Marine Times: Corps’ top general in Iraq criticizes handling of Fallujah

Corps’ top general in Iraq criticizes handling of Fallujah

By Christian Lowe
Times staff writer


Many who fought in Fallujah may have been thinking it, but weren’t willing to say it — that Marines did not want to launch the April siege there, and once in the fight, they didn’t want to pull out before the job was done.
In a candid interview Sept. 12 with four major newspapers at his command post in Iraq, Lt. Gen. James Conway said senior coalition commanders in Iraq ordered the Marines into Fallujah against his advice and counter to the Corps’ long-term plan to quell the city’s insurgency.

Moreover, before Marines could consolidate their gains, they were ordered out, replaced by an unproven local security force cobbled together without the input of senior Marines on the ground there, said Conway, the outgoing commander of I Marine Expeditionary Force.

His comments followed those of Brig. Gen. John Kelly, who was assistant 1st Marine Division commander under Conway. Now serving as the commandant’s legislative assistant, Kelly offered a similar analysis of Fallujah during a seminar held Sept. 7 near Washington, D.C.

“We were ordered to go into Fallujah against our inclination,” Kelly said at a joint U.S. Naval Institute and Marine Corps Association forum. “That was not what we wanted to do in Fallujah. We had a different game plan. A longer game plan.”

The force of 25,000 I MEF leathernecks had arrived in Iraq and assumed responsibility for Anbar province from Army forces less than a month before the Fallujah operation began. They arrived vowing to address the insurgency problem with a “hearts-and-minds” approach. Army forces had encountered tough resistance in the city throughout their occupation, so the Corps envisioned employing a less aggressive strategy, hoping it would garner better results.

But after four private security contractors were killed and their mutilated bodies were paraded in the city streets March 31, two reinforced Marine battalions were ordered in to assault the city.

“We felt like we had a method that we wanted to apply to Fallujah — that we ought to probably let the situation settle before we appeared to be attacking out of revenge,” Conway told The Washington Post.

More than a dozen Marines were killed and scores were wounded in the resulting clashes during the nearly monthlong siege.

In April, coalition military officials had vowed not to rush into a Fallujah attack, planning instead a patient, lasting approach to countering the insurgency there.

“We are not going to do a pell-mell rush into the city,” said Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, then a coalition military spokesman, at a press conference just days before the operation against Fallujah was launched. “It’s going to be deliberate, it will be precise and it will be overwhelming.

A Pentagon spokesman declined comment on the Marines’ remarks. “We don’t have anything to say on that,” Army Lt. Col. Barry Venable said Sept. 17.

Conway spoke to reporters after handing over command of I MEF to Lt. Gen. John Sattler, formerly commander of Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa and the 2nd Marine Division. Conway’s next assignment is as director of operations for the Joint Staff at the Pentagon.

Once ordered into the fight for Fallujah, Marine commanders wanted to finish the job, but the head of coalition forces in Iraq at the time, Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, ordered the Marines out and a hastily assembled “Fallujah Brigade” — made up of former Iraqi army commanders and local militia — into the city, according to published reports on Conway’s Sept. 12 comments.

At the time, Marines had little faith in the brigade and were left feeling bitter, believing that victory was snatched from their grasp.

“We were quite happy with the progress of the attack,” Conway said. “We thought we were going to be done in a few days.”

Conway hands his successor a Fallujah still teeming with terrorists and insurgents.

The city is one of only a few so-called “no-go zones” for American forces in Iraq. The Fallujah Brigade was disbanded in early September, leaving the city arguably worse off than it was before the April assault.

U.S. aircraft have pounded the city in recent weeks, including a Sept. 10 strike on an alleged safe house run by terrorists aligned with al-Qaida affiliate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Reports indicate that another full-scale assault on the town is imminent, a job now left to Sattler.

“Would our system have been better?” Conway asked. “You’ll never know for sure. But at the time, we certainly thought so.”


http://www.marinetimes.com/story.php?f=1-MARINEPAPER-356833.php

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