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War strategy comes under heavy fire

March 25 2003

Five days into the war, the optimistic assumptions of the Pentagon's civilian war planners have yet to be realised.

The risks of the campaign are becoming increasingly apparent and some current and retired military officials are warning there may be a mismatch between Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld's strategy and the force he's sent to carry it out.

The outcome of the war isn't in doubt: Iraq's forces are no match for America and its allies.

But, so far, defeating them is proving to be harder, and it could prove to be longer and costlier in American and Iraqi lives than the architects of the American war plan expected.

And if weather, Iraqi resistance, chemical weapons or anything else turned things suddenly and unexpectedly sour, the backup force, the Army's 4th Infantry Division, is still in Texas with its equipment sailing around the Arabian peninsula.

Despite the aerial pounding they've taken, it's not clear that Saddam Hussein, his lieutenants or their praetorian guard are either shocked or awed. Instead of capitulating, some regular Iraqi army units are harassing American supply lines. Contrary to American hopes - and some officials' expectations - no top commander of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard has capitulated. Even some ordinary Iraqis are greeting advancing American and British forces as invaders, not as liberators.

"This is the ground war that was not going to happen in (Rumsfeld's) plan," said a Pentagon official. Because the Pentagon didn't commit overwhelming force, "now we have three divisions strung out over 300-plus miles and the follow-on division, our reserve, is probably three weeks away from landing."

Asked today about concerns that the coalition force isn't big enough, Defence Department spokesperson Victoria Clarke replied: "... most people with real information are saying we have the right mix of forces. We also have a plan that allows it to adapt and to scale up and down as needed."

Knowledgeable defence and administration officials say Rumsfeld and his civilian aides at first wanted to commit no more than 60,000 American troops to the war on the assumption that the Iraqis would capitulate in two days.

Intelligence officials say Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and other Pentagon civilians ignored much of the advice of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defence Intelligence Agency in favour of reports from the Iraqi opposition and from Israeli sources that predicted an immediate uprising against Saddam once the Americans attacked.

The officials said Rumsfeld also made his disdain for the Army's heavy divisions very clear when he argued about the war plan with Army General Tommy Franks, the allied commander. Franks wanted more and more heavily armed forces, said one senior administration official; Rumsfeld kept pressing for smaller, lighter and more agile ones, with much bigger roles for air power and special forces.

"Our force package is very light," said a retired senior general. "If things don't happen exactly as you assumed, you get into a tangle, a mismatch of your strategy and your force. Things like the pockets (of Iraqi resistance) in Basra, Umm Qasr and Nasariyah need to be dealt with forcefully, but we don't have the forces to do it."

"The Secretary of Defence cut off the flow of Army units, saying this thing would be over in two days," said a retired senior general who has followed the evolution of the war plan. "He shut down movement of the 1st Cavalry Division and the 1st Armored Division. Now we don't even have a nominal ground force."

He added ruefully: "As in Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan, we are using concepts and methods that are entirely unproved. If your strategy and assumptions are flawed, there is nothing in the well to draw from."

In addition, said senior administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, Rumsfeld and his civilian aides rewrote parts of the military services' plans for shipping US forces to the Persian Gulf, which they said resulted in a number of mistakes and delays, and also changed plans for calling up some reserve and National Guard units.

"There was nothing too small for them to meddle with," said one senior official. "It's caused no end of problems, but I think we've managed to overcome them all."

Robin Dorff, the director of national security strategy at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, said three things have gone wrong in the campaign:

-A "mismatch between expectations and reality."

-The threat posed by irregular troops, especially the 60,000 strong Saddam Fedayeen, who are harassing the 300-mile-long supply lines crucial to fueling and resupplying the armor units barreling toward Baghdad.

-The Turks threatening to move more troops into northern Iraq, which could trigger fighting between Turks and Kurds over Iraq's rich northern oilfields.

Dorff and others said that the nightmare scenario is that allied forces might punch through to the Iraqi capital and then get bogged down in house-to-house fighting in a crowded city.

"If these guys fight and fight hard for Baghdad, with embedded Baathists stiffening their resistance at the point of a gun, then we are up the creek," said one retired general.




War in Iraq

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'Shoot and scoot': SAS causes havoc

US awards first post-war reconstruction contract

Bombing campaign targets Saddam's guards

Battered, bruised prisoners speak for inquisitors

River hunt makes for savage comedy

Hundreds try to storm Parliament House

Allies face hardest test in fight for Nasiriyah

A bridge too far for a US maintenance unit

Australia left in the dark, say reporters

Reporter dies, two missing in burst of 'friendly fire'

Battle Stations

US media treads Government line

'Friendly' US missiles hit wrong target

Australian journalist mourned

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