Iraq War

The Iraq War was the invasion of Iraq in 2003 by a multinational coalition led by the United States of America. Military operations were conducted by forces from the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland, and was supported in various ways by many other countries, some of which allowed attacks to be launched or controlled from their territory. The U.N. neither approved nor censured the war, which was never a formally declared war. The U.S. refers to it as Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. Continuing operations are under the command of Multi-National Force-Iraq.

This war is to be distinguished from the Gulf War of 1991, following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The Gulf War had United Nations authorization. Further, both these wars should be differentiated from the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988.

The war had quick result of the removal (and later execution) of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the formation of a democratically elected parliament and ratified constitution, which won UN approval. However, an amorphous insurgency since then has produced large numbers of civilian deaths and an unstable Iraqi government. It has generated enormous political controversy in the U.S. and other countries.

The main rationale for the invasion was Iraq’s continued violation of the 1991 agreement (in particular United Nations Resolution 687) that the country allow UN weapons inspectors unhindered access to nuclear facilities, as well as the country’s failure to observe several UN resolutions ordering Iraq to comply with Resolution 687. The US government cited intelligence reports that Iraq was actively supporting terrorists and developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as additional and acute reasons to invade. Though there was some justification before October 2002 for believing this intelligence credible, a later Senate investigation found that the intelligence was inaccurate and that the intelligence community failed to communicate this properly to the Bush administration.

Factors Leading Up to the Invasion

There were a wide range of opinions that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had a negative effect on regional and world stability, although many of the opinionmakers intensely disagreed on the ways in which it was destabilizing. This idea certainly did not begin with 9/11.

Iraq had had and used chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq War and had active missile, biological weapon and nuclear weapon development programs. These provided Saddam with both a means of threatening and deterring within the region.

He also supported regional terrorists, but there is now little evidence he had operational control of terrorists acting outside the region. Saddam had attempted an assassination of former President George H. W. Bush.

The issue of non-national terrorism, however, took on new intensity after the 9-11 attack.

The Authorization for the Use of Military Force that gave the George W. Bush Administration its legal authority to attack Iraq did not specifically depend on a proven relationship between Iraq and 9-11, or a specific WMD threat to the United States. Both, however, were assumed.

Clinton Administration

After the Gulf War in 1991, United Nations Resolution 687 specified that Iraq must destroy all weapons of mass destruction (WMD). A large amount of WMDs were indeed destroyed under UN supervision (UNSCOM). Two no-fly zones were also instituted in northern and southern Iraq where Iraqi military aircraft were prohibited from flying. The United States and the United Kingdom (and France until 1998) patrolled these zones in, respectively, Operation NORTHERN WATCH and Operation SOUTHERN WATCH.

According to Richard Clarke, the U.S. found a press report, in April 1993, of an attempt, by the Iraqi intelligence service, to assassinate former President George H. W. Bush while he was visiting Kuwait. After confirmation by the CIA and FBI, a retaliatory missile strike was delivered in June of that year. Searches of the records of the Iraqi service after 2003 did not provide hard evidence of such a plot, but reporter Michael Isikoff, often skeptical about U.S claims about Iraq, agreed the records might have been destroyed.

The 1996 Khobar Towers bombing attacked forces, in Saudi Arabia, conducting SOUTHERN WATCH. This attack, however, appears to have been sponsored by Iran.

However, by late 1997, the the Clinton administration became dissatisfied with Iraq’s increased unwillingness to cooperate with UNSCOM inspectors. As a result of widespread expectations that the Clinton administration would decide to act with military force, the UN weapons inspectors were evacuated from the country. Iraq and the United Nations agreed to resume weapons inspections, but Saddam Hussein continued to obstruct UNSCOM teams throughout the remainder of 1998.

Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act in October 1998:

It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.

During the campaign, Bush had criticized President Clinton as too widely engaged in too many conflicts, acting as the “world’s policeman.” In the end, President Bush believed Clinton had lacked the necessary resolve to hold Saddam Hussein accountable for his failure to comply with UN resolutions. Bush also questioned America’s membership in NATO and involvement in UN diplomacy, which led some to believe he was moving towards a more isolationist view of foreign policy.

At the same time, Bush continued to favor executing the policy President Clinton had approved but not acted on: to actively proceed to effect regime change in Iraq.

In December 1998, President Clinton authorized military action against Iraq. Between December 16 and 19, 1998, US and UK missiles and aircraft attcked military and government targets in Iraq in Operation DESERT FOX. It was widely understood that the Clinton administration intended Operation Desert Fox to be not merely a campaign of punishment for Iraq’s failure to cooperate but also to weaken the regime in advance of orchestrated efforts to cause regime change. In that respect, Clinton administration policy was ineffective.

As a result of Iraq’s barring inspectors from the country, UNSCOM inspections of Iraq’s WMD effectively came to an end and in March 1999, the UN concluded that the UNSCOM mandate should end. In December 1999, the UN passed UN Security Council Resolution 1284, setting up UNMOVIC (United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission), headed by Swedish diplomat Hans Blix, which was to identify the remaining WMD arsenals in Iraq. Because UNMOVIC was banned from Iraq, the world had to rely on indirect evidence, most of which turned out to be false or inaccurate. Iraq policy during the remainder of the Clinton presidency was marked by a return to the containment regime that existed before Operation Desert Fox, but now without the benefit of direct intelligence.

Bush Administration Policy

Iraq had been a high priority for George W. Bush during the campaign, and even more so after the election. Before the inauguration, Dick Cheney sent a message to the outgoing Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, "We really need to get the president-elect briefed up on some things [including a serious]] discussion of Iraq." Bob Woodward put it that Bush said "I was not happy with our policy", but it was not yet a first priority.

When Bush and Clinton met in the days of transition, on December 19, 2000, Clinton said that his understanding of Bush's priorities, from reading his campaign statements, were national missile defense and Iraq. Bush said that was correct. Clinton suggested Bush consider other priorities, including al-Qaeda, Middle East diplomacy, North Korea, the nuclear competition between India and Pakistan, and, only then, Iraq. Bush did not respond. Cheney reinforced the already existing, but not well-known, policy of regime change in Iraq, specified by the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act.

On January 10, the new national security team was briefed on the no-fly programs, Operation SOUTHERN WATCH and Operation NORTHERN WATCH, and the graduated responses in effect if the Iraqis fired on U.S. aircraft. Several days later, they were briefed on CIA operations, including Iraq, but the tree major priorities were:

1. Osama bin Laden
2. Worldwide proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
3. Rise of the Chinese military

Iraq was not discussed in detail. There was, however, a meeting of "principals", chaired by Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Condaleeza Rice on February 5, which did include Cheney, Colin Powell, and Deputy Director of Central Intelligence John McLaughlin as a substitute for DCI George Tenet. This meeting was focused on Iraq policy. The decision was to reduce the number of no-fly sorties but to increase the intensity of response.

Policy before 9/11 Attacks

In the early days of the Bush administration, President George W. Bush expressed dissatisfaction with his predecessor’s foreign policy, in particular with regard to Iraq, which he considered weak and half-hearted.

In January 2002, Time Magazine reported that since President Bush took office he had been grumbling about finishing the job his father started.

On February 16, 2001 a number of US and UK warplanes attacked Baghdad, nearly two years before the start of the Iraq war. . An officer in the Joint Staff notified Rice, who notified the President. Rumsfeld was not told, and was furious, because the chain of command went through him. Rumsfeld told Woodward that as the first Secretary of Defense to serve again, many years later, he was determined to play it better and have near-total control. Rumsfeld, a college wrestler, said "If someone does not know how to wrestle, he will get hurt. If you don't know how to move, you will get a black eye. Same in Defense." Rumsfeld wanted the Administration to be "forward-leaning" rather than reactive.

Policy discussions continued at the Deputies level, where Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Powell's best friend, faced Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. One of the Iraq issues was Ahmed Chalabi, who was distrusted by State and CIA, but attractive to Defense.

Iraqi WMD and the War on Terror

At the top level, it does not appear that any top government leaders wanted to strike Iraq immediately after 9/11. It had been discussed; some of Rumsfeld's notes suggest raising the question with Wolfowitz. In a meeting on the 15th, none of the principals wanted to attack Iraq at first; Woodward reported Cheney said "If we go after Saddam Hussein, we lose our rightful place as good guy." Wolfowitz suspected Saddam but had no proof. Bush told Woodward, two years later, said it changed his attitude toward "Saddam Hussein's capability to create harm...all his terrible features became much more threatening. Keeping Saddam in a box looked less and less feasible to me."

Because Iraq was known to have had and used WMD in the past and because Iraq had blocked UN supervision of the destruction of its WMD, there remained great uncertainty about Iraq’s WMD arsenal. The Bush administration made Iraq of central importance to its national security policy. Combined with his isolationist foreign policy beliefs, President Bush started to formulate what has become known as the Bush Doctrine. The doctrine is most fully expressed in the administration’s National Security Strategy of the United States of America, published in September 2002. In it, the President states:

We will disrupt and destroy terrorist organizations by (…) direct and continuous action using all the elements of national and international power. Our immediate focus will be those terrorist organizations of global reach and any terrorist or state sponsor of terrorism which attempts to gain or use weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or their precursors.

The administration included Iraq in a series of states it considered acutely dangerous to world peace. In his 2002 State of the Union President Bush called Iraq part of an “axis of evil” together with Iran and North Korea. In this address the president also claimed the right to wage a preventive war, as distinct from a preemptive attack. Early in 2002, the administration began pressuring Iraq as well as the international community on greater compliance by Iraq with UN resolutions.

Priority

Not all the senior officials of the administration treated attacking Iraq as a high priority. Some believed there was no case, while others felt that Afghanistan needed a higher priority. While Colin Powell eventually argued for Iraqi WMD before the United Nations, he and his deputy, Richard Armitage, internally raised questions. Senators Joe Biden, Richard Lugar, and Chuck Hagel were drafting legislation to limit Bush's authority; Biden said he was getting support from Powell and Armitage.

On January 13, 2003, Bush met with Powell to tell him he had decided to go to war, "The inspections are not getting us there...I really think I'm going to have to do this." He asked Powell if he would or would not support the decision, and Powell agreed; Powell still would attempt to avoid war through diplomatic channels. Bush told Chief of Staff Andy Card of the meeting, and Card believed that Powell had false hope of avoiding war.

Goals

Bush's vision was not simply ousting Saddam, but creating a democracy. This had been the goal of the Project for the New American Century in its 2000 policy paper, "Rebuilding America's Defenses".; the concept involves using preventive war, if necessary, to install democracies; it assumes societies will accept democracies. According to Bob Woodward, Bush had said,

We've got an obligation to go stand up a democracy. We can't go get some former [Iraqi] general and say, Okay, now you're the dictator in Iraq. We've got to fundamentally change the place. And we've got to give the Iraqi people a chance at those fundamental values we believe in.

Cheney thought that too many people in the State Department, including Powell, did not support Bush's vision. Cheney, therefore, tried to keep control of the implementation, generally in concert with Rumsfeld, his protege and bureaucratic opponent of Powell. While Rice probably was personally closer to Bush than the others, she was not as strong an infighter.

Strategic planning

Not all the planning dates may seem in proper sequence; this is not anything suspicious as some of the work was already in progress as part of routine staff activity, while other work was started by informal communications.

Even before the 9-11 attacks, regime change in Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a high priority of the George W. Bush Administration. According to This is not to suggest that previous Administrations had not been considering it, and had been steadily carrying out air attacks in support of the no-fly zones (Operation SOUTHERN WATCH and Operation NORTHERN WATCH), as well as air strikes (Operation DESERT FOX). Nevertheless, the priorities changed.

Another change, in the Bush Administration, was an emphasis on military transformation, or using different approaches than "fighting the last war". Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was a constant advocate of transformation, emphasizing higher technology, more flexibility, and smaller forces, rather than the large heavy forces that were optimized to fight the Soviet Union. This was especially true after early operations in the Afghanistan War (2001-), where large U.S. ground forces were not used, but instead extensive special operations working with Afghan forces and using air power. Every war is different, however, and the reality in Afghanistan is there was an existing civil war and substantial indigenous resistance forces.

Assumed links between 9/11 and Iraq

Late in the evening of 9/11, the President had been told, by CIA chief George Tenet, that there was strong linkage to al-Qaeda. On September 12, President Bush directed counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke to review all information and reconsider if Saddam was involved in 9/11.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz sent Rumsfeld a memo, on September 17, called "Preventing More Events"; it argued that there was a better than 1 in 10 chance that Saddam was behind 9/11. He had been told, by the CIA and FBI, that there was clear linkage to al-Qaeda, but said the CIA lacked imagination. On September 19, 2001, the Defense Advisory Board, chaired by Richard Perle, met for two days. Iraq was the focus. Among the speakers was Ahmed Chalabi, a controversial Iraqi exile who argued for an approach similar to the not-yet-executed approach to Afghanistan: U.S. air and other support to insurgent Iraqis.

One reason Wolfowitz pushed for attacking Iraq was that he worried about what was then assumed would be a large American force in the treacherous terrain of Afghanistan. Since he believed, although without specific evidence, that there was between a 10 and 50 percent chance that Saddam was involved in 9/11, he thought Iraq, a brittle regime, might be the easier target.

On the same day, Bush had told Tenet that he wanted links between Iraq and 9/11 explored.

While Tenet agreed there was a connection between al-Qaeda and 9-11, and that Saddam was supporting Palestinian and European terrorists, he said that the CIA could not make a firm connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq. While CIA continued its analysis, it accepted a briefing from a Pentagon group, under Douglas Feith, to share its ideas about an Iran-9/11 connection. This was presented at CIA headquarters on August 14, 2002. According to Tenet, while Feith's team felt they had found things, in raw reports, that CIA had missed, they were not using the skills of professional intelligence analysts to consider other than the desired conclusion. His attention immediately was caught by a naval reservist working for Feith, Tina Shelton, who said the relationship between al-Qaeda and Iraq was an "open and shut case...no further analysis is required." A slide said there was a "mature, symbiotic relationship", which Tenet did not believe was supported. Pre-9/11 coordination between al-Qaeda operative Mohammed Atta, in Prague, with the Iraqi intelligence service had become likely; Tenet described this association, which was later disproved, He called aside VADM Jake Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and telling him he worked for Rumsfeld and Tenet, and was to remove himself from Feith's policy channels. Later, Tenet learned that the Feith team was presenting to the White House, NSC, and Office of the Vice President.

It appeared a matter of faith in the White House, especially with Cheney, that a link existed between al-Qaeda and 9/11, and Iraq War policy assumed it. A February 2007 report by the Department of Defense Inspector General said no laws were broken, but Feith's group bypassed Intelligence Community safeguards On June 1, 2009, Cheney agreed that the evidence shows no direct link, but the invasion was still warranted due to Saddam's general support of terror.

Reviews by Rumsfeld

CENTCOM had a contingency plan for a new war with Iraq, designated OPLAN 1003-98. It assumed Iraq would launch an attack as it had done in 1990. Rumsfeld had OPLAN 1003-98 presented by LTG Greg Newbold, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in late 2001. Rumsfeld believed the plan, which called for up to 500,000 troops, was far too large; Rumsfeld thought that no more than 125,000 would be needed. Newbold later said he regretted he did not say, at the time,

Mr. Secretary, if you try to put a number on a mission like this, you may cause enormous mistakes. Give the military the task, give the military what you would like to see them do, and let them come up with it. I was the junior military man in the room, but I regret not saying it

Informally, Franks had called it "DESERT STORM II", using three corps as in 1991, but to force collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime. On November 27, he told the Secretary of Defense that he had a new concept, but that detailed planning would be needed. Franks told Rumsfeld, during a videoconference on December 4, 2001, that it was a stale, troop-heavy concept. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) Dick Myers, Vice CJCS Peter Pace, and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith were on the Washington end. Franks intended to ignore Feith, who he described as a "master of the off-the-wall question that rarely had relevance to operational problems."

Franks proposed three basic options:

• ROBUST OPTION: Every country in the region providing support; operations from Turkey in the north, Jordan and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in the south, air and naval bases in the Gulf states, with support bases in Egypt, Central Asia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. This would allow near-simultaneous ground and air operations.
• REDUCED OPTION: A lesser number of countries supporting would mean a sequential air and ground operation.
• UNILATERAL OPTION: If launching forces from Kuwait, U.S. ships, and U.S. aircraft from distant bases, the air and ground operations would be "absolutely sequential" due to the lack of infrastructure to bring in all ground forces at once.

Franks wrote that during the Afghanistan planning, he had developed a technique that presented, visiually, the tasks to be done ("lines of operation") and the country or resource that would be affected by these tasks ("slices"). It is not clear when he first drew this visual aid for Iraq, although it was part of the December 12 briefing to Rumsfeld; the version reproduced in his book was dated December 8.

Franks model, from sketch dated December 8, 2001

In this model, operational fires are strikes by aircraft, artillery, and missiles. Special Operations Forces operations are principally special reconnaissance and direct action (military); unconventional warfare involves both military and CIA guerillas. Information operations, as a line, includes psychological operations, electronic warfare, deception, and computer network operations; politicomilitary and civil-military operations are doctrinally part of information operations but are shown separately here. RG and SRG are, respectively, the Iraqi Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard elite combat formations.

Rumsfeld liked the presentation. He asked Franks what came next, and Franks said improving the forces in the region. Rumsfeld cautioned him that the President had not made the go-to-war decision, and Franks clarified that he referred to preparation:

• Triple the size of the ground forces now in Kuwait
• Increase the number of carrier strike groups in the area
• Improve infrastructure
• Discuss contingency requirements with allies

Franks said the activities could look like routine training. He pointed out that an additional 100,000 troops and 250 aircraft would not fit into Kuwait, and more basing would be needed. Rumsfeld urged that it would have to be done faster "more quickly than the military usually works". The next step was a face-to-face briefing on December 27.

Rumsfeld calls for new planning

Early warning of Rumsfeld's desires came to LTC Thomas Reilly, chief of planning for Third United States Army, still based at Fort McPherson in the U.S. While Third Army would become the Coalition Forces Land Component of CENTCOM, it had not yet been so designated, whenn Reilly received the notice on September 13, 2001. It used the term POLO STEP, the code word for Franks' concept of operations.

On October 9, 2002, GEN Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff of the Army, told staff officers "From today forward the main effort of the US Army must be to prepare for war with Iraq".

Special operations

George Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence, had a major role in the decision to go to war, but also how it was to be fought. In the mid-nineties, CIA had found that a first coup attempt simply had gotten Iraqi CIA assets killed. The lesson learned from Afghanistan was that "covert action, effectively coupled with a larger military plan, could succeed. What we were telling the vice president that day [in early 2002] was that CIA could not go it alone in toppling Saddam...in Iraq, unlike in Afghanistan, CIA's role was to provide information to the military...assess the political environment...coordinate the efforts of indigenous networks of supporters for U.S. military advances..." In February 2002, the Agency re-created the Northern Iraq Liaison Element (NILE) teams to work with the Kurds. Later, CIA officers worked to encourage surrender, but this soon proved impractical; the U.S. forces were so small that the prisoners would have outnumbered the invaders.

Again as with Afghanistan, the CIA would make the initial political contacts with the resistance groups:

• Kurdistan Democratic Party headed by Massoud Barzani
• Patriotic Union of Kurdistan led by Jalal Talabani

In July 2002, a CIA team drove from Turkey to a base at Sulaymaniyah, 125 miles into Iraq from the Turkish border, and a few miles from the Iranian border. Turkey had been told that they were there primarily for collecing intelligence on Ansar al-Islam, a radical group opposed to the secular Kurdish parties, allied with al-Qaeda, and experimenting with poisons. It was based at Sargat, 25 miles from his base, at a location called Khurmal. The team was helped by Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

The supplementary assignment for the team, beyond Anwar al-Islam, was for covert action to overthrow Saddam. They had been ordered to penetrate the regime's military, intelligence, and security services. Confusing the situation was that they had Turkish escorts. Even with difficulties, they established liaison with a well-connected religious group, which access to the inner circles of Saddam's organizations, and irritation with the PUK. Their reports were to be identified as DBROCKSTARS. By February 2003, the informants were providing significant information, including communications from Saddam's Special Security Organization. Air defense installations were confirmed and bombed. 87 secure satellite telephones were made available, but, probably in early March, one asset was captured; 30 of the assets never reported again.

Franks also intensively explored the potential for military special operations, both direct action by U.S. personnel, and, as in Afghanistan, using native resistance elements. In particular, it was agreed that United States Army Special Forces teams could lead up to 10,000 Kurds in guerilla warfare, a number large enough to be effective but not large enough to threaten Turkish sensitivity about spillover of Kurdish nationalism into Turkey. The usually antagonistic KDP and PUK worked with Special Forces against units of Saddam Hussein's military at the start of the war, although This was later to result in partitioning Kurdistan into KDP and PUK areas, although there eventually was a unified Kurdistan Regional Government by 2008.

On March 15, a Kurdish group, with CIA technical assistance, derailed an Iraqi troop train by blowing up the rainroad tracks. There were several dozen harassing attacks in Kurdistan, and a march by 20,000 protesters on Ba'ath Party headquarters in Kirkuk.

Theater/operational planning

In the Gulf War, there was no common commander for all land forces; GEN H Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. gave direct orders to the U.S. Army and Marine unites. Experience both then and in WWII showed the need for a land forces commander.

In November 2001, the commander of United States Central Command, Tommy Franks designated Third United States Army as the CENTCOM Land Forces Component Command (CFLCC). LTG David McKiernan took command of Third Army in September 2002. According to MG Henry "Hank" Stratman, deputy commanding general for support of Third Army, eventual combat with Iraq was assumed when he took his post in the summer of 2001, even before the 9-11 attack.

With the recommendation of Newt Gingrich, COL Doug Macgregor prepared a briefing, which went to Runsfeld, which went against the conventional wisdom that large forces would be needed to defeat Saddam. Macgregor geve the briefing to Gingrich on December 31, 2001. It advocated a quick strike into Baghdad by three brigade-sized forces, followed by 15,000 light infantry forces to maintain order.

Macgregor was sent to brief GEN Tommy Franks, commanding U.S. Central Command, on January 12, 2002. After Macgregor briefed Franks, Franks responded, "Attack from a cold start. I agree. Straight at Baghdad. Small and fast. I agree. Simultaneous air and ground. Probably, but not sure yet." After his return to Washington, Macgregor decided that Franks had given him a polite reception as a courtesy to Rumsfeld; Macgregor wrote a memo of the meeting, which Gingrich forwarded to Dick Cheney and other political contacts. Franks' planner, MG Gene Renuart, argued to Rumsfeld that Macgregor's plan was too light.

Detailed planning by CENTCOM began while active combat was ongoing in Afghanistan, in December 2002. At the time, GEN Eric Shinseki, then Chief of Staff of the Army, testified to Congress that the number of troops approved by Rumsfeld was inadequate. Shinseki, however, was not in the chain of command for operational deployment. Although the Chief of Staff is the senior officer of the United States Army, he is responsible for developing doctrine and preparing forces for use by the combatant commanders.

GEN Franks briefed Secretary Rumsfeld on February 1, with two alternative plans. The first, informally called "DESERT STORM II", repeated the sequential approach of Operation DESERT STORM:

• Phase I: buildup of forces before invasion, with increased air strikes in the no-fly zones and early staging of special operations forces; prestaging of approximately 160,000 troops
• Phase II: Air-centric operations of approximately 3 weeks, preparing the battlefield for the major ground forces attacks
• Phase III: Major ground forces attack with approximately 105,000 troops
• Phase IV: Occupation and reconstruction

The alternative, preferred by Franks, was called RUNNING START, and was chosen as the next planning point. It moved Special Operations preparation into Phase I, made the air and ground phases essentially simultaneous (i.e., merged into a combined Phase III of decisive combat operations), and then a reconstruction phase; the phases were not renumbered.

In the next review, additional alternatives were introduced, still assuming some level of simultaneous air and ground attack, as distinct from the separate air phase of Operation DESERT STORM. They varied with the number of troops required:

• GENERATED START took the most troops, and was considered impractical almost from the beginning; Saddam had learned not to give the U.S. time to prepare. GENERATED START assumed the U.S. would launch an attack only when it had all forces in theater, which would take the longest time and be inflexible.
• RUNNING START option, which assumed launching combat operations with minimum forces and continuing to deploy forces and employ them as they arrived. The final option stemmed from wargaming the running start.
• HYBRID PLAN, which evolved from war-gaming RUNNING START. reflected an assessment that the minimum force required reached a higher number of troops than envisioned in the running start option.

The selected plan was a compromise solution between HYBRID and RUNNING SSTART, with more forces than the latter but fewer than the former. RUNNING START offered operational surprise and less demand for synchronization than HYBRID PLAN.

Critical factors

Several key factors had the potential to override any plan. First, the Iraqi oil infrastructure had to be protected from sabotage, as its revenue would be key in reconstruction. The military and CIA had different information as to Saddam's intentions; as a practical matter, the oil facilities were kept under close surveillance as the attack grew closer.

Second, Saddam Hussein was the key to Iraqi resistance. Ideally, he would leave the country. If, however, he could be located and killed by air attack, that also would change priorities.

V Corps

While V Corps was stationed in Germany, all plans assumed it would be the heavy striking force in any attack against southern Iraq. Planning for such an attack had long been one of its responsibilities. Planning intensity intensified in April 2002. It deployed to Poland and conducted Exercise VICTORY STRIKE, a training exercise with Iraq in mind. Under CFLCC, a command exercise, LUCKY WARRIOR, in Kuwait, involved V Corps and I MEF. Next, the annual CENTCOM exercise, INTERNAL LOOK, added practice for the Joint Force Air Component Command (JFACC), while Special Operations Command for CENTCOM (SOCCENT) formally established two Joint Special Operations Task Forces (JSOTF): JSOTF-North and JSOTF-West. It assumed I MEF with part of its air wing, 1st Marine Division with two regimental combat teams, and V Corps with all of 3rd ID, an attack helicopter regiment, and part of the corps artillery.

I MEF

U.S. Marine planning had, since the Second World War, focused on relatively small, quick-response operations from the sea, typically by brigade-sized Marine Expeditionary Units. Their Vietnam War experience holding ground in the northernmost part of South Vietnam was unusual. They had fought a large-scale operation in Operation DESERT SABRE, which was closer to the WWII experience of multidivisional attack.

Nevertheless, the first Operational Planning Team, held in March 2002, assumed that the I MEF effort would support large-scale Army movement. Its concept was that the Marines would send "Task Force South" to move from Kuwait, capture Jalibah Airport, and stage from there to capture Qalat Sikar and An Kut airfields closer to Baghdad. They would then secure southern Iraq, while the Army brought in resources for the main attack.

This was too deliberate and logistics-intense for Rumsfeld's "RUNNING START" model. Counterproposals were sent back to plan for single Army and Marine brigades to start individual advances. I MEF countered that it was a better overall headquarters than V Corps, since it was experienced in controlling air operations where an Army corps was not. In the planning of July 2002, it was tentatively accepted that I MEF might indeed be the main headquarters. The U.S. Marines also welcomed the participation of British Royal Marines.

The Marines also needed to coordinate with Special Operations forces.

Special Operations forces

Special Operations had played a major and effective part in Afghanistan, and were visible to Rumsfeld and Franks. As in Afghanistan, they divided into "white" (i.e., acknowledged) and "black" (i.e., covert forces).

The main white operations were 5th Special Forces Group in the south, under COL John Mulholland, and 10th Special Forces Group in the north under COL Michael Repass. Repass was promoted to command a joint special operations task force containing the two groups; COL Charlie Cleveland replaced him in the 10th. They reported both to CENTCOM and Task Force 20.

Larger, however, was Task Force 20, secretly located on Saudi soil at Ar'ar, commanded by MG Dell Dailey, who was also the overall head of Joint Special Operations Command. TF 20 included Delta Force, the 75th Ranger Regiment, MC-130 COMBAT TALON and other large Air Force Special Operations Command aircraft and helicopters from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. In an unprecedented move, the task force had been supplemented with a conventional paratroop battalion from the 82nd Airborne Division.

One of the key, although controversial, contingency missions for TF 20 was seizure of Baghdad International Airport, especially if the Saddam Hussein regime collapsed. The latter was always at the minds of the senior civilian leaders, but contingency planning for leadership collapse went back to the Second World War: Operation RANKIN CASE C. In WWII, that indeed was an airborne mission. In this war, however, the 3rd Infantry Division staff felt they could do the job more efficiently and with less risk.

Delta and supporting TF20 units, however, had other missions.

The Turkish front

Relations among Turkey, the Iraqi government, the Kurds of Iraq, separatist Kurds in Turkey, and, to a lesser extent, Kurds in neighboring countries has always been sensitive.

Using the 4th Infantry Division (U.S.) (4ID), the most technically advanced in the U.S. Army, planners wanted to launch a northern front from Turkey, but Turkish public opinion was opposed. On March 1, the Turkish Parliament refused to consent to any U.S. operations, including overflights by cruise missiles or aircraft, search and rescue, much less ground troops. At this point, the 4 ID was already in ships off the Turkish coast. Colin Powell had considered the need for a northern front overrated. If there were no northern front and Iraqi forces moved south, that would simply make them better targets. He did think Rumsfeld liked the idea as part of keeping the southern force smaller.

Eventually, Turkey gave some limited and low-visibility access, including overflights by aircraft and missiles, and operations by the 10th Special Forces Group, under COL Charlie Cleveland. On March 22, it flew to the Bashur and Sulaymaniyah areas in the Turkish zones of northern Iraq, using a circuitous, low-altitude, and dangerous path over the Sinai Peninsula, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Turkey did allow one damaged MC-130 COMBAT TALON to make an emergency landing in Turkey. The 10th Group eventually raised 70,000 Kurdish fighters that interfered with the southern movement of Iraqi Army units.

McKiernan, in February, had recommended to Franks essentially the same thing as did Powell: send the 4th ID to the south. If the Turks changed their position, units could always be sent there. Franks, however, thought that keeping a northern threat would keep the Iraqis distracted. He believed that the Iraqis focused on the 4th ID as the main invasion force; even when its ships moved south through the Suez Canal, Arab media reports assumed that it would land in Jordan and attack from the west. By not committing the division to the south, he believed he could maintain a diversion.

Phase IV Planning

Before a decision to invade Iraq had been made, the U.S. State Department began a study, in October 2001, for post-Saddam Hussein transition in Iraq. The project was headed by Thomas S. Warrick. Thirty-three total meetings were held primarily in Washington from July 2002 through early April 2003.

In October 2002, the Defense Department did not create a postwar planning organization, because it might give a message that they were not trying to avoid war. No one organization was in charge. The Joint Chiefs, in December, created Joint Task Force 4 (JTF 4) to do more planning.

Feith and Hadley went to Rumsfeld about Phase IV planning, and proposed that it be in Defense, not CENTCOM and not State. Powell did not object, thinking Defense would have the people. The policy recommendation became National Security Presidential Directive 24, signed on January 20, 2003.

Frank Miller, NSC staff director for defense, had chaired, since August 2002, an Executive Sterering Group that, to his surprise, had to coordinate offices inside the Department of Defense as well as across government. Specifically, he found the budget office, Feith's policy office, the Joint Staff and CENTCOM were not talking. He observed that many of the Defense staff liked to conceptualize, but, as he told Rice and Hadley, "They don't do implementation." His personal contacts told him that internal communications were terrible; the Joint Staff was afraid of Feith and Rumsfeld and did not want to be interfering with Franks.

On March 12, Douglas Feith said the Defense Department planned to downsize the armed forces and create a depoliticized professional force, responsible to civilian control, of 3 to 5 divisions. The special organizations such as the Fedayeen, Republican Guard, Special Republican Guard, and Special Security Organization would be shut down.

He planned to have the interim government run prison camps for formations of Iraqi units, but "not immediately demobilize all the people and put them on the street, but use them as a reconstruction force." In his presentation to the National Security Council, he did not assume that the army would simply go home.

During the planning phase, Rumsfeld told Franks that LTG Jay Garner would be responsible for reconstruction, reporting to CENTCOM. Garner would head the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.

A number of retired generals have been highly critical of the plan, focused especially on what they considered the unrealistic goals of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. They include Paul Eaton, who headed training of the Iraqi military in 2003-2004; former chiefs of United States Central Command (Anthony Zinni and Joseph Hoar); Greg Newbold, Director of the Joint staff from 2000 to 2002; John Riggs, a planner who had criticized personnel levels, in public, while on duty; division commanders Charles Swannack and John Batiste.

Major combat phase

While the start of major combat is often stated as March 20, 2003, operations actually had started well before then. Special operations forces were in the country, and there had been a gradual intensification of bombing under the "no-fly" programs, Operation NORTHERN WATCH and Operation SOUTHERN WATCH.

A "running start" had been planned, and it was fully expected that the plan would alter with events, as it is a truism no plan survives contact with the enemy. Both sides did consider Baghdad the key center of gravity, but both made incorrect assumptions about the enemy's plans. The U.S. was still sensitive over the casualties taken by a too-light raid in Operation GOTHIC SERPENT in Mogadishu, Somalia. As a result, the initial concept of operations was to surround Baghdad with tanks, while airborne and air assault infantry cleared it block-by-block. Iraq, in turn, both assumed a siege of Iraq, but, unknown to the Coalition, expected to use irregulars to harass the supply lines of advancing forces.

The Coalition did not expect to be able to reach Baghdad in a single bound; there was always an intention to make entry, regroup, and then make a final assault. Baghdad was not the only target; there were urgent needs to secure the oilfields against destruction, and to take control of the southern port of Umm Qasr. Kurds in the north were already semi-autonomous and wanted to take action; the relations between the Kurds in Iraq and Kurds in Turkey was extremely sensitive.

Baghdad was effectively in U.S. hands by April 9. Deputy CENTCOM commander Mike DeLong said three factors made looting much worse than expected:

• Saddam opened his prison doors and let prisoners free; these were primarily "ordinary decent criminals" rather than dissenters; it added 30,000-50,000 outlaws to the confusion
• The "resignation" of the Iraqi police, which DeLong said was the most unexpected. He is unsure that the information operations campaign urging the military to disarm also affected the police
• The dissolution of the Iraqi army, both by its soldiers and as a political decision, putting large numbers of unemployed young men onto the streets.

Interim Military Government

On April 16, Franks declared the end of major combat, and ordered the withdrawal of the major U.S. combat units. The CENTCOM forward headquarters in Qatar and I MEF were to be withdrawn. U.S. forces would be reduced to 30,000 by the end of August, which the U.S. believed was adequate. While the fighting was in progress, he asked for a provisional government to be established, and LTG (ret) Jay Garner was named, and created the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (OHRA). Garner had experience running humanitarian operations in Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. Garner said that he always considered himself in a temporary role. He said that Franks had been promised a large number of constabulary from other nations; his immediate goal, before debaathification, was "...setting up to pay the civil servants and the police and the pensioners."

CFLCC was redesignated Combined Joint Task Force 7 (CJTF-7) on May 1, but McKiernan's headquarters was replaced by V Corps, then under LTG Wallace. MG Ricardo Sanchez, then commanding 1st Armored Division (U.S.) in Germany, was promoted to LTG and given command of V Corps. According to Sanchez, Franks had not specified a specific Phase IV role for CENTCOM or V Corps.

Franks and DeLong recommended that only the senior Ba'ath Party leadership be blacklisted, on the assumption, much as with the Soviet Communist Party, that Party members ran most of the basic government services. Nevertheless, the Party was dissolved on May 12, and CENTCOM was faced with the job of creating a new civilian infrastructure. Garner said that he had protested full debaathication to Bremer, who said "These are the directions I have. I have directions to execute this..."

In the PBS interview, Garner's interviewer asked him if his superiors wanted him simply prepare for Chalabi, a neoconservative favorite, to take over. Garner denied this was Rumsfeld's plan, quoting him as saying "I don't have a candidate. The best man will rise." Garner did say that Chalabi "certainly he was the darling of Doug Feith and [former Defense Policy Board Chairman] Richard Perle and probably ...Paul Wolfowitz, perhaps (Vice-President) Dick Cheney. I'm not sure." He said that he was prepared to bring back the Army, "By the 15th of May, we had a large number of Iraqi army located that were ready to come back, and the Treasury guys were ready to pay them. When the order came out to disband, [it] shocked me, because I didn't know we were going to do that. All along I thought we were bringing back the Iraqi army. ... Why we didn't do that, I don't know."

As the senior official, Garner was replaced in a month, on May 7, by L. Paul Bremer of the U.S. Department of State, although Bremer took control 9 days later. Bremer established the Coalition Provisional Authority, which was not well coordinated with the military.

Transitional government and insurgency

The Coalition Provisional Authority took control on 16 May 2003, effectively taking over from ORHA. Its Regulation Number 1 designated CENTCOM for military support.

The headquarters for foreign military units in Iraq is Multi-national Force-Iraq (MNF-I). On an overall basis, it reports to the United States Central Command, which also commands the U.S. troops in MNF-I. Other units report to their home nations, although there are a number of non-US commanders from the MNF-I Deputy Commanding General, and Australian, British and Polish commanders at division level.

Full authority passed to the elected Iraqi government on 30 June 2009.