefer that national policy follow their vision as closely as possible;
but most leaders are sufficiently experienced to know the limits of power,
and thus closely study the world situation on the basis of material pro-
vided by the experts and institutions before making their decisions.
In official Washington, the policy formulation and decision-making
processes usually fail when the delicate balance between leaders and profes-
sionals is distorted—when the intelligence community and other institu-
tions fail the political leadership by providing inaccurate information and
poor analysis, or when the leaders ignore that expert advice. In the case of
the war in Iraq, the professional establishment failed the White House.
When put into practice, the administration’s policy fell short of expecta-
tions. The preparations for and conduct of the war were marred by endemic
and profound intelligence failures and unprecedented politicization of the
military planning and actual fighting. American forces reached Baghdad in
nineteen days, overcoming a tenacious enemy, horrific weather, and dubi-
ous instructions. A full year later, however, Iraq is still far from being paci-
fied, and a guerrilla war is rapidly escalating—metamorphosing in the
process from a Baathist reaction to the U.S. invasion to an anti-American
jihad conducted by a coalition of nationalists and Islamists.
INTRODUCTION 3
The errors that have plagued the U.S. war in Iraq can be traced directly
to long-term institutional problems within the intelligence community and
defense establishment. These problems are the aggregate outcome of forty-
five years of warranted fixation with the Soviet Union, followed by eight
years of systemic emaciation and abuse of the intelligence agencies by the
Clinton administration. The gravity of these endemic problems was made
clear on September 11, 2001. Although the new administration immedi-
ately committed to an uncompromising war against international terrorism
and its sponsoring states, no administration has the ability to instanta-
neously reverse decades-old institutional shortcomings in intelligence col-
lection and analysis. However, much more could have been done since 2001
to improve American capabilities, better preparing troops for the chal-
lenges of the war on terrorism that is likely to continue for years to come.
Rather than focusing on beating back postwar recriminations, the ad-
ministration should now be soberly analyzing the war in Iraq so that the
mistakes made in all phases of the crisis and conflict are not repeated in
the future. This is an essential and urgent task, as the United States is only
at the beginning of a lengthy and arduous war. Former CIA director Jim
Woolsey has correctly identified the war on terrorism as World War IV
(the Cold War being World War III), saying: “This fourth world war, I
think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for
us....As we move toward a new Middle East,o ver the years and,I think,
over the decades to come...we will make al ot of people very nervous.” It
is only logical to assume that America’s myriad enemies will make every
effort to escalate the war in their own favor—unleashing terrorism, sub-
version, and insurgency wherever they can. Throughout, America must
project a message of resolve to the ruling elites of the Muslim world. “We
want you to realize that now, for the fourth time in one hundred years, this
country is on the march,” Woolsey has declared, addressing his remarks di-
rectly to the terrorists and dictators of the world.“And we are on the side of
those whom you most fear—your own people.”
It is imperative that we strive to comprehend the intricacies of the war
in Iraq—the achievements and the shortcomings—so that we learn appro-
priate lessons, correct endemic problems, and improve contingency plans
and intelligence collection. America’s soldiers deserve no less.
American military operations in Iraq did not unfold as planned. Their
successful outcome is largely the result of the battlefield performance of
4 The Secret History of the Iraq War
the American fighting forces rather than the quality of the war plans and
intelligence these troops acted upon. This is not an abstract issue: the
American leadership’s profound misunderstanding of the situation in Iraq
led them to adopt overly optimistic notions about such crucial issues as the
fighting capabilities of the Iraqi military, popular hostility to American
forces, and the ease of establishing a new Iraqi government in post-
Saddam Baghdad. This level of ignorance is inexplicable considering that
American intelligence agencies have monitored Iraq since the early 1970s,
when the Soviet Union attempted to use the nation as a springboard for at-
tacking Iran and the Persian Gulf. During the 1980s, the United States was
intimately involved in supporting Saddam’s Iraq in its war against Iran.
And since 1990, when America went to war against Iraq to liberate Kuwait,
Washington has remained obsessed with Saddam Hussein.
After Bush won the White House in 2000, the Arab world had no illu-
sions about the new administration’s determination to confront Saddam
Hussein. These convictions were reinforced by reports of secret contacts
between George Tenet and pro-U.S. Arab leaders early in Bush’s term (fol-
lowed by Colin Powell’s first visit to the Middle East) in an effort to restore
the anti-Iraq coalition assembled by the previous President Bush. In pri-
vate conversations, however, Arab leaders were extremely reluctant to form
a new coalition against Iraq despite tremendous U.S. pressure. The Middle
East was marching to its own drum, these leaders warned Washington, and
America must adjust its pace accordingly if it wanted the Arab world to co-
operate. The administration’s obsession with Iraq was out of sync with the
realities of the region, these leaders stressed. These leaders’ strong warn-
ings should have convinced American intelligence agencies to study the
situation more closely, but instead the administration committed itself to a
series of maneuvers aimed at persuading or compelling Arab nations to
cooperate with the United States and support its plans to attack Iraq.
In 2001, after the United States formally declared the war on terrorism,
Saddam became convinced that Iraq would have to prepare for a guerrilla
war in the event that the United States resolved to attack his regime. In
early 2002, the Bush administration had excellent intelligence from numer-
ous reliable human sources about the profound shift in Iraq’s war policy.
Among the most important sources was Lieutenant Colonel al-Dabbagh,
who reported to London through Dr. Ayad Allawi, now a member of the
Iraqi Governing Council. Al-Dabbagh (who has asked that his first name
not be given in public) acquired the minutes of a December 2001 meeting
of Iraq’s top commanders that was chaired by Saddam himself; the meeting
INTRODUCTION 5
was devoted to formulating military strategy for the coming war with the
United States. “The battle with America is inevitable,” Saddam said, ac-
cording to these minutes. “What is of paramount importance is how to sus-
tain the continuation of war after [the American] occupation.”
In early 2002, Saddam ordered that about a third of Iraq’s arsenal, par-
ticularly weapons suitable for protracted guerrilla warfare, be hidden
throughout Iraq in desolate spots marked only by encrypted GPS readings.
The only people who knew the precise locations of these caches were Sad-
dam, his son Qusay, and his private secretary, Abid Hamid Humud. “Sad-
dam Hussein said that if any of these weapons were found by ordinary
Iraqi people then the head of the military unit would be hanged immedi-
ately,” al-Dabbagh told Con Coughlin of the London Sunday Telegraph.
Given this level of interest and exposure, it is staggering how thor-
oughly the U.S. intelligence community failed to comprehend Baghdad.
Indeed, throughout the war, not only did the United States adhere to in-
correct assessments of the situation in Iraq; its overconfidence in flawed
intelligence actually resulted in the military’s taking unwarranted risks.
The specific challenges of an occupation of Iraq were recognized by
both American and outside experts and analysts from the very beginning
of the offensive. In a March 24, 2003, report to the Kremlin, the GRU (Rus-
sia’s military intelligence) described the unexpected predicament Ameri-
can forces were facing. “The U.S. made serious errors in their estimates of
the Iraqi army’s strength and combat readiness. U.S. military intelligence
and the CIA failed to uncover the true potential of the Iraqi forces and, in
essence, misinformed the top military and civilian leadership of the coali-
tion member countries,” the Russian experts concluded.
American experts outside the administration agreed that America’s
leadership—military and political—erred in its fundamental assessment
of Iraq and the challenges American forces would face there. “Their as-
sumptions were wrong,” observed retired Gen. Barry M. McCaffrey, com-
mander of the 24th Mechanized Division during the 1991 Gulf War.
“There is a view [held by the administration] that the nature of warfare has
fundamentally changed, that numbers don’t count, that armor and ar-
tillery don’t count. They went into battle with a plan that put a huge air
and sea force into action with an unbalanced ground combat force.” In-
deed, the November 2003 after-action report of the 3rd Infantry Division
identified serious problems with supplies and security that were a direct
result of decisions by “higher headquarters” or other parts of the defense
establishment. “The Division crossed [into Iraq] short the ammunition it