Iraq: The Next Phase

Lots of chatter about halting or scaling back reconstruction and going back to a war footing. Below is a CNN report on a CIA analysis of the situation and a piece from Fred Kaplan of Slate. None of it looks good and if this is the trend, I don't see anyway to reduce troop strength anytime soon. It also looks like Bremer's role/position may quickly change.
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CIA: Iraq security to get worse
Bremer meets with White House advisers to discuss situation

WASHINGTON (CNN) --A recent CIA assessment of Iraq warns the security situation will worsen across the country, not just in Baghdad but in the north and south as well, a senior administration source told CNN Tuesday.

The report is a much more dire and ominous assessment of the situation than has previously been forwarded through official channels, this source said. It was sent to Washington Monday by the CIA station chief in Iraq.

It was not immediately clear if the assessment was what prompted the hastily arranged trip to Washington by Iraq civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer, who met Tuesday at the White House with President Bush and senior national security officials.

The report was discussed during the high-level meetings, sources said.

The senior administration source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Bremer agreed with the CIA assessment and added his personal comments to the station chief's memo.

In his Veterans Day speech Tuesday, Bush referred to "recent reporting" of cooperation between Saddam loyalists and terrorist elements from outside Iraq.

"Saddam loyalists and foreign terrorists may have different long-term goals, but they share a near-term strategy: to terrorize Iraqis and to intimidate America and our allies," Bush told the conservative Heritage Foundation.

"In the last few months, the adversary has changed its composition and method, and our coalition is adapting accordingly."

Another senior administration official said those points in the speech were based on a U.S. intelligence report about the security situation.

A third U.S. official said the intelligence report was from the CIA and that it highlights what the official conceded are several "major ongoing security issues."

That official refused to characterize the report in further detail. But the senior administration source who did discuss the report said it essentially says things are "gonna get worse" across Iraq.

The source said the memo notes that:

• More Iraqis are "flooding to the ranks of the guerrillas." Many of these Iraqis are Sunnis who had previously been "on the sidelines" but now believe they can "inflict bodily harm" on the Americans.

• Ammunition is "readily available," making it much easier to mount attacks.

The assessment also notes that organization and coordination are getting "tighter" among foreign insurgents -- extremists including but not limited to al Qaeda and Hezbollah -- and those "displaced people" who lost power. (Full story)

On a related matter, this source said Bremer sent out his own separate two-page memo Monday in which he provided alternatives to the current seven-step U.S. plan for the transition of power from the Coalition Provisional Authority to the Iraqi people.

U.S. officials in Washington and military commanders in Iraq have voiced concern about the recent increase of attacks against coalition and other targets in Iraq. Bush has urged his national security team to accelerate the training and deployment of Iraqi security forces.

A large explosion Wednesday apparently shattered the Italian police headquarters in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. Initial reports indicated that six people were killed. (Full story)

Thirty-eight U.S. troops have died this month, bringing the number of U.S. troops killed in the Iraq war to 398. Since President Bush declared an end to major combat May 1, 259 U.S. servicemen and women have been killed.

There is no reliable source for Iraqi civilian or combatant casualty figures, either during the period of major combat or after May 1.

The Associated Press reported an estimated 3,240 civilian Iraqi deaths between March 20 and April 20, but the AP said that the figure was based on records of only half of Iraq's hospitals, and the actual number was thought to be significantly higher.
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War Declared, Again
We're not pulling out of Iraq, so it's logical that we're pushing in deeper.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2003, at 4:04 PM PT


And so it's official: "Postwar Iraq" is just another term for "Iraq War—Phase II."

In a heavily guarded news conference in Baghdad today, Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, called the state of conflict there a "war." John Burns, the New York Times correspondent covering the event, quotes Sanchez's aides noting that the general's choice of words was deliberate—his way of injecting realism into the debate back in Washington. "We are taking the fight into the safe havens of the enemy in the heartland of the country," Sanchez stated. That sounds like war, all right.

To reinforce the impression, word also got around today that the White House has called L. Paul Bremer back to Washington for talks. Bremer is the civilian chief of the U.S.-led occupation authority. He left Baghdad quite promptly, deferring a long-scheduled meeting with the Polish prime minister, whose own troops have recently arrived in country for patrol duties. The guess around the Pentagon is that Bremer's role in postwar reconstruction will probably be scaled back, if not suspended, at least until the war is really over.

Whatever the U.S. armed forces do next—and it's a safe bet the change in policy will go well beyond semantics—should not come as much of a surprise. The muddling-through of the past couple of months could not have been sustained much longer, on any grounds. Attacks by insurgents have risen from a half-dozen a day to 35; American fatalities have multiplied from an average of one a day to four; meanwhile, Iraqi hearts and minds are more drifting away from than lurching toward the "coalition" cause. Something had to give. We're not pulling out, so it's logical that we're pushing in deeper.

The big question is whether the renewed offensive will truly defeat the insurgents, as Gen. Sanchez guarantees—or whether, in the process of "taking the fight into the safe havens," it will only swell the insurgents' ranks. It has widely been speculated that the insurgents have two aims: first, to kill the American occupiers; second, by doing so, to force the Americans to take more aggressive action and thus further alienate Iraqi civilians. It's a very fine line, and walking it will be Sanchez's most challenging task as a commander.

Of course, a big question in this whole equation is: Who are the insurgents? Are they Baathist holdouts, foreign terrorists, or ordinary, if well-armed Iraqis who are angry at American soldiers for killing a brother or cousin? If U.S. intelligence knows who they are and where they hang out—just where these "safe havens" are—the war might be finished without having to use a lot of force. If intelligence doesn't know—and news reports suggest it doesn't—then force might have to be quite heavy.

Vietnam analogies are still premature. The insurgents have no state power like North Vietnam, no large and dedicated nationalist army like the Viet Cong, no extensive suppliers like the Soviet Union. Still, unless Gen. Sanchez pulls this thing off fairly quickly, Iraq could start looking like a sand-dune version of the big muddy.

Retired Gen. Eric Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff who was upbraided by Donald Rumsfeld for warning Congress that postwar occupation would require a few hundred thousand troops, probably hasn't had to buy his own lunch for several months now. All he has to do is show up at the Army-Navy Club around mealtime and any number of eager officers are no doubt happy to reward him for speaking military truth to civilian power.

But the military is hardly blameless in this situation. Last year, the Army and Air Force conducted two war games involving scenarios roughly resembling the Gulf War. At the end of them, one of its mock-commanders, a retired Army general named Huba Wass de Czege, wrote a memo to his colleagues, noting that they ended the game too soon.

These games, he wrote, "tend to devote more attention to successful campaign-beginnings than to successful conclusions." The war games are declared over, he continued, "when victory seems inevitable to us (not necessarily to the enemy), at about the point operational superiority has been achieved and tactical control of strategically significant forces and places appears to be a matter of time." Yet winning a war doesn't mean simply winning on the battlefield. "It is just as important," Wass de Czege wrote, "to know how to follow through to the resolution of such conflicts." Otherwise, there is a tendency to underestimate "the difficulties of 'regime change' and the magnitude of the effort required to achieve strategic objectives."

The real war recapitulated the war game: swift battlefield victory, followed by a chess-player's notion of victory—saying, "Checkmate in three moves," and instead of slogging through the three moves, toppling the king and declaring the game won.

The vanishing of the Iraqi army was interpreted as a vanquishing. Pulling down Saddam's statue was taken as shorthand for killing the man himself. Baghdad was seen, quite properly, as the central target of the U.S.-led invasion; the fall of the Baghdad regime was extrapolated, prematurely, as the surrender of all Iraq.

The latest lesson of the war might be this: Whatever great improvements are wrought in a military force—in the firepower of the weapons, the maneuverability of the troops, the coordination of the individual services, the accuracy of the missiles and bombs—these factors comprise but the first phase of a war. As many predicted all along, the harder and more enduring part is the second phase. Neglecting this truth a few months ago, at the end of the first phase, means that the second phase will now be much harder than it might have been for all concerned.

 

Not aimed at you Woofer, but the number of people who think there is a finite number of terrorists/guerillas/etc. is amazing. It's always going to be more. It doesn't matter if we take out a bunch at once as others will regroup and go back to pinpricks. We completely screwed up on this and we'll be paying the price for decades, if not lifetimes. We cannot win because the other side will never accept defeat. The best we can hope for now is to change the dynamic to thwart the idealogical fervor somewhat. The only way to do that is to pursue policies that are complete 180s from what this administration is currently implementing and willing to do... or time travel.

 

Pretty damn smart strategy... UN and the Red Cross. Polish, Spanish, Ukrainian, and Italian allies. Japan's not coming. Turkey's not coming. The other committments run out this Spring... does anyone think there will be anybody left but Brits and Americans at that point? They're playing their hand very well and it continually looks like we have no idea. Bad press indeed.
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Guerrillas' strategy becomes clear: Isolate the U.S.
By Tom Squitieri, USA TODAY

The attack on Italian forces Wednesday in southern Iraq is part of a guerrilla strategy to isolate the United States as it attempts to win international support for rebuilding the country, military analysts say.

The attack, which killed at least 26 people, is the latest in a string of bombings that have targeted U.S. allies or international agencies, such as the United Nations and Red Cross.

The bombings, many of them launched by suicide attackers, are also a sign that the U.S.-led coalition is facing a resistance that is more lethal and is growing in sophistication and organization.

"What we see is increasing evidence that we are facing an enemy that has a strategy," says Andrew Bacevich, a professor of international relations at Boston University and a former Army colonel. "This is careful planning of the thoughtful, logical use of violence in order to achieve the enemy's objective."

Insurgents hope to foster a sense of insecurity in Iraq and shake resolve in the United States.

"The center of gravity in this war is not the (U.S.) military force, to defeat it, but rather the people of Iraq and the people of the United States," says Andrew Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "There is no way the Iraqi insurgents can physically force the U.S. military to leave. What they've got to do is convince the American people it is not worth it to sustain the military presence."

Krepinevich says the insurgents will know that they have lost the war when the Iraqi people "feel confident enough to actively support the coalition and provide intelligence." That is why the insurgents "exact retribution on any Iraqi that seems to support the coalition," he says.

The resistance started out small and ineffective after Baghdad fell April 9. Small groups attacked U.S. soldiers with rifles and grenades. Usually, the attackers were killed. Pentagon officials initially described the attacks as doomed efforts of "dead-enders" from the former regime.

More recently, guerrillas have used mortars and improvised explosives detonated by remote control, which have allowed insurgents to attack soldiers from a distance and survive.

Suicide bombers and more sophisticated weaponry have increased the death toll. At least 37 U.S. soldiers have died in hostile action in Iraq this month, including 22 killed in two attacks on U.S. helicopters. American officers say the insurgency is an alliance of Saddam Hussein loyalists and foreign fighters.

Guerrillas are now regularly targeting international aid groups, American allies, U.S. soldiers and Iraqis who cooperate with coalition forces.

The attacks have had an impact: Hope has faded at the Pentagon that other nations will contribute troops to Iraq. The United Nations, Red Cross and other international organizations have scaled back their presence in Iraq. And some supporters of the U.S. effort, such as Spain, Bulgaria and the Netherlands, have reduced their diplomatic missions in Iraq.

The insurgents are attempting to use classic guerrilla tactics designed to give advantage to a force that is outnumbered and outgunned.

These tactics were first developed in the sixth century B.C. by Chinese general Sun Tzu in The Art of War. Sun Tzu wrote, "If we wish to fight, the enemy can be forced to an engagement even though he be sheltered behind a high rampart and a deep ditch. All we need do is attack some other place that he will be obliged to relieve."

"This is a campaign against the occupation, and it is one where there is thought and organization and logic, and that is bad news for us," Bacevich says. "It does not mean that we lost or mean that we are losing; it means the problem with each passing day deepens and that if you are supporting the Americans, you are in the gun sights."

Coalition forces have stayed with a dual strategy that combines attempting to locate and kill insurgents with efforts to rebuild the country. But some military experts say good intelligence remains an obstacle.

"The big story of late is the inadequacy of American intelligence," Bacevich says. "The first step to begin to counter this insurgency is that we need to be in a position to initiate the attacks — to hit them before they hit us. At this point, that initiative still lies with the enemy. We need better intelligence if we are going to be able to turn that around."

But the longer that U.S. and coalition forces are there, the better U.S. intelligence gets.

"The United States still has major problems in human intelligence collection and analysis which terrorists are exploiting," says Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"We cannot ever stop their intelligence from improving, although our intelligence networks are getting steadily better," Cordesman said.

 

Sorry giddy, I don't buy that line of reasoning. This was a self-inflicted wound. There were many people saying "don't shoot yourself in the foot," for over a year now and he completely ignored those pressures. Now, when it's deadly obvious that things are going from bad to worse, the criticism falls on those who didn't want this to happen in the first place? You can't say the man has the courage of his convictions when you think things are going well and then turn around and say the opposition is making him do something when things are going bad. He screwed up, his administration screwed up, and we will pay a price for this stupidity for years.

On a related note: AQ, terror, WMD, changing the ME, democracy in Iraq, the welfare of the Iraqi people... what do we say when we pull out and leave the place demonstrably worse then when we went in?

 

I'm sure there is some opportunism in it, but it is primarily nbased on the idea that this administration has made decisions that are net losses for this country. Look at it this way... you have an employee who is stealing form the till. You use the fact that he is stealing as a basis to fire him. Same principle here.

And there's nothing in our history or founding documents that suggest the executive or any aspect of government is free from ciriticism at time of war. Playing that card is just plain un-American in my view.

 

There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said -- no. But, somehow we missed it.

Well, we'll know better next time.

-Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead