Rumsfeld’s War: The Failed Plan Unravels

publication date: Sep 29, 2008

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author/source: Col. Robert E. Quinn (Ret) and John Fredericks / STAFF

By Col. Robert E. Quinn (Ret) and John Fredericks / STAFF

In the third installment of our on-going series on the war in Iraq we dissect the original plan and intent of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Who Really Knew?
The Bush Administration has been roundly criticized for gaping flaws in its military plans that made up the strategic lynchpins of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The flaws lay primarily in the administration’s original geo-political analysis and its strategy for what to do immediately after the Iraq invasion.

These, coupled with a plethora of early U.S. tactical missteps in Iraq were the precursor to a disastrous and costly first five years of the war.

The Bush Administration ignored the advice of its military generals and in so doing unilaterally pursued a post-conflict strategy that was destined to fail. The consequences of their decisions in terms of increased U.S. and Coalition troop casualties, civilian deaths, battlefield results, Coalition break-ups, religious extremism and the resultant loss of political authority in the region nearly cost the United States the war.

Many lingering questions surrounding the early planning debacle remain unanswered. They beg the questions, reminiscent of the Watergate hearings 35 years ago and asked by then Senator Howard Baker (R-TN), “What did you know, and when did you know it?”

The Driving Powers of Democracy
America’s world power is executed through the National Security Council (NSC). The NSC develops the U.S. National Security Strategy, which is a written document produced every two years for the purpose of influencing and exporting democracy throughout the world.

A key piece of its strategic prowess is based on implementing the powers of Diplomatic dialogue, Information and technology exchange, Military and policing security and Economic financial business transactions and trade (DIME). These are the powers of western secular democratic nations. The DIME is the cornerstone of U.S. national security and execution of all international operations. It is the centerpiece of U.S. resolve.

The NSC, part of the U.S. executive branch (which falls under the authority of the president), controls and influences U.S. world policy through six regional commands over the seven continents worldwide.

These commands are: Northern Command (U.S.), Pacific Command (Asia), Southern Command (South America), European Command (Europe), the new Africa Command (Africa) and Central Command (Middle East). All are led by four-star generals and U.S. inter-agency representatives from the State Department, Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Justice, FBI and other national level intelligence agencies.

They work in tandem to support U.S. interests and trade policies in their respective regions. These commands are responsible for executing our national objectives globally. Central Command (CENTCOM), the current hot spot, controls U.S. policy in 27 Middle-Eastern countries.

Initial Invasion Plans Go Awry
In the months that led up to the Iraqi invasion, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell met on a regular basis with Vice President Cheney, CIA Director George Tenant and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice (who made up the NSC) to outline their invasion plan for Iraq. They then presented President Bush with a National Security Policy and Plan for the Iraqi conflict.

Their plan was partially based on gaining international support from Partner Nations (Britain, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand), the G-8 and the U.N. Security Council (Russia, France, Germany, China and others). The NSC also cultivated and then accepted support from our 80 Coalition countries. Many countries committed to send either combat troops or monetary support for U.S. DIME policies against Iraq. This initial show of support served as the administration’s catalyst to empower Colin Powell to present to the U.N. Security Council his now infamous graphic presentations of suspected nuclear weapon development sites in Iraq. Powell’s passionate plea to compel action by the U.N. Security Council led to an international blockade of Iraq.

Powell’s U.N. performance has been widely discredited by much of the leftist mainstream media as they falsely interpreted his statements as a personal prelude to justify the war. The left’s subsequent barrage of negative criticism leveled at him was designed to undermine his credibility, and it systematically eroded his international influence.

Powell quietly began to doubt that the U.N. was actually capable of averting war, which was his original intent. As events progressed, Powell decided he could no longer serve an administration with a Secretary of Defense and a Vice President that were pushing for a war with Iraq. Powell’s speech, buttressed by his reputation for integrity, and Europe’s increasing oil prices led directly to the final ultimatum by the U.N. Security Council. They passed Resolution 1441, which gave the Coalition of nations the “green light” to commence invasion operations of Iraq.

Powell resigned from the Bush Administration shortly thereafter.

Following the U.N. vote, the execution of hostilities was turned over to the Supreme Allied Commander of the Coalition i.e., the U.S. CENTCOM Commander.

The Rumsfeld and Franks Show
General Tommy Franks, the CENTCOM commander, was charged with developing Rumsfeld’s plan for the U.S. and Coalition Invasion of Iraq. President Bush and Rumsfeld had already given Franks the early go-ahead to redevelop the standing invasion plans of Iraq in the summer of 2002, well before the U.N. Security Council voted for actual hostilities through U.N. Resolution 1441. Franks redesigned the current second-generation invasion plan (known as 1003v).

The invasion plan consisted of massive air demonstrations and bombing strikes on visual desert targets, followed by a threatening ultimatum of a major ground assault with tanks and close air support. Considering the populace of Iraq was 25 million people, with 10 million in Baghdad alone, if the ultimatum was ignored (which it was), the plan called for secondary heavy bombing attacks on Baghdad’s infrastructure for a set period of time.

The ground offensive was re-designed by Franks and his staff as a two-pronged attack, emanating north from Kuwait and south from the borders of Turkey. It called for 400,000 ground troops.

April was chosen as the month for invasion due to its cool wet weather, which would block the spread of Saddam Hussein’s expected use of chemical and biological Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) against oncoming Coalition troops. The absence of winds would limit chemical weapon agent casualties, as residue from Saddam’s artillery and missile strikes would be neutralized by rain and low winds.

Saddam had already used chemical weapons against the Kurdish minority in Northern Iraq, killing many innocent women and children. This WMD threat was real and a summer invasion would leave Coalition troops in overprotective garments causing massive heat casualties in combat operations.

Rumsfeld Runs Roughshod Over U.S. Generals
The original invasion plan 1003v conceived by previous CENTCOM commanders and endorsed by Franks’ staff as well as Army Chief of Staff, General Eric Shinseki, called for 400,000 ground combat troops for the initial assault and twice that for post occupation operations.

In a stunning and somewhat unprecedented decision, Rumsfeld, playing politics, only allocated 180,000 U.S. troops, less than half of what his military generals called for.

Rumsfeld based his decision on Title 10 law, which authorizes the President to commit up to 200,000 troops to hostilities without a formal declaration of war by Congress. Rumsfeld not only circumvented his generals’ advice, but he also ignored the known planning factors from the previous Gulf war. Rumsfeld, by reducing the troop allotment for combat operations, sought to avoid a legal fight with Congress over the Iraqi invasion.

Shinseki was outraged at Rumsfeld’s decision and promptly resigned as Army Chief of Staff. Shinseki knew full well what would happen in Iraq with Rumsfeld’s troop rollback gambit.

When Congress ultimately gave a vote of confidence to the President on the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein from power, it was only a political vote. It was not a unifying declaration of war against another sovereign nation. The responsibility for the outcome of hostilities and combat casualties was Bush’s alone.

Rumsfeld may have kept the President legally out of trouble with the Supreme Court and Congress over title 10 laws, but he allowed Army units that were not at combat strength to execute war in Iraq. Rumsfeld, a former Air Force pilot, and unabashed air power advocate, defended his decision by maintaining that overwhelming air power could win the war. His air power dominance fixation was partially based on the success of the 1999 conflict against Serbia in Kosovo during the Clinton administration.

Grand Plan Unravels
The 1003v grand plan further unraveled just days before the planned assault. Turkey, at the last minute, denied use of their territory to launch the Iraqi northern invasion by the 4th U.S. Infantry Division. They remained on ships in the Mediterranean. This was the first of what would be many political misreads by the Bush team. Turkey’s bailout forced Franks to revert to an “off the shelf” training maneuver war plan launched from Kuwait.

The cornerstone of Frank’s military strategy was based on defeating the center of gravity of Saddam Hussein’s security regime, the Republican Guard Forces Command in northern and southern Iraq. The invasion of two fronts, so central to Franks’ plan, now became a single front attack.

Franks had correctly applied second generational warfare of mass effects with third generation warfare of Information Operations in his attack. He used both national and international media attention during the air campaign to sensationalize the visualization of the downtown Baghdad mass bombing, calling it effectively, “Shock and Awe.”

The objective was to intimidate and undermine the RGFC’s will to fight by making them believe their defeat was imminent. However, Saddam’s RGFC forces executed a fourth generation warfare movement by abandoning their uniforms, tanks and equipment in northern Baghdad and blending into the Iraqi populace with weapons and explosives, driving south in cars and commercial trucks, as satellite overpasses from the NSA picked up their left behind dug-in tanks and armored vehicles. This RGFC force then combined with civilian militias and sniped at moving U.S. forces.

The Sunni and Shiite RGFC forces assimilated back into the tribes, clans and religious extremist militias that had been underground for years fighting against Saddam’s regime. The Baathist party civilian forces, fearing this outcome, purposely left much of Iraq’s infrastructure in place, expecting US and Coaltion forces to understand the asymmetrical threat of the religious extremists in Iraq. This is why the bridges over the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were left intact and not blown apart as the Third Infantry Division executed their Thunder Run into center-city Baghdad from the south.

This series of events was not correctly contemplated in the Bush war plan. The Baathist secular loyalists themselves were shocked by the degree of ignorance demonstrated by U.S. forces as they entered Baghdad. These gaffes laid the groundwork for much of the post combat problems that soon followed the fall of Baghdad.

Psychological Warfare
Attempts at psychological warfare through the power of Information Operations and economics were executed directly by Franks and Rumsfeld by going on national news networks. The effect of their media presentations contributed greatly to the demoralization and quick defeat of the secular Republican Guard Forces. Once the bombs started raining down and the missiles annihilated their known Iraqi targets with stealth precision, the will of the Iraqi secular defenses deteriorated at lightening speed, and the U.S. ground assault met little organized military resistance.

Rumsfeld’s Economic Blunder
Rumsfeld wanted to disrupt the Iraqi DIME infrastructure, and employed technology available to him through the covert U.S. Information Operations. He ordered computer network system attacks on the entire Iraqi financial apparatus, which subsequently dismantled Iraqi global financial assets, sending the country into immediate financial chaos within hours of the initial attack.

While this strategy helped disrupt Iraqi organized resistance in the short-term, its long-term result contributed to the destruction of the Iraqi economy. This led to catastrophic consequences for the average Iraqi, and turned many Iraqi’s against the U.S.

Suddenly, we were not perceived as “liberators”, as the Bush team promised. Rather, our troops were viewed as agents of economic calamity, and it opened the door to an even higher level of anti-U.S. sentiment.

Critical Signals Ignored
Rumsfeld authorized the recruitment and use of Iraqi ex-patriots to form the Free Iraqi Forces (FIF). The FIF was developed and planned by the U.S. Task Force “Warrior” which deployed from Fort Jackson in the fall of 2002. Task Force Warrior promptly built a training camp and received Iraqi volunteers in Hungary in January 2003. The Task Force was commissioned the prior fall to identify Global Iraqi ex-pats for counterinsurgency operations and intelligence gathering in Iraq. Their operations objective was to raise an unconventional warfare Army Group of human intelligence operators gathering intelligence and trained in subversion tactics to support and stabilize invading U.S. forces and Iraqi populace, post combat.

A recruiting effort began with a goal of 5,000 recruits from Coalition countries, also using an Iraqi ex-pat leader and his Iranian contacts to get Iraqis out of Iraq, before the invasion. Less than 100 people arrived when training commenced in January 2003. Sunni and Shiite didn’t want to fight side by side, and there was not much enthusiasm by Iraqis living in Europe for the initiative. This caused their FIF mission to change and the trainees became mere cultural information officers and trained linguists.

This was a critical signal that the desire of Free Iraqis to overthrow Saddam was gravely overstated by the Bush administration. Interestingly enough, Bush and Rumsfeld never allowed the media or Congress to know the true numbers of Free Iraqi Forces training in Hungary. They simply ignored the signs that Sunni and Shiite Free Iraqi Forces did not get along with each other, a sign of things to come in Iraq.
 
It Was All About the Oil
Bottom-line, Rumsfeld wanted a fast war and quick victory in order to bring home U.S. combat troops and immediately insert U.S. companies into Iraq’s infrastructure. He wanted American oil companies to cheaply seize Iraq’s oil fields, U.S. service companies to commandeer Iraqi infrastructure and U.S investment firms to rebuild Iraq’s financial trade and agriculture. This is the reason he commissioned so many privatized security companies (i.e.:Blackwater, Aegis). These handpicked firms would then have the geo-political ability to work uninhibited, outside the rules of engagement for war. He wanted American private interests to be responsible for security and nation building in Iraq, not the military. Hence, he manipulated the post reconstruction plan. Rumsfeld’s insistence on limiting the number of U.S. troops deployed to Iraq was partially based on his vision of getting in and out expeditiously and allowing U.S oil companies, based in Texas, to take control of Iraqi oil fields, refineries, pipelines and reserves. If accomplished, he believed that the U.S could dictate oil prices from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and eventually manipulate the entire global oil market.

Rumsfeld’s ill-fated plan, concocted by the NSC with State Department support, imploded when there were not enough U.S. and Coalition ground troops to control the post invasion insurgency. Once American and European firms saw terrorist beheadings of civilian contractors on the Internet and CNN News, they backed out of their commitments to participate in the administration’s phased reconstruction plan for Iraq.

Franks, seeing the handwriting on the wall, decided to retire and write a book.

Rumsfeld compromised the success of the post war mission by limiting secondary combat troop engagements during the invasion. As a result, follow up military operations failed to secure Iraqi  RGFC soldiers, whom had melted back into the Iraqi tribes and the general populace. Rumsfeld’s agenda to secure Iraq’s oil infrastructure for U.S. companies helped expand the insurgency, and produced countless Sunni and Shitte terrorist cells.

Rumsfeld’s plan may have exploited a legal loophole in keeping Congress informed, but it opened up a major hole in the post combat battlefield. The U.S continues to pay the price in terms of human suffering, casualties and national will. 
Rumsfeld was finally forced to resign after Democrats took control of Congress in November 2006.