How the Pentagon’s promise of a quick war ran into the desert sand
Friday 28th March 2003
In early February, just a few weeks before the Iraq war began, a funny thing happened in the corridors of the Pentagon — it went strangely quiet. After a flurry of deployment orders in the new year, sending tens of thousands of soldiers and marines out to the Gulf, the flow of paperwork out of the defence secretary’s office slowed to a trickle.
”There’s not much happening here right now,” a slightly bemused senior military officer said at the time.
It now appears that Donald Rumsfeld, standing at his trademark lectern from which he micromanaged the war plans, blocked a request from his field commander, General Tommy Franks, to start moving two heavy divisions to the Gulf. There were already enough forces in the theatre, he argued, according to officials in the Pentagon.
That single decision did more than any other to shape the dilemmas coalition forces are facing now in Iraq, one week into the war. Rumsfeld had promised a war of the kind no one had ever seen before, full of hi-tech surprises and breathtaking special forces raids that would go straight to the core of the regime.
The images from the battlefield, at least for now, have told another, more familiar story — American GIs and marine ”grunts” trudging through the mud while an unseen, committed guerrilla force lurks in tropical undergrowth, or in the alleyways of densely packed towns.
This is not Vietnam, and the images are, in that respect, misleading. There is some talk now of the war lasting months rather than weeks, but not even the most downcast pessimist in Washington or London believes this battle will go on for years or that Saddam will win.
However, there is rising concern among serving and retired military officers with memories of that conflict, that the US may have entered another war with blithely over-optimistic assumptions, and without the forces to do the job.
The heavy armour that Rumsfeld held up in February, the 1st Cavalry Division in Texas and the 1st Armoured Division in Germany, will only begin moving next month. It could take up to five weeks more for them to ship their tanks and other equipment.
The 20 000 soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division held their farewell ceremonies in Texas yesterday, and their tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles are already in the Red sea, having been diverted from Turkey. But they will probably not be ready to fight at the frontlines until mid-April. American paratroopers finally opened the northern front yesterday but they are a much lighter force and in no position to march on Baghdad.
For the time being, it will be up to three US divisions and Britain’s 1 Armoured Division, to carry the war on their shoulders. But the American vanguard of that force, the 3rd Infantry Division and the 1st Marine Division, has spent a week slogging through sandstorms, mud and near-constant guerrilla attack along the Euphrates valley.
Meanwhile, the US marines’ northward push from Nassiriya has advanced about 24 kilometres until stopped by the Iraqis at Daghara. These forces face continued Iraqi counterattacks on Nassiriya and the bridges across the Euphrates, which are making supplying the advance difficult.
It is unclear whether either the marines or the 3rd Infantry have the resources and energy left to finish the job and take the Iraqi capital. The 101st Airborne Division, which moved the bulk of its helicopters into forward bases in the western desert overnight on Wednesday, is still relatively fresh but it cannot take on the Republican Guard with its Apache assault helicopters alone. An attempt to do just that on Sunday was repelled by intense anti-aircraft fire.
Rumsfeld now faces a dilemma — to raise the stakes or to cut his losses. The former means taking an even bigger gamble: press harder on Baghdad in the hope that the regime will be ”decapitated” and the resistance wither. The latter means slowing down, waiting for the 4th Infantry to arrive with its tanks, and methodically weeding out the Fedayeen militia and Baath party enforcers from the southern towns.
Both options offer benefits, but are weighed down with costs and risks. For the time being, it looks as though Rumsfeld, the man who is still dictating the pace of this conflict from his Pentagon lectern, will follow his ”forward-leaning” instincts and take the faster, riskier route.
Blitzkrieg
The stakes involved are all the higher since his instincts so far have not paid off. The blitzkrieg approach to the war was built on two assumptions, which have since proved to be misplaced: that the Shia south would rise up immediately and hand such cities as Basra to the coalition; and that Saddam would give up most of the countryside and adopt a defensive crouch in Baghdad.
It was a fundamental mistake, argues Bob Killebrew, a retired army colonel who helped plan for the last Gulf war.
”It’s always bad to build plans based on the cooperation of the enemy,” he said.
In fact, the Shias, having been let down by American promises of liberation once before, in 1991, have decided to sit this war out and watch from the sidelines.
”I think one of the problems here was that so many people in the administration had a very strong political agenda, which was inspired by the Iraqi opposition, and by western mirror-imaging, assuming they want what we want,” said Anthony Cordesman, an expert on the Iraqi military at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein has learned the military lessons of the past 12 years, since the last Gulf war, in ways the Pentagon hawks did not anticipate. In particular he learned from Mohammed Aideed, the Somali warlord who evaded capture in 1993 and lured America’s best soldiers into a bloody trap in the backstreets of Mogadishu. It can be no coincidence that Republican Guard special forces have been turning up in ”technicals”, pickup trucks with machine guns or anti-tank weapons mounted on the back — exactly the sort Aideed used a decade ago.
Clouding the decision on deployments was a long-running internal Pentagon battle over the army. Since taking up their jobs in 2001 Rumsfeld and his group of civilian reformers have been trying to revolutionise the armed forces, making the navy less dependent on its aircraft car riers and the army on its big tank-heavy divisions.
The decision to use just one such division, the 3rd Infantry, in the starting line-up for the Iraq war, was therefore highly controversial. Infantry officers are convinced that Mr Rumsfeld’s decision to hold back the 1st Cavalry and 1st Armoured divisions and to use airborne troops and marines in their place, was first and foremost a political one, designed to prove a point.
Washington was not alone in its over-confidence. British ministers in private briefings before the war were presented with a picture of the effect of military action against Iraq which, it is now admitted, was far too optimistic.
The briefings were based on reports from the defence intelligence staff and MI6. Right up to the eve of the war, intelligence officials were confidently predicting that there were no Republican Guards or Iraqi special security forces anywhere in the south.
They appear to have been misled, whether deliberately or not, by the senior Iraqi figures they say they were in touch with.
Britain also assured Iraq’s worried neighbours that the military campaign would be quick — an outcome they needed in the face of their public opinion.
The hope, say British military officials, was that a brief ”shock and awe” bombing campaign would be enough to topple a fragile regime. Iraqi forces, including the Republican Guards, would quickly surrender. Air Marshal Brian Burridge, commander in chief of British forces, suggested that the most serious problems before US tanks arrived at the gates of Baghdad would be how to cope with large numbers of prisoners of war and the humanitarian needs of a displaced population.
Some of Britain’s military commanders, notably Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of the defence staff, were much more cautious and sceptical. However, though they were consulted about them, the military plans were drawn up by the US.
The first night of bombing — not the promised ”shock and awe” but a precision strike prompted by intelligence provided by the CIA — was not planned. What it did, British officials say, was to disrupt the original plan.
In the first few days of the war, British ministers remained over-optimistic. Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, proclaimed the port of Umm Qasr captured on Saturday, four days before it actually was.
British military officers, like their American counterparts, admit they were surprised by Iraqi resistance.
Saddam Hussein was not the inflexible general he was made out to be. Specifically, he or his military advisers appreciated the vulnerability of long supply lines as US troops charged towards Baghdad.
For the British and their main objective, Basra, Saddam sent in ”Chemical Ali” — his loyal lieutenant, Ali Hassan al-Majid — to stiffen resolve, or rather to coerce local Iraqi troops into counterattacks or to stay in the city.
This left British troops with an acute dilemma compounded by the growing humanitarian crisis and lack of food and water: to bomb military and Baath party targets in the city from outside, thereby risking civilian casualties, or enter in force at the risk of casualties among their troops.
British military officials admit they have had to make ”adjustments” to their tactical battle plans in the south after encountering stiff resistance in several towns.
Originally the British plan had been to sweep through the southern provinces and to surround and contain Basra and other large towns in the area but not to occupy them. Their task was to rush in humanitarian aid and provide a shield in the south to protect advancing US troops.
British officers have frequently spoken about how they wanted to avoid gritty, urban street fighting which might turn the local population against the whole military campaign.
But rather than surrender en masse, Iraqi forces have put up often fierce resistance, largely driven by paramilitary militias, British officials say. That has required a more aggressive British approach.
”The fact is that we now understand what is going on in Basra to a greater degree than clearly we could have predicted,” Air Marshal Burridge said yesterday. ”Until you actually see what is happening it is very difficult to make judgments.”
Patient
He said that the British army’s experience in Northern Ireland would help in military operations in southern Iraq. The air marshal’s comments suggest much more dangerous urban warfare lies ahead for the Royal Marines and paratroopers now deployed around Basra.
”We have enormous experience in Belfast and we know how fluid these situations can become,” said Air Marshal Burridge.
British military commanders say they are prepared to be patient in taking the city, waiting for months if necessary in an operation which, it was originally assumed, would take a matter of days.
The 24 000 British combat troops engaged in Iraq are likely to remain in the south where they are still needed. One plan was for the armoured brigade to move north and provide a rear base for the US.
One of the problems is that British forces use different ammunition and even different types of fuel from the US so they need their own separate supply lines.
The offensive on Baghdad is likely to be an almost solely American affair. The crucial question is whether they have the strength to fight on through three Republican Guard divisions and into the urban warfare of Baghdad without waiting three weeks for significant reinforcements.
”In military terminology, attackers reach their ‘culminating point’ when their supplies and energy are depleted to the point when they can no longer overcome the resistance,” Col Killebrew said. ”The question now is when do General Franks’ forces reach their ‘culminating point’.”
The worst outcome, he argues, will be for the troops in the field to ”go on and on until they run out steam and then face defeat”.
In a sign that the Pentagon is beginning to acknowledge the problem it faces, there were reports yesterday that the 2nd Armoured Cavalry, based in Louisiana, had been called into action. But a regiment on its own is unlikely to provide the level of force protection for US supply lines that the field commanders are calling for.
However, bringing units back from the front to fight the Fedayeen in the south while waiting for the 4th Infantry Division to catch up also carries costs. The US would lose the initiative to the Iraqis. Weeks of aerial bombardment would kill more civilians, raising international outrage to new peaks, while back home there would inevitably be talk of a quagmire.
Those are high costs for a defence secretary who has made ”forward-leaning” his catchphrase.
”I don’t think we’ll find ourselves going city by city and getting involved in each one,” said a Pentagon official this week.
There were reports yesterday that frontline US infantry near Najaf, the scene of intense exchanges with Iraqi guerrillas this week, were being braced for a potentially decisive battle with the Medina Division of the Republican Guard somewhere between the holy Shia shrine at Kerbala and the ancient city of Babylon.
Meanwhile, the helicopter-borne brigades of the 101st Airborne in the western desert, are preparing to hit Baghdad’s defenders from above and behind, while special forces and coalition bombers strike at the centres of power.
It is a strategy that is built on an adapted version of the Pentagon’s earlier assumptions. It assumes that the guerrilla fighters are hated by the population and will wither away once orders stop coming from Baghdad.
”When Baghdad folds or falls and people realise there is no central power behind the thugs, the situation will turn,” a senior Pentagon official predicted. He said Rumsfeld’s critics were still thinking of the battlefield as linear, whereas the new tactical thinking involved ”networks”, combining armour, mobile forces striking from all directions and close air support.
In short, the message coming from the Pentagon is full speed ahead. The new tactics will work and the regime will collapse — just wait and see. It has only been a week.
Ironically, it will be up to the army — that bastion of conservatism in Rumsfeld’s eyes — to prove his theories right. The marines may play a supporting role once they have made their way through the waterlogged Tigris valley, but the 3rd Infantry and the 101st Airborne will be at the centre of the fighting in Baghdad.
Col Killebrew says it is an old story. He said: ”Between the wars, the army is always accused of being not very bright, and then, when the war comes, it’s the army that wins the fight.” – Guardian Unlimited Â