1.

MORE DISSENT IN PENTAGON RANKS OVER IRAQ WAR
By Jim Lobe

Inter Press Service
January 11, 2005

http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=4328

For the second time in as many months, a report by a key Pentagon advisory group has implicitly taken the administration of President George W. Bush to task for major failures in pre-war planning, particularly with respect to Iraq.

A 220-page report quietly released late last month by the Defense Science Board (DSB) concludes that the administration clearly underestimated the number of troops and cost required to achieve its political objectives in Iraq.

The report, entitled "Transition to and from Hostilities," explicitly contradicts another key assumption of top Pentagon officials before the Iraq war that Washington could quickly reduce its troop presence after ousting the regime of President Saddam Hussein.

"[W]e believe that more people are needed in-theater for stabilization and reconstruction operations than for combat operations," asserts the report, which based its conclusions on a study of U.S. military interventions over the last 15 years.

Moreover, the DSB task force, which interviewed scores of current and former U.S. officials with experience in war-fighting, counter-insurgency, peacekeeping and reconstruction, found that stabilization of "disordered societies, with ambitious goals involving lasting cultural change, may require 20 troops per 1,000 indigenous people."

Washington currently has 150,000 troops in Iraq, a presence that translates into only six troops for every 1,000 Iraqis -- far short of the roughly 500,000 troops the task force indicates would be necessary in Iraq. A 5 to 1,000 ratio may be sufficient to stabilize "relatively ordered" societies for which the U.S. is not seeking to achieve "ambitious goals," such, as presumably, implanting a democratic, pro-Western government.

"The United States will sometimes have ambitious goals for transforming a society in a conflicted environment," according to the report. "Those goals may well demand 20 troops per 1,000 inhabitants . . . working for five to eight years. Given that we may have three to five stabilization and reconstruction activities underway concurrently, it is clear that very substantial resources are needed to accomplish national objectives."

The report also concludes that the State Department is much better equipped to organize and oversee reconstruction operations than the Bush administration, which had given the job in Iraq initially to the Pentagon, had recognized. It calls for the Defense Department to support substantially increased resources for the State Department to meet that mandate.

The DSB consists of volunteer experts -- mostly from the private sector -- chosen by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to advise him on key issues on which they have special expertise. In many cases, Rumsfeld follows its recommendations.

Indeed, following the submission of its originally classified report last fall, Rumsfeld issued a directive instructing the military's regional commanders to "develop and maintain" new war plans specifically designed to address stabilization and reconstruction issues, another major recommendation highlighted in the report.

The latest report follows another on "strategic communication" by the DSB made public in November. That study also challenged a number of core assumptions about the administration's "war on terrorism," especially its insistence that radical Islamists "hate" the United States because of its "freedom" and democratic practices, rather than concrete U.S. policies in the region, such as its staunch support for Israel against the Palestinians, the invasion of Iraq, and its backing for Arab autocrats.

Warning that Washington was losing the propaganda war to the Islamists, because of its perceived "arrogance, opportunism, and double standards," the report argued that the administration's insistence that it wants to bring democracy to Islamic societies was "seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy" based on a faulty assumption that Arabs, in particular, are "like the enslaved people of the old Communist world."

The latest report does not specifically address either the "war on terrorism" or the situation in Iraq, but its conclusions are certain to fuel the ongoing controversy over whether Pentagon civilians led by Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith effectively "lost" the Iraq war by ignoring warnings from the State Department, the intelligence community and the uniformed military that stabilizing the country would require many more troops than they wished to deploy.

Before the war, the Pentagon civilians, who were backed by Vice President Dick Cheney, sought to exclude the State Department or the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from postwar planning and operations largely because of their belief that the two agencies would promote Sunni Arab nationalists in the place of Saddam Hussein. They, on the other hand, supported exile leader Ahmed Chalabi, a secular Shi'ite who, they believed, was committed to a thorough de-Ba'athification of Iraq and staunch alignment with the U.S. and even Israel.

They also believed Chalabi's repeated assurances that U.S. troops would be greeted as "liberators" by virtually all Iraqis, rather than as "occupiers" and so planned to quickly draw down the 140,000 troops who invaded the country to only about 30,000 by early 2005.

In one particularly notorious case, Wolfowitz publicly ridiculed estimates by the Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, that "several hundred thousand" troops at least would be required to stabilize the country.

Rumsfeld, who had downgraded a special Army institute devoted to peacekeeping and stabilization shortly after taking over the Pentagon, also wanted to make Iraq a model for a "transformed" military that, with massive firepower, precision weapons, superior technology and mobility, could quickly overwhelm the enemy.

While the military objective was indeed quickly achieved, the absence of a sufficiently large force, let alone one experienced in peacekeeping and stabilization operations, created a major security vacuum that was filled over the following months by an insurgency which, according to the head of Iraqi intelligence last week, has grown to some 30,000 full-time fighters backed by 200,000 supporters.

Instead of focusing on Iraq, the DSB task force examined U.S. combat operations since the end of the Cold War and their aftermath and found that more troops not only were required for stabilization than for combat, but that stabilization operations have typically lasted for five to eight years.

The Pentagon, according to the report, "has not yet embraced stabilization and reconstruction operations as an explicit mission with the same seriousness as combat operations. This mindset must be changed."

In addition, it went on, the Pentagon had failed to establish a strong working relationship with the State Department, whose regional expertise, knowledge of culture, diplomatic skills, and contacts with international agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were critical to achieving success in post-conflict situations.

"The orchestration of all instruments of U.S. power in peacetime might obviate the need for many military excursions to achieve political objectives; or, failing that, at least better prepare us to achieve political objectives during stabilization and reconstruction operations," the report notes in an apparent critique of the both the administration's rush to war and the Pentagon's postwar performance.

--Jim Lobe, works as Inter Press Service's correspondent in the Washington, D.C., bureau. He has followed the ups and downs of neo-conservatives since well before their rise in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

2.

From TRANSITION TO AND FROM HOSTILITIES

Defense Science Board
December 2004
Pages 165-72

http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/2004-12-DSB_SS_Report_Final.pdf

CHAPTER 7: SUMMARY AND KEY RECOMMENDATIONS

Some Important Issues Not Thoroughly Addressed

• Enlisting allies and coalition partners
- For peacetime planning and practicing
- With very different resources and skills

• Building a more capable government, not just a more capable DOD
- Congressional attention is aligned by department, not by pan-government functions like stabilization
- Most departments and agencies are not set up to respond to unanticipated demands with supplemental funding

• Describing the process of employing all instruments of U.S. power to support the prevention of conflict as well as the conflict and post-conflict period

• Harmonizing homeland security with overseas missions

Although the scope of our study was broad, there were important subjects we did not address, or we addressed only superficially as the above figure shows.

It is particularly worth highlighting that, despite good intentions, the structure and operation of the Congress, with its numerous committees and staff, is poorly structured to address the kind of foreign policy challenges and requirements we have addressed in this study. Transforming the executive branch without also transforming the Congress will likely prove ineffective, or at least frustrating. We have recommended procedural change rather than irksome reorganization as the way to improve functioning in the executive branch, and we believe that the same principle might apply to the Congress.

Constant Themes

• Anticipate the long-lead capabilities needed for the future
- Human resources: linguists, analysts, case officers
- Building a brand: strategic communication

• Orchestrate and plan, don’t just coordinate
- Clearly assign roles, responsibilities, accountability, and resources to departments and agencies
- Pan-government operational plans and pan-Intelligence Community supporting intelligence plans
- Transcending peacetime, large-scale hostilities, stabilization and reconstruction

• Adequately resource: the alternative is more expensive
- Service skill sets for stabilization and reconstruction (e.g., MPs, civil affairs)
- State Department capabilities for planning, exercising, deploying
- Intelligence Community capabilities for all-source analysis, field activities, planning, exercising
- Strategic communication

• Sustain our attention
- Focus on issues before crises occur
- Maintain contingency capabilities: planning, exercising, deep expertise

Certain leitmotifs have pervaded our study:

-- Certain critical capabilities require preparation years in advance -- the United States cannot succeed at the last minute.

-- Coordination, the traditional interagency currency in the government, is necessary but insufficient for orchestration and success.

-- Shortchanging fundamental capabilities and preparation actually raises costs -- significantly.

-- Continuous, vigilant attention and action is the best way to be poised to face global surprise.

Mr. Secretary, we respectfully recommend . . .

. . . that you use your authority to . . .

• Direct the regional combatant commanders to maintain a portfolio of contingency operational campaign plans
- Spanning peacetime, war, stabilization and reconstruction
- For countries ripe and important

• In support of these plans
- Direct your intelligence organs to maintain a portfolio of contingency intelligence campaign plans
- Direct the Services to reshape and rebalance their forces to provide a stabilization and reconstruction capability, meeting as well as possible the criteria we have proposed for an effective S&R capability
- Direct OSD, the Joint Staff, and the Services to make language and cultural capability part of the normal readiness assessment and requirements process

We strongly urge the secretary of defense to use his authorities to direct the regional combatant commanders to broaden the aperture of their disciplined planning process to encompass not only combat, as now, but the peacetime employment of military instruments as well as the department’s capabilities for stabilization and emergency reconstruction.

For that expanded planning activity to have meaning, the secretary should instruct his intelligence organs to maintain, and execute, a portfolio of concomitant intelligence campaign plans supporting the aforementioned regional combatant commanders’ operations plans.

Executing the stabilization and reconstruction operational elements of campaign plans will require vastly expanded and improved stabilization and emergency reconstitution capabilities, and we ask the secretary to instruct the services to ensure those capabilities are available to the regional combatant commanders. In planning for the provision of those capabilities, the services need to perform quantitative analysis of their likely expected needs with at least the same veracity as they do for combat force structure.

The secretary should also direct the services to take skills in languages and cultures as seriously as they take skills in combat; otherwise the nation may win the war but will surely “lose the peace.”

Mr. Secretary, we respectfully recommend . . .

. . . that you use your authority to . . .

• Accelerate the transformation of the Defense HUMINT Service to provide sustained coverage

• Direct DIA to revitalize our collection, analysis, and use of open source information

• Direct your intelligence organs to substantially improve all-source analysis
- Address the gamut of selection and recruitment, training, equipping, and rewarding allsource analysts
- Expand the role of senior analysts so as to shape collection and classification
- Perform analysis in a problem-centered manner
- Ensure that analysts are “born joint” so that analysis is aligned with intelligence questions rather than organizational divisions

• Ensure adequate attention and resources are devoted to close-in, terrestrial sensing, tagging, and tracking so as to find the targets most important in asymmetric warfare

The foundation of the aforementioned planning, and operational execution, is intelligence, information, knowledge, and understanding.

The secretary should accelerate the ongoing transformation of the Defense HUMINT Service, with particular attention to ensuring that the nation has the global coverage and sustained foreign presence that is needed in regions ripe and important. This is a long-lead item: if the department does not lay the HUMINT groundwork years in advance, and sustain its attention and presence, the United States will not be prepared.

Much of the needed information and knowledge can be found in unclassified sources, although we acknowledge it may take a lot of work to find and organize it. The pursuit, exploration, and exploitation of open sources have taken a back seat to learning secrets. While we in no way denigrate the importance of the latter, we ask the secretary to instruct DIA to establish a vital and active effort focused on using open sources to provide information on cultures, infrastructure, genealogy, religions, economics, politics, and the like in regions, areas, and states deemed ripe and important.

All-source analysis can transform raw intelligence, data, and information into knowledge and understanding. Analysis is not just an art form, but also a craft and engineering discipline demanding specific attentiveness to recruiting individuals with the right skills and mental capacities, providing adequate and continuing training, providing feedback and assessment, equipping with the right computer tools, and ensuring incentives to promote creativity and insulation from group pressure. We ask the secretary to direct all of his intelligence organs to jointly enhance all-source analysis.

Finally, in light of the actual enemies, weapons, materiel, installations, tactics, and strategies the United States faces in dealing with failing and failed states, U.S. ISR capabilities, brilliant though they are, are inadequate to the task, insofar as they were developed for cold war purposes. More intimate, terrestrial, 21st-century ISR is required, composed of elements like tagging, tracking, and locating capabilities. A “Manhattan Project” in scale, intensity, and focus is required to transform the nation’s portfolio of tagging, tracking, and locating programs into an institutionalized discipline to serve the United States for decades to come. We ask the secretary to instigate that development swiftly; again, this is a long-lead item demanding preparation years in advance of need.

. . . and that you use your influence to . . .

• Institutionalize long-term, rigorous, and sustained pan-government Contingency Planning and Integration Task Forces for countries ripe and important

• Support DOS in its role in planning and operations related to the stabilization and reconstruction mission

• Revitalize our government’s capability in strategic communication

In addition to strengthening capabilities within the Department of Defense, we urge the secretary to use his considerable influence to propel needed changes that span the government’s agencies and departments or that are centered on cabinet departments other than Defense. We identify three areas where the secretary’s effort could have considerable impact.

The secretary can accelerate the institutionalization of an effective pangovernment strategic planning and integration process for addressing issues in countries ripe and important; but need not wait to institute DOD’s own improvements in planning, stabilization, strategic communication, and intelligence.

The secretary should lend his support to the efforts of other departments and agencies as they undergo transformation, particularly in their approach to instituting management discipline for contingency planning and for maintaining contingency capabilities.

Finally, the secretary should urge the establishment of an effective national strategic communication capability and lend DOD’s resources and capabilities to this effort, as appropriate.

Urgent Action is Called For

• If everything we recommend is implemented over the next five years . . .

• But we continue our current policy of undertaking military expeditions every two years . . .

• We will begin two more stabilization operations without sufficient preparation or resources . . .

• And anything started wrong tends to continue wrong

We can implement many of the recommendations now.

The sooner we start on the long-lead items, the sooner we will be ready.

In any large organization things change slowly. If our recommendations were to be implemented in DOD and across the executive branch in, say, five years, it would be an unprecedented display of speed and urgency. However, if the nation continues its habit of engaging in new and additional stabilization and reconstruction operations every two years, during that period the United States will begin two new commitments -- unprepared. And something started wrong tends to stay wrong.

We urge greater than usual speed in implementing the recommendations in our study.