Scroll down or click on #operationiraqifreedompanel for my comments on the 27MAR23 AEI panel discussion, "The Iraq War Series: Operation Iraqi Freedom"; #runuptowarpanel for my comments on the 21FEB23 AEI panel discussion, "The Iraq War Series: The Run-Up to the War"; #conductofwarpanel for my comments on the 14APR23 AEI panel discussion, "The Iraq War Series: The Conduct of the War"; and #aftermathpanel for my comments on the 21JUN23 AEI panel discussion, "The Iraq War Series: The Aftermath".
Scroll down or click on #schakerubinoped for my comments on both Kori Schake's 16MAR23 National Review op-ed, "Learning too Much from Iraq", and Michael Rubin's 20MAR23 Washington Examiner op-ed, "The Iraq War Looks Better with Time"; #pletkaschmittoped for my comments on Danielle Pletka and Gary Schmitt's 01MAY23 American Purpose op-ed, "Mission Accomplished?"; and #rubinoped for my comments on Michael Rubin's 18MAR03 Washington Examiner op-ed, "We Still Haven’t Addressed the Iraq War’s Real Intelligence Failure".
Transmittal message. Professor Leffler's e-mails are omitted. Ms. Pletka, Dr. Schmitt, and the other series contributors did not respond to my e-mails, so I don't know whether they've read them.
from: [Eric LC]
to: [Melvyn Leffler], [Ben Lefkowitz], [Stephen Hadley], [Gary Schmitt], [Robert Kagan]
cc: [Clara Keuss], [Elissabeth Buckles]
date: Apr 1, 2024, 8:00 PM
subject: Critical comments on "The Iraq War Series: Operation Iraqi Freedom" (AEI panel, 27MAR23)
Dr. Schmitt, Ms. Pletka, Mr. Hadley, Dr. Kagan, and Professor Leffler,
I clarify the Iraq issue at Operation Iraqi Freedom FAQ by hewing to its primary sources. The project includes corrective criticisms of experts who contradict OIF's primary sources to mislead the public. Culprits include Richard Haass and Charles Duelfer—see below.
I'm currently reviewing panel transcripts and articles from the American Enterprise Institute's The Iraq War Series 20 Years Later. You can read my critical comments on the 21FEB23 panel discussion, "The Iraq War Series: The Run-Up to the War", and series op-eds at my Review of the American Enterprise Institute's "The Iraq War Series 20 Years Later".
These comments respond to the 27MAR23 panel discussion, The Iraq War Series: Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Before I comment on excerpts from the transcript, the overall panel discussion calls for a preliminary clarification of the Iraq Survey Group's findings. Bear with me, it's important. Professor Leffler's portion of the discussion in particular hinges on the false premise that the Iraq Survey Group cleared Saddam on WMD beyond the bluff.
In fact, the Iraq Survey Group confirmed Saddam's WMD threat. As Mr. Hadley alludes to with "Saddam had the capability and intention...to get back into developing WMD once sanctions were lifted", ISG's findings show that Iraq possessed an active WMD program in violation of UNSCR 687 with "clear evidence of his [Saddam's] intent to resume WMD", "preserved capability" with "undeclared covert laboratories", a "large covert procurement program" for "military reconstitution efforts [that] ... covered conventional arms, dual-use goods acquisition, and some WMD-related programs", the "IAEC [Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission] Modernization Program", "ongoing missile programs...with ranges in excess of 150 km that, if developed, would have been clear violations of UNSCR 687", "Saddam clearly intended to reconstitute long-range delivery systems and that the systems potentially were for WMD", and critically, non-pareil "denial and deception operations" (ISG).
ISG confirmed Saddam possessed at least ready terrorism-level chemical and biological capability hidden in the Iraqi intelligence services along with readily convertible larger chemical and biological production capability. For example:
The UN deemed Iraq’s accounting of its production and use of BW agent simulants—specifically Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus lichenformis, Bacillus megaterium and Bacillus thuringiensis to be inadequate. ISG remains interested in simulant work because these items may be used not only to simulate the dispersion of BW agents, develop production techniques, and optimize storage conditions, but also the equipment used for their manufacture can also be quickly converted to make BW agent. [ISG]
Note, the IIS also managed Saddam's "regional and global terrorism, including a variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist, and Islamic terrorist organizations" (Iraqi Perspectives Project), which also violated UNSCR 687 for casus belli.
The UNSCR 687 "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441) did not distinguish between the WMD capability that ISG found and the battlefield-ready stockpile that ISG failed to find. The US case against Saddam, inasmuch it can be separated from the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441), did not tolerate the WMD capability that ISG found regardless of stockpile. In terms of strategic threat, Saddam's confirmed WMD capability was equally threatening as a stockpile, and arguably a greater threat than a stockpile that's designed for battlefield use given the marked compatibility of Saddam's WMD capability with Saddam's terrorism. Presidents Clinton and Bush were most concerned about Saddam's distinctive combined WMD-terrorism threat—I quote them in part three of the OIF FAQ answer to "Why did Bush leave the ‘containment’ (status quo)".
Appreciation of Iraq's "denial and deception operations" (ISG) is critical to understand that the Iraq Survey Group could only guess, and doesn't actually know, the fate of Saddam's WMD stocks and the full extent that Iraq's WMD program was retained and reconstituted. It's thematic in the ISG Duelfer report that Iraqi counter-intelligence, which substantially undermined the UNSCR 687 inspections and international intelligence efforts, also undermined the ex post ISG investigation.
David Kay, Charles Duelfer's predecessor with ISG, tried to explain this to Congress:
I regret to say that I think at the end of the work of the [Iraq Survey Group] there's still going to be an unresolvable ambiguity about what happened.
A lot of that traces to the failure on April 9 to establish immediately physical security in Iraq -- the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was directly intentional, designed by the security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program and their other programs as well, a lot of which was what we simply called Ali Baba looting. "It had been the regime's. The regime is gone. I'm going to go take the gold toilet fixtures and everything else imaginable."
I've seen looting around the world and thought I knew the best looters in the world. The Iraqis excel at that.
The result is -- document destruction -- we're really not going to be able to prove beyond a truth the negatives and some of the positive conclusions that we're going to come to. There will be always unresolved ambiguity here.
A lot of that traces to the failure on April 9 to establish immediately physical security in Iraq -- the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was directly intentional, designed by the security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program and their other programs as well, a lot of which was what we simply called Ali Baba looting. "It had been the regime's. The regime is gone. I'm going to go take the gold toilet fixtures and everything else imaginable."
I've seen looting around the world and thought I knew the best looters in the world. The Iraqis excel at that.
The result is -- document destruction -- we're really not going to be able to prove beyond a truth the negatives and some of the positive conclusions that we're going to come to. There will be always unresolved ambiguity here.
Notice Dr. Kay's inference that much, maybe even most, of the evidence was removed by Iraqi counter-intelligence after the regime change. Therefore, absence of evidence for ISG does not equal evidence of absence for Iraq. The still-large pile of UNSCR 687 violations that ISG found constitutes a floor only, not a complete account of Saddam's WMD. We can only speculate about what was in the "unparalleled" (Kay) mass of evidence that Iraqi counter-intelligence "sanitized" (ISG). It's a reasonable assumption that the missing evidence includes higher value items than the scraps that Saddam's agents left behind.
The determinative UNMOVIC report that established casus belli found that "With respect to stockpiles of bulk agent stated to have been destroyed, there is evidence to suggest that these was [sic] not destroyed as declared by Iraq." Then the Iraq Survey Group reported, "With the degradation of the Iraqi infrastructure and dispersal of personnel...ISG cannot determine the fate of Iraq’s [biological] stocks...There is a very limited chance that continuing investigation may provide evidence to resolve this issue." And, regarding the missing chemical stocks, "ISG investigation, however, was hampered by several factors beyond our control. The scale and complexity of Iraqi munitions handling, storage, and weapons markings, and extensive looting and destruction at military facilities during OIF significantly limited the number of munitions that ISG was able to thoroughly inspect."
After the ISG investigation wrapped up, the chemical stocks that were confiscated separately by the CIA's Operation Avarice validated the caveat, "ISG cannot discount the possibility that a few large caches of munitions remain to be discovered within Iraq" (ISG).
Finally, Mr. Hadley says, "Saddam had the capability and intention...to get back into developing WMD once sanctions were lifted". Similarly, Professor Leffler says, "he [Saddam] was saying to some of his scientists and military leaders, that he would also restart his weapons of mass destruction programs once the sanction regime was totally eliminated".
The common assumption is that Saddam had not undertaken to resume WMD because the UN Security Council had not yet officially lifted the UNSCR 660-series sanctions. That assumption is incorrect. Per ISG, Saddam's approach to the sanctions was "We have said with certainty that the embargo will not be lifted by a Security Council resolution, but will corrode by itself." Saddam wasn't waiting for the UN Security Council to lift the sanctions; Iraq's far gone "continued violations of its obligations" (UNSCR 1441) assured the UNSC could not lift the sanctions. Instead, Iraq pursued an "end-run strategy focusing on the de facto elimination of sanctions rather than the formal and open Security Council process" (ISG). From Saddam's perspective, he was lifting the sanctions long before the 2002-2003 "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441):
By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions and undermine their international support. Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime, both in terms of oil exports and the trade embargo, by the end of 1999.
... As UN sanctions eroded there was a concomitant expansion of activities that could support full WMD reactivation. [ISG]
... As UN sanctions eroded there was a concomitant expansion of activities that could support full WMD reactivation. [ISG]
By the time President Bush presented the formal case for Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441) to the UN General Assembly, Iraq had undertaken conventional and WMD-related armament activity, along with terrorist activity, in "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) of the Gulf War ceasefire for years. The reconstitution of Saddam's WMD program was underway.
So, do we know that the intelligence estimates were predictively imprecise, as Professor Leffler emphasizes? Yes. But do we also know that the intelligence, per its normal role and its operative role in the UNSCR 687 enforcement, correctly indicated that the Saddam regime was engaged in proscribed armament and terrorist activity for casus belli? Also yes. I discuss this in parts five to seven of the OIF FAQ answer to "Did Bush lie his way to war with Iraq".
For more exposition about the Iraq Survey Group and a sample of excerpts from the ISG Duelfer report, see the OIF FAQ retrospective #duelferreport section.
Now on to the comments. Mr. Hadley's remarks are mostly on point, which is to say, consistent with OIF's primary sources. Professor Leffler's remarks show his understanding of the Iraq issue is fundamentally flawed. Dr. Kagan is "puzzled as to...why do we treat this war like it was the biggest catastrophe in living memory" because he ignores that the Iraq Syndrome, which is based on the prevailing false narrative of OIF, is a metastatic premise of our politics and policy.
Danielle Pletka:
This was an important conversation to have. It’s important to remember how things really happened, not simply how the ex post facto history is written.
The fundamental step for AEI to educate the people "to remember how things really happened" is to re-lay a proper foundation for the public with OIF's primary sources, i.e., the bedrock set of controlling law, policy, precedent and determinative facts that define OIF's justification. That's the way to equip everyone, layman and expert alike, with the essential tools to accurately assess whether anyone's "ex post facto history" is credible or misinformed.
Stephen Hadley:
Why Iraq? You know, my good friend, Richard Haass, has this wonderful formulation that there are wars of necessity and wars of choice. My life experience is that if anytime an academic or someone else says to you, it’s either one thing or another, it’s always some of both. I think in this case, Iraq was really a war not of necessity, not of choice, it was war, what I would say was, last resort.
See my Correction of Richard Haass's "Revisiting America’s War of Choice in Iraq". Excerpt:
According to OIF's primary sources and Dr. Haass's two elements of "wars of necessity", i.e., "when vital interests are at stake and there are no other viable options available to defend them", OIF was a war of necessity, not a "war of choice".
I recommend my explanation to Dr. Haass of why OIF was a war of necessity according to his taxonomy. It's consistent with Mr. Hadley's explanation of why OIF was a "war [of] last resort". As for the rest of my correction, Dr. Haass's 20th anniversary distortion of the Iraq issue is sweeping and egregious.
Stephen Hadley:
Charlie Duelfer is here.
See my Rebuke of and advice to Charles Duelfer where I correctively criticize Mr. Duelfer's 20th anniversary of OIF blog post.
Robert Kagan:
I know I’m probably stepping on the previous panel a little bit, but to me the real question is, why has America responded to the war the they have? ... And when I try to look for an answer to this, I think it has something to do with the fact that we were going through a series of paradigm shifts having to do with the nature of what is America’s proper role in the world. And I really think at the end of the day, the debate about Iraq is a debate about what America should be doing in the world, even if people don’t want to treat it that way.
The answer to Dr. Kagan's "real question...why has America responded to the war the [way] they have?" is that the American people have been tricked into the Iraq Syndrome by the prevailing false narrative of OIF.
Dr. Kagan may know OIF's actual justification. But the vast majority, including experts who should know better, propagate a false narrative of OIF. In domestic and international politics, the Iraq Syndrome festers at the premise level, more implicitly than explicitly these days, to devalue and marginalize anything, person or policy, positively associated with OIF as the fruit of a poisoned tree. For example, note President Trump's political weaponization of the Iraq Syndrome and the construction of the deviant Obama Doctrine.
The Iraq Syndrome is able to foment a paradigm shift because the Gulf War ceasefire compliance enforcement pursuant to UNSCR 678, established at the dawn of the post-Cold War, was by presidential design paradigmatic and baseline for post-Cold War US-led liberal international order. When experts are confused by the varied reasons for OIF, the explanation is that OIF had a diverse basis because the UNSCR 678 enforcement was programmed with all the essential elements of American leadership of the free world. That's why stigmatizing the Iraq intervention can fuel a paradigm drift.
The fundamental solution to the problem that puzzles Dr. Kagan is for him and all his colleagues at AEI, Brookings, Hudson Institute, Washington Institute, etc., and academia to discredit the prevailing false narrative and clarify the Iraq issue for the public at the premise level of our politics and policy. See OIF FAQ post Regarding pundits and David Brooks's "Saving the System".
Stephen Hadley:
Well, in the campaign, I think Iraq figured very little and not at all...And if he talked about foreign policy at all, he talked about our neighborhood...So this was not a president who came in with a foreign policy agenda, and certainly not an Iraqi agenda.
My Google search returned three reference points for Governor Bush's position on Iraq during the 1999-2000 presidential campaign: Bush's 23SEP99 speech at The Citadel and 19NOV99 speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, and 04DEC99 New York Times article, Bush Has Tough Words and Rough Enunciation for Iraqi Chief.
The references contradict Mr. Hadley's "this was not a president who came in with a foreign policy agenda, and certainly not an Iraqi agenda". Iraq was on Governor Bush's foreign policy agenda, although bundled with related international concerns, not held above the others. The references give the impression that while Governor Bush had a coherent platform and a working grasp of international issues, he was not then the maven on "The crisis between the United States and Iraq that led to the declaration on August 2, 1990, of a national emergency has not been resolved" (President Clinton, 28JUL00) that Bush became as President. That being said, Governor Bush did cite Iraq by name, and the constituent elements of WMD, terrorism, "unbalanced dictators", and strong principled American leadership were there in broad strokes.
Stephen Hadley:
And one of the things the president gets criticized for is this so-called Axis of Evil speech, where he talked about Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. And he said they represent an axis of evil. ... the problem actually was the word axis. Because everybody said, “Are you saying there’s a coalition?” And what the president said that people didn’t pay enough attention to I think was, these three countries share a common characteristic, which they are both pursuing weapons of mass destruction, which is what we thought Saddam Hussein was saying was at the time.
According to the Iraq Survey Group's findings, "we" thought right: ISG confirmed Saddam's WMD intent and activity in violation of UNSCR 687.
The boldly deceptive criticism of the 2002 State of the Union should have taught Bush officials to compete harder against the unbridled propaganda that has obfuscated the Iraq issue. They pushed back some, but not nearly enough.
As Mr. Hadley points out, despite the "axis of evil" phrase, Bush did not characterize an alliance between north Korea, Iran, and Iraq. The 2002 SOTU merely reiterated the standing view of their respective illicit activities and warned about each rogue state separately.
We know now that the 2002 SOTU undersold their collective threat. north Korea, Iran, and Iraq were in fact illicitly cooperating to a greater degree than the 2002 SOTU characterized. See the Iraq Survey Group's Regime Finance and Procurement section, Congressional Research Service report Iran-North Korea-Syria Ballistic Missile and Nuclear Cooperation, and Professor Christopher Clary's paper The A. Q. Khan Network: Causes and Implications.
Stephen Hadley:
And they are supporting terrorism. And therefore, could they be link a where weapons of mass destruction would get in the hands of terrorists. Having been through 9/11, and seeing what 19 terrorists could do with box cutters, you can only imagine what they might do with weapons of mass destruction.
The presidential concern over Saddam's combined WMD-terrorism threat was officially established before 9/11. The noncompliant Saddam and al Qaeda problems matured together during the Clinton administration. Thus, President Clinton warned of Saddam's combined WMD-terrorism threat in 1998 and set the policy versus the WMD-terrorism threat in 1995 along with Public Law 104-132 (1996). President Bush's Iraq and counter-terrorism policies just reiterated Clinton's policies, adjusted with the heightened threat evaluation from 9/11.
Danielle Pletka:
But here’s the $64,000 question, why Iraq, OK? I can pick other countries that actually represented a very serious threat. And in fact, there were fights that went on among various factions of national security experts. Why not Iran? Why Iraq?
Stephen Hadley:Well, we did deal with Iran. We did deal with a whole lot of other challenges. One of the problems is, Americans think all the Bush administration did was Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terror. And one of the reasons we did this book is if you just look through the table of contents, it’s pretty clear that we’re working all of these issues, all the time, at the same time.
The answer to Ms. Pletka's "$64,000 question" is that the Bush administration's different approaches to Iran and Iraq reiterated the Clinton dual-containment framework, which applied conventional containment to Iran. Whereas containment for Iraq was defined as the UNSCR 678 enforcement of the Gulf War ceasefire mandates purpose-designed for "the need to be assured of Iraq's peaceful intentions in the light of its unlawful invasion and occupation of Kuwait" (UNSCR 687). Public Law 107-243 and President Bush's determination for OIF define OIF as a UNSCR 678 action.
Stephen Hadley:
Saddam had the [WMD] capability and intention. . . . And if Bush had basically said, “OK, Saddam, you’re out.” Sanctions would have been lifted. Saddam, I think, would have been back into his old games of supporting terrorizing people and invading his neighbors, including potentially a rerun of the Kuwait invasion. And this time, he wouldn’t stop in Kuwait, he would go into Saudi Arabia. And finally, in terms of weapons of mass destruction, I think it’s pretty clear he would have gotten into the nuclear business. And so you would have had an arms race between Iran and Iraq as to who could get a nuclear weapon first. And that’s not a prescription for stability in the Middle East. So, you know, you try to run the counterfactual, if we just stood down, that’s what might have happened.
Danielle Pletka:Well, having just been in Iraq, I think it was worth the effort. People who have forgotten, you know, I always remind people, it wasn’t just Saddam Hussein who was wantonly murdering hundreds of thousands of his own people, attacking two neighbors, killing, in the end, more than a million casualties. It wasn’t those things. It was, you know, cutting out the tongues of your opponents. You know, people forget what it was like. It wasn’t all sweetness and light under Saddam Hussein. And Iraq is a different country, an imperfect democracy, but as you say, one. . . .
For his counterfactual, Mr. Hadley should also consider that Saddam's rule by “systematic, widespread and extremely grave violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law by the Government of Iraq, resulting in an all-pervasive repression and oppression sustained by broad-based discrimination and widespread terror” (UN Commission on Human Rights, 19APR02) — already assessed as genocidal — was found to be "far worse" (UN Special Rapporteur on Iraq, 18MAR04) than we knew. For example, the terrorist insurgency was a conversion of Saddam's terrorist governance, "The predominant targets of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside of Iraq" (IPP).
Regarding "Saddam, I think, would have been back into his old games of supporting terrorizing people and invading his neighbors", the Iraqi Perspectives Project found that Saddam's terrorism had been substantially underestimated. The IPP findings that "the Saddam regime regarded inspiring, sponsoring, directing, and executing acts of terrorism as an element of state power", "the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda", and "Saddam’s use of terrorist tactics and his support for terrorist groups remained strong up until the collapse of the regime", plus the ISG findings of a covert ready terrorism-level WMD capability, suggest Saddam "invading his neighbors" in other ways than a "rerun of the Kuwait invasion".
Danielle Pletka:
there was a small cabal, I’m using that word intentionally, of people, the vice president, Dick Cheney, who’s on our board, full disclosure. And Paul Wolfowitz, who used to be one of our colleagues here at the American Enterprise Institute, and a small group of others who were agitating for this, who made the case aggressively, and finally brought the president around. What actually happened?
Stephen Hadley:They were certainly agitating for it, but I’m not sure they brought the president around. I think the president came around with the kind of thinking that I just described. ... either say that whole 12 years of effort by the entire international community was a mistake, or to use that force he accumulated and remove the regime from power. That’s where it ended up. Because we’d been working at this problem for 12 years.
Stephen Hadley:But in February of 2003, one month before Bush has to make a decision whether to go into Iraq or not, President Chirac of France, President Putin of Russia, and Chancellor Schröder of Germany, basically say they’re out of coercive diplomacy. And they’re not going to support the use of force against Iraq under any circumstances. And at that point, coercive diplomacy is largely over, and the president is faced with this choice. On the one hand, the president could say to Saddam Hussein, “OK, you win. You’ve got a get out of jail free card, I’m not going to go into Iraq unless I get an 18th UN Security Council resolution,” knowing that Putin and Chirac would block it. That’s what Saddam Hussein thought, that was his get out of jail free card.
Excerpt from the OIF FAQ retrospective #ultimatumoptions section:
At the same time, the resolutions for the 1998 penultimate push had been strict, too. While UNSCR 1441 imposed an “enhanced inspection regime” that made it harder for Saddam to escape the 2002-2003 UNSCR 687 inspections, Bush opting to go back to the UNSC — in effect retracing to Clinton’s failed push with UNSCRs 1154, 1194, and 1205 — presented a familiar-looking pattern to Saddam that encouraged him to recycle with UNMOVIC the “tactics of delay and deception” (Clinton) that had successfully foiled UNSCOM. ISG reported Saddam’s reiterated “token effort” against the UNSCR 1441 inspections was based on his rationalization that the US president was bluffing again and Saddam’s accomplices on the UNSC would once again, like they had in 1998, undermine the US and UK.
To Bush and Blair's credit, the US and UK chose to give their fellow Council members a fair redemptive chance "to take the [UNSCR 660-series] resolutions of the U.N. Security Council seriously" (Bush, 07OCT02), and the requisite threat of regime change would have been more credible with a staunch unified front, which could have induced Iraq's mandated compliance. Instead, Saddam was half right: his accomplices on the UNSC undermined the US and UK again.
. . .
In 2003, however, American and British leadership stood firm. Albeit there was little material difference between an ultimatum issued from a new redundant UNSCR or from the UNSCR 678-authorized UNSCR 660-series enforcers, we can speculate in hindsight — knowing what we know now about Saddam and his accomplices — whether Saddam might have perceived the new look of a direct confrontation as a sufficiently credible threat to induce him to submit and comply in Iraq's “final opportunity to comply” (UNSCR 1441). I doubt it.
To Bush and Blair's credit, the US and UK chose to give their fellow Council members a fair redemptive chance "to take the [UNSCR 660-series] resolutions of the U.N. Security Council seriously" (Bush, 07OCT02), and the requisite threat of regime change would have been more credible with a staunch unified front, which could have induced Iraq's mandated compliance. Instead, Saddam was half right: his accomplices on the UNSC undermined the US and UK again.
. . .
In 2003, however, American and British leadership stood firm. Albeit there was little material difference between an ultimatum issued from a new redundant UNSCR or from the UNSCR 678-authorized UNSCR 660-series enforcers, we can speculate in hindsight — knowing what we know now about Saddam and his accomplices — whether Saddam might have perceived the new look of a direct confrontation as a sufficiently credible threat to induce him to submit and comply in Iraq's “final opportunity to comply” (UNSCR 1441). I doubt it.
Knowing how Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441) played out due to Saddam's accomplices on the Security Council, the better chance for coercive diplomacy to switch off the military threat with Iraq's mandated compliance would have been the direct confrontation option that President Clinton set up following Operation Desert Fox, which the "small cabal" of Bush officials favored.
That being said, I doubt Saddam would have submitted to a direct confrontation either. Heeding Prime Minister Blair's counsel to reiterate Operation Desert Fox's precedential procedure, which PM Blair authored with President Clinton, provided a rock solid legal basis for Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Stephen Hadley:
Bush could have said, “OK, you’re right, those 17 UN Security Council resolutions didn’t mean a thing. Twelve years of trying to get compliance, we’re going to forget that. And US credibility, so what?”
More than "US credibility" was at stake. The UNSCR 678 enforcement of the Gulf War ceasefire terms was baseline and paradigmatic for post-Cold War liberal international order. Excerpt from the OIF FAQ retrospective #americanprimacy section:
The Gulf War ceasefire terms were purpose-designed to resolve Saddam's manifold threat established with the Gulf War. The scope of the ceasefire terms meant that enforcing Iraq's mandated compliance resonated beyond the 4 corners of the Saddam problem or even the Iraq intervention itself. In 1991, at the dawn of the post-Cold War, the Gulf War ceasefire was invested with all the essential international norms, including strict aggression, disarmament, human rights, and terrorism-related mandates, and vital enforcement principles that were required to reify the aspirational "rules" of the post-Cold War world order.
Due to the historical context, threats and interests at stake, comprehensive spectrum of the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441), model enforcement procedure, and US-led UN-based structure, the UNSCR 660-series compliance enforcement was tantamount to the flagship and litmus test of the US-led post-Cold War liberal international order.
In other words, the resolution of Saddam's probation with Iraq's mandated compliance per the Gulf War ceasefire represented the primary test case for US-led international enforcement with a readily measured pass/fail gauge. The paradigmatic set of international norms that defined Iraq's ceasefire obligations was enforced with a clear UN-mandated compliance standard and a strict US-led compliance process. Iraq's mandated compliance set the gold standard for enforcing post-Cold War liberal international order, whereas Saddam's noncompliance risked a model failure for US-led enforcement of the liberal international order, a theme that permeated the US law and policy on Iraq through the HW Bush, Clinton, and Bush administrations.
Under the avid scrutiny of our competitors, who were also Saddam's accomplices, the success or failure of American leadership to "bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations" (P.L. 105-235) would reveal the real-world viability of the post-Cold War "Pax Americana" rule set and American leadership of the free world.
The contest was hard, but the US passed the primary leadership test with Iraq.
Due to the historical context, threats and interests at stake, comprehensive spectrum of the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441), model enforcement procedure, and US-led UN-based structure, the UNSCR 660-series compliance enforcement was tantamount to the flagship and litmus test of the US-led post-Cold War liberal international order.
In other words, the resolution of Saddam's probation with Iraq's mandated compliance per the Gulf War ceasefire represented the primary test case for US-led international enforcement with a readily measured pass/fail gauge. The paradigmatic set of international norms that defined Iraq's ceasefire obligations was enforced with a clear UN-mandated compliance standard and a strict US-led compliance process. Iraq's mandated compliance set the gold standard for enforcing post-Cold War liberal international order, whereas Saddam's noncompliance risked a model failure for US-led enforcement of the liberal international order, a theme that permeated the US law and policy on Iraq through the HW Bush, Clinton, and Bush administrations.
Under the avid scrutiny of our competitors, who were also Saddam's accomplices, the success or failure of American leadership to "bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations" (P.L. 105-235) would reveal the real-world viability of the post-Cold War "Pax Americana" rule set and American leadership of the free world.
The contest was hard, but the US passed the primary leadership test with Iraq.
Danielle Pletka:
But there have been discussions about whether or not WMD was the sole factor in us going into Iraq. If this had happened in 1999, we would have said, absolutely, WMD is the reason. This is why we went and this is why Saddam had to go. There was no other way to get rid of it, because he was so inextricably intertwined with it. But what about the question that arose in Bush’s speeches and in Bush’s foreign policy worldview, which was of democracy, of the dangerous nature of these tyrannies.
The answer to Ms. Pletka's question is that the reason for OIF is 'All of the above': See the OIF FAQ answer to "Was Operation Iraqi Freedom about WMD or democracy".
The key to answering Ms. Pletka's question is understanding that the Iraq WMD issue per UNSCR 687 and Saddam tyranny issue per UNSCR 688 were both in the bundle of ceasefire mandates purpose-designed for "the need to be assured of Iraq's peaceful intentions in the light of its unlawful invasion and occupation of Kuwait" (UNSCR 687). From the beginning, the US enforced both mandates pursuant to UNSCR 678. The Saddam terrorism issue per UNSCR 687 was in the bundle, too.
So it was always both, not either Saddam's WMD or his tyranny. By law, Iraq's threat was defined as its noncompliance with the Gulf War ceasefire terms, including Iraq's evidential failure to disarm per UNSCR 687. Meanwhile, the law and policy on Iraqi democratic reform that the Bush administration inherited from the HW Bush and Clinton administrations was a UNSCR 688 enforcement measure. UNSCR 688 defined Saddam's human rights violations as a national security threat, "the consequences of which threaten international peace and security in the region" (UNSCR 688).
Stephen Hadley:
So this was an effort to remove a national security threat. That’s how we saw it. Once the threat was removed, the question was, what then? Do you just replace one dictator with another? After Saddam fell, what we heard from the Iraqi people was, we want to build a free democratic society in which we can all participate, rather than being under the thumb of a dictator. And we thought being Americans, standing for freedom, democracy, rule of law, human rights, we had to respond to that. We also thought that the only way you were going to keep a country like Iraq, which was riven by divisions of ethnic groups, religion, and all the rest, the only way you were going to keep it together, was in a democratic framework, where Sunni, Shi’a, and Kurds would all participate in developing a common future for the country. So democracy, our ideals were in fact the most realistic way to keep this country together, and hopefully make it into a country that could deliver for its people, that would not invade its neighbors, that would keep down terror, and would participate with us in defending the international order. That was the vision we had.
See the 16MAR03 US and coalition statement of the Atlantic Summit, "A Vision for Iraq and the Iraqi People", the OIF FAQ answer to "Was Operation Iraqi Freedom about WMD or democracy", and the OIF FAQ answer to "Was the invasion of Iraq perceived to be a nation-building effort".
Again, the record shows that Iraqi democratic reform was not an ad hoc choice, "Once the threat was removed, the question was, what then?". Within the controlling law and policy on Iraq, Iraqi democratic reform was a standing UNSCR 688 enforcement measure from before Bush's presidency. It seems Bush officials asked themselves the question anew, but they just arrived at the same answer they inherited from Congress and the HW Bush and Clinton administrations. For Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441), Congress made sure to incorporate sections 3 and 7 of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 in the 2002 AUMF.
Stephen Hadley:
So Bush did believe that it was in our interest, in our national security interest, but also consistent with our ideals, to promote a transformation of the Middle East that would bring political democracy and free markets to the Middle East. And that the vehicle for doing that would be Iraq, on the one hand, and a Palestinian state, which we spent a lot of effort trying to help create, on the other. And these would be the fulcrums and the examples for a Middle East that would try to transform itself through the efforts of its own people, and have a Middle East that was more secure, more stable, more democratic, and more prosperous for its people. But the impetus for Iraq was national security considerations. That’s why we went into Iraq. And then the question was, what do you do then? And that’s where this all came to fruition.
Mr. Hadley seems to be conflating the Bush Freedom Agenda, which was a post-9/11 innovation, with the older UNSCR 678 enforcement of the UNSCR 688 humanitarian mandates. Mr. Hadley is correct insofar that the UNSCR 688 enforcement measure of Iraqi democratic reform neatly overlapped the Freedom Agenda. But the UNSCR 678 enforcement of all the Gulf War ceasefire mandates, including UNSCR 688, was fundamentally a national security consideration.
Danielle Pletka:
But I think it’s important people understand, did we just go in halfcocked, kind of chopped the head off the place, and then suddenly realized that we were the dog that caught the car. We were in pottery barn and we actually broke it, as Colin Powell used to like to say. Or did we have a sense of where we were going?
Stephen Hadley:Contrary to the mythology, we did a lot of postwar planning prewar. We didn’t get it all right, that’s for sure. One of the reasons was, we didn’t really realize we hadn’t been in Iraq. We hadn’t had diplomatic relations with Iraq for a long time. And we had not fully taken into account the trauma of Saddam Hussein’s rule for all these decades, not just on the infrastructure of the country and governance structures, but within the psyche of the Iraqi people. Also, our efforts, I think, were frustrated by a number of things that we did not anticipate.
Melvyn Leffler:When you read the after action reports of the various military units that went into Iraq, as I have, it is really stunning to see the extent to which they acknowledge how ill prepared they were for the postwar situation. And, you know, one of the things that Charlie Duelfer points out in his book is that, if you were in Iraq in April and May of 2003, as he was, the chaos and instability was palpable. And why did Iraqis become disaffected? Part of it was because they could not contemplate the degree to which Americans, in their view, allowed this disorder and strife. It was beyond their imagination that the United States, with all its power, could not preserve order and stability. So, in terms of the occupation, the deployment of military forces, the size of the military force, and the components of those forces had hugely significant consequences.
In the context of what we knew before OIF, the initial post-war plan was valid.
Recall that more US troops = more peace was not the only theory on the post-Saddam planning table. There was also the fashionable theory of more troops = less progress and more resistance, i.e., insurgency, which was attractive for US officials infected with the Vietnam Syndrome. Notably, Iraqi expats advised a 'light footprint' approach with the US military receding to a background support role following the invasion based on the belief that a 'heavy footprint' (scare quotes) "FOREIGN MILITARY OCCUPATION" would alienate Iraqis and discourage them from nation-building. We saw the Iraqi expat advice reflected in the initial background support role for US troops, the rush to put an Iraqi face on the government and security forces, and the rapid restoration of Iraqi sovereignty.
It turned out that the Iraqi expats were wrong: We learned that more US troops in post-Saddam Iraq = more peace and more progress and less insurgency. And the Vietnam Syndrome is debilitating bullshit. But that's what happens to initial plans when theories are tested for real. The preemptive perfection standard that critics apply to OIF is abnormal. Setback to an initial plan that compels adjustment is a normal pattern for any kind of real competition, including peace operations versus vicious initially underestimated adversaries like Saddamists.
To be fair, it wasn't just Iraqi expats and US officials who initially subscribed to the more troops = less progress theory. Recall that UN envoy Sérgio Vieira de Mello rejected US military protection in order to not alienate the Iraqi people he was committed to help. The price of Vieira's mistake was his assassination by the Saddamists. Given that a top international expert like Vieira badly underestimated the corruption of Saddam's Iraq makes it understandable that US officials did, too.
Mr. Hadley's response is the key to understanding why the initial post-war plan failed.
Professor Leffler should explain to the Iraqis who "could not contemplate the degree to which Americans, in their view, allowed this disorder and strife. It was beyond their imagination that the United States, with all its power, could not preserve order and stability" that the Americans who deserve blame are not US troops or even US officials. Rather, they should blame every analyst, politician, and pundit who downplayed Saddam's terrorism or tyranny for the failure of the initial post-war plan.
We can assume local Iraqis appreciated the extreme degree to which the Saddam regime had corrupted Iraqi society. But we didn't know that until we got inside. We know now that the Saddam regime's UNSCR 687 terrorism violations, including Saddam's "considerable operational overlap" (IPP) with al Qaeda, and UNSCR 688 human rights violations, which were "far worse" (UN Special Rapporteur on Iraq, 18MAR04) than we knew, were substantially underestimated before OIF. Consequently, the initial post-war plan was calibrated to a concept of Iraqi society that we didn't know was outdated and inadequate by 2003. An accurate and precise pre-war assessment of the Saddam regime's extreme terrorism and tyranny would have given US officials a better read on the needs of 2003 Iraqi society, rather than the pre-Iran-Iraq War or pre-Gulf War Iraqi society envisioned by expat advisors or the stage-managed Iraq that Saddam showed to UN officials. It would have informed a more robust initial post-war plan.
As far as "the United States, with all its power", keep in mind that Saddamists are the world's top experts at terrorizing and mass-murdering Iraqis. Their zealous expertise at terrorizing and murdering Iraqis exceeded our initial ability to protect the Iraqi people and "preserve order and stability" per Public Law 105-338, UNSCR 1483, etc..
Where the US brought to bear "all its power" was the COIN adjustment. Clearly, the Iraqis were not so "disaffected" by the early setbacks that they didn't join the COIN "surge" with the Sahwa "awakening". What really disaffected the Iraqis was Obama's abandonment of Iraq and early poor approach to ISIS, because the Iraqis had fresh memories of Americans and Iraqis fighting side by side against AQI. The COIN adjustment proved to the Iraqis that America, if not at first, had figured out how to "preserve order and stability" versus the Saddamists, yet Obama deliberately, inhumanely chose not to.
See the OIF FAQ retrospective #postwar section where I discuss the post-war difficulties.
Melvyn Leffler:
Well, I think, ultimately, the responsibility does reside inside the White House. And ultimately, President Bush deferred to the tactics and strategies that Donald Rumsfeld employed. The important fact to keep in mind, and I think it is a fact, is that Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush were on totally different pages with regard to what to do in postwar Iraq. Rumsfeld wanted to disengage as quickly as possible. And President Bush, having decided to invade Iraq, did want to promote democracy and freedom. There is no indication that those were significant priorities at all of Rumsfeld, or of Gen. Tommy Franks, the head of the Central Command. So there was dysfunctionality at the very highest levels of the administration. And responsibility for that does reside inside the White House.
Professor Leffler's criticism of Secretary Rumsfeld is overly harsh. The assumption that the US military was the be-all, end-all of the post-war nation-building in Iraq is the basic premise of Professor Leffler's criticism of Rumsfeld and the "dysfunctionality at the very highest levels of the [Bush] administration". However, contrary to Professor Leffler, US planners did not initially assume that the US military would be the alpha and omega of the post-war nation-building in Iraq. Rather, they envisioned a support role for the US military as Iraqi groups, other GOs, IOs led by the UN, and NGOs would take over the center of gravity, and the US military would step back.
The initial post-war plan failed because the plan proved to be inadequate for the underestimated enemy and the worse-than-expected condition of Iraqi society. But recall that under Rumsfeld, Iraq met its early political benchmarks, e.g., elections and restored sovereignty, sooner than expected. Though it proved to be inadequate, the initial post-war plan was being carried out.
Finally, the COIN adjustment didn't start from scratch. Incremental adjustments under Rumsfeld, albeit overshadowed, laid the groundwork for the success of the COIN "surge".
Melvyn Leffler:
But the execution, what you’re asking about right now, was terribly flawed during these initial months and contributed to enormous amount of demoralization. And totally at the time, undermined America’s image.
As it turned out, the US military needed to become the center of gravity when the Saddamist insurgents beat the initial post-war plan and the civilian agencies failed Iraq. But again, that's what happens to initial plans when they're tested for real, especially against extreme adversaries like Saddamists. Great achievements in US military history have often followed the worst setbacks, if we learn from them. As far as "undermined America’s image", we learned that America isn't perfect. Preemptive perfection has never been a defining trait in US military history. But with Iraq, like other US military victories, America succeeded by staying resolute in the face of failure, standing fast, and adapting to the competition.
What really "undermined America's image" are experts who've propagated a false narrative of OIF and President Obama's radical deviation to irresponsibly end OIF.
Stephen Hadley:
And on the opportunity cost, let me just say a word about that. People forget that because of the effectiveness of those operations, Muammar Qaddafi in Libya voluntarily in 2003, gives up his weapons of mass destruction. The Iranians, we learned, subsequently suspended most of their Iranian covert weapons development and enrichment program. Why? Because they thought the United States was going to invade them. They were going to be next. We worked through diplomacy. We get, in September 2005, an agreement with the North Koreans where they’re going to give up their nuclear program altogether. Working with three European countries, we get a similar agreement with Iran in 2003 and 2004.
And because I would say in part, because of our loss of credibility and leverage, because of our failure to stabilize Iraq, both of those countries walk out of those agreements, and we were never able to get them back into them. So we paid an enormous price for that.
And because I would say in part, because of our loss of credibility and leverage, because of our failure to stabilize Iraq, both of those countries walk out of those agreements, and we were never able to get them back into them. So we paid an enormous price for that.
If true US deterrence depends on a universal belief that "the United States was going to invade them" is a viable option for the US to bring rogue actors like Saddam into compliance with essential mandates, that means the COIN adjustment in response to the "loss of credibility and leverage, because of our failure to stabilize Iraq...we paid an enormous price for that" was a vital corrective for US foreign policy.
Why? Because occupation and peace operations are an inseparable part of the invasion sequence, and guerilla insurgency like North Vietnam used versus South Vietnam or the Saddamists used versus post-Saddam Iraq is a standard strategy versus "foreign military occupation". If we're lucky, the enemy may not resort to it. But we can never discount the possibility, which automatically reduces our "credibility and leverage" if we're implicitly averse to competing against an insurgency. For example, Saddam chose to breach the Gulf War ceasefire because his risk assessment was that the US was bluffing and would not take on the risk of a hard costly occupation. So where the OIF invasion increased our deterrence leverage in the moment, that was conditional: The real international test for US deterrence was always whether the US would stand fast when faced with a hard costly occupation and thereby prove to the world that the Vietnam Syndrome was cured.
In order for US deterrence to become genuinely competitive, we needed to prove to ourselves, our allies, and the watching world that when the Saddamist insurgency knocked down the OIF peace operations and we lost the initiative, we would get back up, adjust practically, stay resolute politically, and stand fast to win the contest.
The US passed the vital leadership test with the COIN "surge", which should have cured the Vietnam Syndrome to establish true US deterrence, like the US did when we passed the much harder leadership test of the Korean War. Instead ...
Stephen Hadley:
I would have to say that we came up with . . . the so-called endless war in Iraq ended for the United States in 2011 when President Obama took out all of our troops. That had some very adverse consequences, which we can talk about. Failure to attend to what was happening in Syria as it descended into civil war, had serious consequences. So that al Qaeda regroups as ISIS in Syria, and in 2014 comes in and takes 40 percent of Iraq. And in some sense defeats all the good that came out of the surge.
... President Obama ripped up the vital leadership test that the US passed with the COIN "surge" by contravening both the US-Iraq Strategic Framework Agreement and the cardinal precedent of US leadership with Germany, Japan, and Korea in order to engineer an irresponsible exit from Iraq that not only restored the Vietnam Syndrome but boosted the disease by entrenching the degenerative Iraq Syndrome.
I discuss the vital corrective aspect of OIF and Obama's deviation in the OIF FAQ retrospective #americanprimacy section.
Stephen Hadley:
It is President Obama, not President Bush, who sends in the troops in 2014, to help the Iraqis throw out the ISIS. But it’s a different model. It’s not the kind of 160,000 occupy the country. It is, by, with, and through Iraqi security forces. It is a support and train mission. And that is a mission that continues to this day with 2500 troops there. It is the right model for how we help countries build a democratic, prosperous future.
The "right" number of US troops depends on the situation. More than 2500 US troops are still stationed in each of Germany, Japan, and Korea.
According to the US-Iraq SFA, President Obama's choice to end OIF was wrong to begin with given Iraq's nascent condition and the neighborhood danger growing from the Arab Spring. In terms of the "right model", I agree that the "support and train mission" was right for Iraq's condition at the point that President Obama cut off the OIF peace operations. However, I'm not convinced that the current US mission with Iraq is sufficient for Iraq's current condition.
I discuss the adequacy of the current US mission with Iraq in my Comment on Brian Dunn's "What Shall Phase IX in Iraq Look Like?".
Audience question:
Q: Thanks, Dany. Thanks, Mr. Hadley. [Inaudible 00:37:56]. Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons in 1990s, and we couldn’t find any in 2000s. Can you explain what happened to those stockpiles?
Stephen Hadley:Yeah. A lot of people say it was an intelligence failure.
The correct answer is we don't know what happened to Saddam's stockpiles, other than the stocks confiscated by the CIA's Operation Avarice.
The "intelligence failure" was the determinative UNSCR 687 findings openly cited in the intelligence assessments, e.g., "UNSCOM considered that the evidence was insufficient to support Iraq’s statements on the quantity of anthrax destroyed and where or when it was destroyed", "UNMOVIC has credible information that the total quantity of BW agent in bombs, warheads and in bulk at the time of the Gulf War was 7,000 litres more than declared by Iraq", and "With respect to stockpiles of bulk agent stated to have been destroyed, there is evidence to suggest that these was [sic] not destroyed as declared by Iraq" (UNMOVIC Clusters document).
The fact is the Saddam regime never accounted for its stockpiles per UNSCR 687, and the Iraq Survey Group was unable to account for them per UNSCR 687 due to "the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was directly intentional, designed by the security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program and their other programs as well" (Kay).
We can guess what happened to Saddam's stockpiles, but as a matter of knowledge, to use David Kay's phrase, their fate is an "unresolvable ambiguity".
Audience-Charles Duelfer:
I wonder, you know, at some point, that momentum, does that overcome the, you know, create space for diplomacy, or does diplomacy all of a sudden recede, because you either use this military force, you can’t sustain it in the high keyed up position that needs to be. You mentioned earlier that you were trying to, you know, cause Saddam to rethink this. It’s got to be a very difficult balance in the White House to say, well, I’ve got all these military forces out there. But the Pentagon is telling me, you know, I can’t sustain this forever. You know, we either have to make a decision or not make a decision. Could you just address that dilemma a bit?
Stephen Hadley:Sure. I mean, what you hope is that the course of diplomacy will work, and Saddam either comes clean or leaves the country. ... There is a bit of a use it or lose it point with that force that you’ve got arrayed in the region. It’s end of March, summer is coming. You know, this is a force that’s suited to operate in a camp [sic: chem] bio environment. And if you’ve seen those [MOPP] suits that you were in those circumstances and think about doing that in 120-degree Iraqi summer, it’s not an attractive proposition. But I don’t think that alone would have caused the president to say I’m going to use this instrument I built up. I think it was what I described. Twelve years of effort, 12 years of trying to enforce the writ of the international community in the United States. And the consequences of just standing down from that effort. I think that was what drove the decision rather than the kind of use it or lose it in terms of the force.
See the OIF FAQ answer to "Did Bush allow enough time for the inspections".
Procedurally, the timing of President Bush's determination for OIF matched UNSCR 1441's mandated timeline, according to which the diplomatic "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441) ran its course and concluded with the presentation of the UNMOVIC Clusters document to the UN Security Council on 07MAR03.
Practically, Saddam's mandated cooperation with the UNSCR 1441 "final" compliance test depended on the 'coercive' credibility of the military threat. So with the OIF invasion force build-up having reached its 'use it or lose it' point, the decision point for OIF was defined for President Bush and Prime Minister Blair both practically and procedurally.
As it happened, when confronted with the OIF invasion force at peak readiness, Saddam chose to breach the Gulf War ceasefire anyway. The Iraq Survey Group confirmed that "the Iraqis never intended to meet the spirit of the UNSC’s resolutions", so we know that breaking the practical and procedural deadlines for OIF's decision point wouldn't have changed the casus belli. As Mr. Hadley points out, such a choice by the Commander in Chief would have only made the mission worse for the OIF invasion force.
Melvyn Leffler:
I did portray some of his really significant successes in the 1970s, when he nationalized the petroleum companies and hugely enhanced the revenues of the Iraqi government. And to use those revenues to promote a great deal of literacy, medical care. Made a tremendous effort to stimulate industrialization and bring about agrarian reform. There were really noteworthy significant achievements inside Iraq, that he was responsible for accomplishing in the 1970s.
Stephen Hadley:I am not pessimistic about Iraq. I think Iraq in the end of the day, after all it’s been through, the trauma of Saddam, the trauma of the invasion, the trauma of four years of security chaos, the trauma of the invasion by ISIS, the effort to get ISIS back, fluctuation of oil prices, COVID-19, meddling by Turkey, by Syria, by Iran. In spite of all of that, this is a government that has held together, has six, now seven free and fair elections, peaceful transition to power. Yes, the turnout is down with every election as people get disillusioned with governments that don’t seem to be producing. But it is a struggling democracy. And there are signs of hope. You were just there, and you can tell folks a little bit about that. I think it is still possible that the Iraqi people will achieve what was their vision and what was our vision, which is a democratic Iraq, where Sunni, Shi’a, and Kurds and other minority groups are working together for a common future. And that will be a good example for the Middle East.
Yes. There's a reason that we were optimistic about the potential of the Iraqi people. President Obama, 19MAY11:
Indeed, one of the broader lessons to be drawn from this period is that sectarian divides need not lead to conflict. In Iraq, we see the promise of a multiethnic, multisectarian democracy. The Iraqi people have rejected the perils of political violence in favor of a democratic process, even as they’ve taken full responsibility for their own security. Of course, like all new democracies, they will face setbacks. But Iraq is poised to play a key role in the region if it continues its peaceful progress. And as they do, we will be proud to stand with them as a steadfast partner.
Melvyn Leffler:
And what is often not known that I also demonstrate in that first chapter of the book was that between 1997 and 2001, he was making a systematic attempt, and a successful attempt, to undermine the sanctions regime. His government was generating during these years, very significantly increased revenues. And as the Duelfer Report demonstrated, he was already using those revenues to resume his buildup of conventional capabilities.
Right, Iraq was building up its conventional capabilities, which also violated UNSCR 687 for casus belli. However, Professor Leffler omits that ISG found Saddam was building up his WMD capabilities too:
The successful implementation of the Protocols, continued oil smuggling efforts, and the manipulation of UN OFF contracts emboldened Saddam to pursue his military reconstitution efforts starting in 1997 and peaking in 2001. These efforts covered conventional arms, dual-use goods acquisition, and some WMD-related programs.
... From 1999 until he was deposed in April 2003, Saddam’s conventional weapons and WMD-related procurement programs steadily grew in scale, variety, and efficiency. [ISG]
... From 1999 until he was deposed in April 2003, Saddam’s conventional weapons and WMD-related procurement programs steadily grew in scale, variety, and efficiency. [ISG]
Melvyn Leffler:
And to grapple with your initial statement about you don’t think that 9/11 was determinative, I would disagree with that.
Robert Kagan:No, it was determinative, but it was not the original reason why Iraq appeared on the American radar screen.
Melvyn Leffler:No, it’s not why it appeared. ... And for the most part, policymakers did not think that the use of force, especially American combat troops, was commensurate with the threat that Iraq posed prior to 9/11. So in that sense, I would suggest that 9/11 really does transform, legitimately transform, in my opinion, threat perception.
Professor Leffler and Dr. Kagan are both right. See the OIF FAQ retrospective #911 section and part three of the OIF FAQ answer to "Why did Bush leave the ‘containment’ (status quo)".
Note, "Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives" (IPP).
The distinctive combined threat of Saddam's UNSCR 687 WMD and terrorism violations was officially marked by President Clinton. The difference made by 9/11 was to significantly boost the valuation of the already-defined threat and the urgency to expeditiously resolve it with Iraq's mandated compliance. At the same time, the ad hoc post-ODF 'containment', which had been the President's excuse to not use force besides the ongoing counterfire in the no-fly zones, had evidently failed as Saddam kept pushing, which meant that the President was compelled to make a hard choice about the use of force.
Melvyn Leffler:
But a lot of the narrative suggests that Iraqis are still shattered by the experience of the American invasion, occupation, and the dislocation, and turmoil, and sectarian strife that followed. So, did all of this really help America promote world order? Did it help promote democracy and stability in the Middle East? I think it’s a difficult question.
I answer Professor Leffler's "difficult question" in the OIF FAQ epilogue answer to "Was Operation Iraqi Freedom a strategic blunder or a strategic victory".
The short answer is OIF under President Bush did "help America promote world order [and]...democracy and stability in the Middle East". But President Obama's irresponsible exit from OIF, combined with his feckless approach to the Arab Spring, was profoundly inhumane and has been a compounding strategic blunder. Obama radically deviated with Iraq, so the consequences of Obama's choice should not be ascribed to OIF. Blaming OIF for the harm from Obama ending OIF is like pulling a patient out of a cancer treatment partway through, just when the patient is turning the corner, and then blaming the curtailed cancer treatment when the cancer returns.
Melvyn Leffler:
But let’s honestly grapple with why so many Americans criticize the use of force in Iraq, and why so many people around the world are still critical. So what lots of folks see is the fact that as a result of the American intervention, and the insurgency, and the counterinsurgency and the sectarian strife, somewhere between 200,00 and 300,000 Iraqis died. As a result of those circumstances, approximately eight to nine million Iraqis were displaced. That’s a third of the prewar population of Iraq. Eight or nine million Iraqis were displaced. Some estimates say that the ultimate cost of the American venture in Iraq might equal almost $2 trillion.
So, the difficult question for a lot of people to deal with and why people are skeptical of the utility of using force in this situation is, whether the results were commensurate with the cost. And I think it’s an interesting issue.
Robert Kagan:So, the difficult question for a lot of people to deal with and why people are skeptical of the utility of using force in this situation is, whether the results were commensurate with the cost. And I think it’s an interesting issue.
Mel, that is not the question I asked. And that’s not the question we’re grappling with. If we know the outcome of every action that we take in its entirety, before we take it, that will make it a lot easier to make decisions. The problem is, is we don’t know what the outcome is going to be. The losses that you described, and the cost that you described, assume, at least in part, that there would be no costs, and no wars, and no conflicts, and no dead Iraqis if we took the other choice. And what I’m suggesting is that, at the time, we did not know what the various historical futures were, and we could imagine a worse historical future, even in the one that you just elucidated as to what actually happened, you know, if we’d taken another route. And so the problem is not, can we weigh the costs and benefits of a war that we’ve already undertaken? The difficulty is deciding what do we do when we’re in the spot that we’re in right then.
The reason that "so many people around the world are still critical" is that they view "the insurgency, and the counterinsurgency and the sectarian strife, somewhere between 200,00[0] and 300,000 Iraqis died" as "a result of the American intervention" because they don't understand that those things are the result of Saddam's ceasefire violations, which caused the intervention.
If they understood Saddam's ceasefire violations, then they could understand Saddam's extreme UNSCR 688 human rights and UNSCR 687 terrorism violations. If they understood Saddam's human rights and terrorism violations, then they could understand two things about the "utility of using force in this situation":
The first thing is that the root cause of "the insurgency, and the counterinsurgency and the sectarian strife, somewhere between 200,00[0] and 300,000 Iraqis died" is the genocidal Saddamists who converted their terrorist governance to the terrorist insurgency that viciously attacked the Iraqi people like they were revolting in 1991.
The only thing in the world that proved willing and able to stop the Saddamists' genocidal terrorist rule and their genocidal terrorist insurgency was the intervention of US forces. Notice that as soon as Obama took away America's protection from Iraq, the Saddamists came swarming back to terrorize and kill Iraqis.
The second thing that comes from understanding Saddam's human rights and terrorism violations (setting aside the composition of "might equal almost $2 trillion") is understanding that the reason for "Some estimates say that the ultimate cost of the American venture in Iraq might equal almost $2 trillion" is that letting the noncompliant Saddam regime fester for so long proved to be a costly mistake. By 2003, the Saddam problem was "far worse" (UNCHR) than we knew, which as Mr. Hadley points out, is why the initial post-war plan failed. Letting the Saddam problem fester drove up the cost of the regime change that was necessary to solve the Saddam problem. As it happened, it's better that the regime change happened in 2003 than any later since the Saddam problem was only growing worse, and more costly to solve, the longer we let it fester.
Robert Kagan:
I think that one of the problems is, is that, the justification ultimately for invading Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. I believe if there had never been 9/11, we still might have wound up at war with Iraq. I think if Al Gore had been president, he might have wound up at war with Iraq.
As Dr. Kagan points out, the grounds for the Iraq intervention long preceded 9/11. But it's not accurate to say "the justification ultimately for invading Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11" since the 9/11 attacks heightened the valuation of Saddam's UNSCR 687 WMD and terrorism violations and increased the urgency to "bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations" (Public Law 105-235).
"I think if Al Gore had been president, he might have wound up at war with Iraq" makes sense given that President Bush came into office at the culmination point of "The crisis between the United States and Iraq that led to the declaration on August 2, 1990, of a national emergency has not been resolved" (President Clinton, 28JUL00). The Iraq crisis matured during the Clinton administration, and Bush's case against Saddam carried forward Clinton's (and Gore's) case against Saddam.
Secretary of State Albright, 26MAR97:
Under resolutions approved by the UN Security Council, Iraq is required to demonstrate its peaceful intentions by meeting a series of obligations. It must end its weapons of mass destruction programs and destroy any such weapons produced. It must cooperate with the inspection and monitoring regime established by the UN Special Commission, or UNSCOM. And it must recognize its border with Kuwait, return stolen property, account for POW/MIAs, end support for terrorism and stop brutalizing its people.
...
Our view, which is unshakable, is that Iraq must prove its peaceful intentions. It can only do that by complying with all of the Security Council resolutions to which it is subject. ... And the evidence is overwhelming that Saddam Hussein's intentions will never be peaceful.
...
Our view, which is unshakable, is that Iraq must prove its peaceful intentions. It can only do that by complying with all of the Security Council resolutions to which it is subject. ... And the evidence is overwhelming that Saddam Hussein's intentions will never be peaceful.
President Clinton, 16DEC98:
The hard fact is that so long as Saddam remains in power, he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of his region, the security of the world. The best way to end that threat once and for all is with the new Iraqi government, a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the rights of its people. ... Heavy as they are, the costs of action must be weighed against the price of inaction. If Saddam defies the world and we fail to respond, we will face a far greater threat in the future. Saddam will strike again at his neighbors; he will make war on his own people. And mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them, and he will use them.
Vice President Gore, 26JUN00:
The INC [Iraqi National Congress] and the Vice President reaffirmed their joint desire to see a united Iraq served by a representative and democratic government responsive to the needs of its people and willing to live in peace with its neighbors.
The Vice President reaffirmed the Administration's strong commitment to the objective of removing Saddam Hussein from power, and to bringing him and his inner circle to justice for their war crimes and crimes against humanity. Saddam's removal is the key to the positive transformation of Iraq's relationship with the international community and with the United States, in particular.
... The Vice President reaffirmed American concern for the welfare of the Iraqi people. ... He further emphasized the US concern for the safety and security of all the Iraqi people in accordance with UNSCR 688, which condemns Saddam Hussein's repression of the Iraqi people as a threat to regional stability.
... The Vice President reaffirmed American concern for the welfare of the Iraqi people. ... He further emphasized the US concern for the safety and security of all the Iraqi people in accordance with UNSCR 688, which condemns Saddam Hussein's repression of the Iraqi people as a threat to regional stability.
The OIF FAQ answer to "Was Operation Iraqi Freedom about WMD or democracy" shows the presidential continuity of the UNSCR 678 enforcement.
Robert Kagan:
And so, I really do think that then when things go bad, people go back and say, so why did we do this? And there’s a paradigm problem, because I don’t think Americans really understand how we had gotten into position in the first place, that it was our job to do something about what was going on in the Middle East. If there’s an underlying assumption then that it was our responsibility to keep order in the Middle East, which we later decided that maybe that wasn’t our responsibility. And I feel like that’s kind of the debate we’re still having today.
To clarify the Iraq issue for "Americans [to] really understand how we had gotten into position in the first place", re-lay a proper foundation for the public with OIF's primary sources. They're straightforward, thorough, and plainly stated. They're bedrock.
Melvyn Leffler:
Well, I think there was a lot of questioning in the 1990s, Bob, about whether the role of the United States should be to use military force to preserve world order, both in the Middle East and elsewhere. You remember, Condi Rice, in her famous 2000 foreign affairs article, said that foreign policy is not social work. And it is not the task of the United States to be doing these things. So that even quite a few people who joined the George W. Bush administration in 2000, are pretty ambiguous about what the role of the United States should be.
As far as I know, the "questioning...about whether the role of the United States should be to use military force to preserve world order" did not dispute the fundamental justification of the UNSCR 678 enforcement, at least in the mainstream orbit of the foreign policy and political establishments. If anything, in 1999-2000, mainstream critics of the US role with Iraq, such as then-Senator Biden, were frustrated that the US wasn't doing enough to resolve the Saddam problem with force.
Robert Kagan:
I mean, yes, you have to make a judgment. But in each case, you know, what are your criteria? And the question as to whether it is America’s responsibility to deal with things that go on in the Middle East is a foundational question. What’s your answer? Well, if the answer is no . . . I’ll lay it out even more, if the answer is no, then there’s no reason to use force at all. If the answer is yes, then it’s going to come down to whether force seems to be the appropriate thing to use at that particular moment or not.
Melvyn Leffler:The United States has a tremendous interest in world order. But when is it appropriate to use military force to achieve that objective? And I’ve always been drawn to two speeches that George H. W. Bush gave in 1992, after he was defeated. And he gives two speeches between his electoral defeat and the transition to the Clinton administration. And they’re incredibly lucid speeches about the dilemmas of when to use force. And basically, he says, it depends on good judgment, there are times to use it, and there are not times to use it. And he says this, generating generic rules will not really answer the situation.
The UNSCR 678 enforcement was not a general case.
For Iraq, President HW Bush crossed the war threshold with Operation Desert Storm. Then, while acknowledging Saddam's threat remained unresolved, he only suspended the Gulf War contingent on a conditional ceasefire that required Iraq to comply with a comprehensive set of mandates purpose-designed to assure the international community of Saddam's "peaceful intentions" (UNSCR 687). Then HW Bush withdrew US forces, except for the UNSCR 688 no-fly zones, to be replaced by UN forces. Saddam responded to the retreat of US forces by violating the ceasefire terms. In his last week in office, HW Bush ordered US forces back to bomb Iraq. That's what he handed off to President Clinton.
The three presidents, including Bush in 2002-2003, tried hard to resolve the Saddam problem with no or less use of force. But force was always part of the equation for Iraq because Saddam made it necessary to "bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations" (Public Law 105-235). Nothing in President HW Bush's record shows that he was willing to let Saddam escape Iraq's Gulf War ceasefire obligations. That's also true for President Clinton.
Independent of 9/11, the Iraq crisis was not static because Saddam was active with his threatening noncompliance. After Saddam beat the sanctions—"The [Saddam] Regime’s strategy was successful to the point where sitting members of the Security Council were actively violating the resolutions passed by the Security Council" (ISG)—and brushed off the Operation Desert Fox bombing campaign, the credible threat of ground invasion, i.e., resumption of the Gulf War, was the only realistic coercive leverage left for the UNSCR 678 enforcers.
Melvyn Leffler:
But I don’t think the administration went into Iraq to preserve world order. I think that the administration went into Iraq for reasons of national security, the way Steve Hadley just described it. And most of the policymakers in the administration will tell you that . . . and have told me, as Steve Hadley suggested just a half hour ago, that the overriding consideration for President Bush was his belief, perhaps an erroneous belief, but his belief, his sincere belief, that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq. And that those chemical and biological weapons might find their way into the hands of terrorists. Or that in the long run or the intermediate term and the long term, Saddam would restart his weapons programs and “blackmail” the United States. Those were the reasons, not world order.
Robert Kagan:The reason Saddam Hussein had the United States as an enemy, the reason Islamic radicals have the United States as an enemy is because the United States has been in the Middle East. And so, that is a world order question. We’re not in the Middle East because our vital national security is. . . . Especially with oil not being, you know, as big a deal, we’re not in the Middle East for our vital national security interest. We’re in the Middle East for world order reasons. And that was true then too. And that’s why we went to war with Saddam over Kuwait. That was a world order question. It was not a vital national security interest question.
The "world order" and "national security" interests are both spelled out in the controlling law and policy on Iraq. In terms of national security, Saddam's manifold unresolved threat was defined by Iraq's noncompliance with the Gulf War ceasefire mandates on disarmament, terrorism, aggression, and human rights. The Iraq WMD issue was a Gulf War ceasefire compliance issue per UNSCR 687, and Saddam's possession of WMD was a UNSCR 687 violation. The baseline UNSCR 678 enforcement of the paradigmatic Gulf War ceasefire mandates, including the UNSCR 687 disarmament mandates, was essential for US-led liberal international order.
It was all of a piece in the Gulf War ceasefire compliance enforcement.
Melvyn Leffler:
Now, the policymakers, I think, sincerely were convinced that there were weapons of mass destruction. And there was reason for them to be convinced. Why? Saddam had had weapons of mass destruction. He had used weapons of mass destruction. He had lied about his weapons of mass destruction. He had concealed his weapons of mass destruction. There were ample reasons to believe that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous character who might well have weapons of mass destruction, and who was capable of letting terrorists get ahold of them, even if not al Qaeda terrorists. But I would say one lesson of all of this for policymakers, and for analysts as well, is to step back and reexamine fundamental assumptions, to reexamine fundamental axioms. There was reason to step back. Now, it’s easy for me to say, many of us say to one another, you really need to rethink fundamental assumptions. How many of us really reexamine fundamental assumptions? How often do I, how often do you Bob, how often does anyone? But one lesson of this is to reexamine fundamental assumptions and to be able to step back.
Actually, regarding the Iraq WMD issue per UNSCR 687, the UNSCR 678 enforcers did rigorously "reexamine fundamental axioms". At the decision point for OIF, the Saddam regime was evidentially in material breach across the board of the Gulf War ceasefire terms. The principal cause for OIF was Iraq's failure to comply and disarm as mandated with the UNSCR 1441 inspections. In Saddam's "final opportunity to comply" with "full and immediate compliance by Iraq without conditions or restrictions with its obligations" (UNSCR 1441), Iraq's "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) of the Gulf War ceasefire WMD mandates was established by UNSCOM, decided by the UN Security Council, confirmed by UNMOVIC to trigger the decision for OIF, and corroborated post hoc by the Iraq Survey Group: "ISG judges that Iraq failed to comply with UNSCRs" and "the Iraqis never intended to meet the spirit of the UNSC’s resolutions".
Saddam's "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) at Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441) is confirmed and corroborated. OIF's casus belli is clear.
Melvyn Leffler:
For example, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld asked his intelligence chief in October of 2002. He actually asks him, how certain are we that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction? And Gen. Schaffer writes a 10 page or so memorandum, which is now available in the Rumsfeld Papers, a 10-page memorandum. And the gist of it is, we’re 30 percent sure of this, and 40 percent sure of that, and 25 percent sure of this. And he ends the 10 pages by saying, “In short, Mr. Secretary, we don’t know how much we don’t know.” ... So there was reason to step back and reassess fundamental assumptions.
... Now, the policymakers, I think, sincerely were convinced that there were weapons of mass destruction. And there was reason for them to be convinced. Why? Saddam had had weapons of mass destruction. He had used weapons of mass destruction. He had lied about his weapons of mass destruction. He had concealed his weapons of mass destruction. There were ample reasons to believe that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous character who might well have weapons of mass destruction, and who was capable of letting terrorists get ahold of them, even if not al Qaeda terrorists.
Audience-Kori Schake:... Now, the policymakers, I think, sincerely were convinced that there were weapons of mass destruction. And there was reason for them to be convinced. Why? Saddam had had weapons of mass destruction. He had used weapons of mass destruction. He had lied about his weapons of mass destruction. He had concealed his weapons of mass destruction. There were ample reasons to believe that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous character who might well have weapons of mass destruction, and who was capable of letting terrorists get ahold of them, even if not al Qaeda terrorists.
Q: Kori Schake from AEI. Mel, did you find any evidence in your research that any other relevant government had a different view on Iraq’s WMD programs? Because that seems to me a pretty important part of the conversation that hasn’t yet been touched on.
Melvyn Leffler:Yeah, I think that’s a great question. And my research, which is based mainly on American and British records, and what American and British officials and intelligence analysts said about what other intelligence agencies were saying. The reports unequivocally suggest that everyone, every intelligence agency, around the world, according to American summaries, believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Now, Jacques Chirac, apparently, there’s evidence to suggest that Jacques Chirac did not believe that Saddam still had weapons of mass destruction. However, the information that I’ve seen suggests that, at least American said that French intelligence agencies also believed that he had weapons of mass destruction.
Gary Schmitt:So this is something I do know a bit about. I was in France, I was in Paris, in November, early December of 2002, and the French intelligence was quite convinced that there were weapons of mass destruction. But the other part of this is the lack of . . . I mean, I was surprised when Colin Powell, at the UN, when he made the presentation, I was also surprised by the sort of lack of material put forward.
I unpacked Secretary Powell's case presentation at Regarding Secretary of State Powell's speech at the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003. Based on the fact record – knowing what we know now – the speech holds up well. The main points are validated nearly across the board.
As for Jacques Chirac, I don't know what he believed, but this is what French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin said to the UN about the French intelligence assessment on 05FEB03:
Regarding the chemical area, we have indications about a capacity to produce VX and mustard gas. In the biological area, our evidence suggests--the evidence suggests that there are significant stocks--there is the possible possession of significant stocks of anthrax and botulism toxins and the possible--possibly a production capacity today.
To clarify, in the Gulf War ceasefire disarmament process, the "fundamental assumptions" were actually operative presumptions until Iraq proved it disarmed in accordance with UNSCR 687. There was no burden on the UNSCR 678 enforcers to prove Iraq possessed WMD matching intelligence assessments. Enforcement with Iraq did not pivot on the intelligence. By procedure, the intelligence assessments did not and could not trigger enforcement. The "onus" (UNMOVIC) was solely on Iraq to prove it disarmed in accordance with UNSCR 687. By procedure, only Iraq's "continued violations of its obligations" (UNSCR 1441) could and did trigger enforcement, including OIF.
I go over this in part one of the OIF FAQ answer to "Did Bush lie his way to war with Iraq".
This e-mail is long, longer than I expected, but that's not surprising. The topics covered in the "The Iraq War Series: Operation Iraqi Freedom" panel discussion are in the OIF FAQ's wheelhouse. I hope these comments help clarify the Iraq issue. I look forward to your feedback. If you have questions about my work, please ask.
This e-mail will be posted here. I'll read the "The Iraq War Series: The Aftermath" and "The Iraq War Series: The Conduct of the War" panel transcripts, but I haven't committed myself to commenting on them.
from: [Eric LC]
to: [Charles Duelfer], [Sahar Soleimany], [Ben Lefkowitz], [Stephen Rademaker]
cc: [Gary Schmitt]
date: Mar 29, 2024, 10:40 AM
subject: Critical comments on "The Iraq War Series: The Run-Up to the War" (AEI panel, 21FEB23)
Ms. Pletka, Mr. Rademaker, Mr. Duelfer, and Dr. Pollack,
I clarify the Iraq issue at Operation Iraqi Freedom FAQ with OIF's primary sources. That includes criticizing experts who misinform the public by contradicting OIF's primary sources. I'm currently reviewing panel transcripts and articles from the American Enterprise Institute's The Iraq War Series 20 Years Later. It's a work in progress, which you can read here.
These comments respond to the 21FEB23 AEI panel discussion, The Iraq War Series: The Run-Up to the War.
My main takeaway from the panel discussion is that the discourse on Iraq has been badly warped by experts, including Mr. Duelfer and Dr. Pollack, who fundamentally misrepresent both the UNSCR 687 disarmament process and the ex post Iraq Survey Group findings. In that regard, I'll preface my comments with corrective statements from Mr. Duelfer's predecessor with ISG, David Kay. Excerpt from the OIF FAQ retrospective #duelferreport section:
On January 28, 2004, David Kay, who preceded Charles Duelfer as head of the Iraq Survey Group, reported to the Senate Armed Services Committee:
The Iraq Survey Group heavily qualified its findings in the report's Transmittal Message, Scope Note, and various sections by cautioning that the Saddam regime was expert at hiding proscribed items and activities, much evidence was lost prior to, during, and after the war, key Saddam regime officials were not forthcoming, statements conflicted, there were clear signs that suspect areas were "sanitized", and other practical factors, such as the terrorist insurgency, limited its investigation. For example, on January 28, 2004, David Kay informed the Senate Armed Services Committee:
In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point of the Iraq Survey Group, and in fact, that I reported to you in October, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of [U.N.] Resolution 1441. Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities -- one last chance to come clean about what it had. We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material.. . .
The Iraq Survey Group heavily qualified its findings in the report's Transmittal Message, Scope Note, and various sections by cautioning that the Saddam regime was expert at hiding proscribed items and activities, much evidence was lost prior to, during, and after the war, key Saddam regime officials were not forthcoming, statements conflicted, there were clear signs that suspect areas were "sanitized", and other practical factors, such as the terrorist insurgency, limited its investigation. For example, on January 28, 2004, David Kay informed the Senate Armed Services Committee:
I regret to say that I think at the end of the work of the [Iraq Survey Group] there's still going to be an unresolvable ambiguity about what happened.
A lot of that traces to the failure on April 9 to establish immediately physical security in Iraq -- the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was directly intentional, designed by the security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program and their other programs as well, a lot of which was what we simply called Ali Baba looting. "It had been the regime's. The regime is gone. I'm going to go take the gold toilet fixtures and everything else imaginable."
I've seen looting around the world and thought I knew the best looters in the world. The Iraqis excel at that.
The result is -- document destruction -- we're really not going to be able to prove beyond a truth the negatives and some of the positive conclusions that we're going to come to. There will be always unresolved ambiguity here.
Kenneth Pollack:
We had obviously supported the Iraqis during the Iran-Iraq War against Iran. And coming out of it, the Bush administration had been hoping to become even closer to Saddam, hoping to bring him over to our side of the Cold War, our policy called constructive engagement with Iraq. Which was all about hopefully moving Saddam in our direction. And so when Saddam decides to invade Kuwait, it’s a shock for a whole variety of reasons. A blatant use of aggression by one state against another. It completely scuppers the entire policy direction that the administration had been heading in.
This is an important point for critics who assert that President Bush eschewed diplomatic alternatives and rushed to war with Iraq as a first resort in 2002-2003. In fact, Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441) in 2002-2003 was the culmination of an exhausted diplomatic process that began with normal diplomacy to moderate Saddam in the 1980s. After normal diplomacy with Saddam failed in 1990-1991, we tried to rehabilitate Iraq with the diagnostic measurements-cum-prescriptive measures of the Gulf War ceasefire "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441) which were purpose-designed for "the need to be assured of Iraq's peaceful intentions in the light of its unlawful invasion and occupation of Kuwait" (UNSCR 687). The reiterated diplomatic attempts to enforce Iraq's compliance with the Gulf War ceasefire terms failed by 2000-2001, if not by 1998 with Operation Desert Fox, which left only Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441). Finally, in 2003 the Saddam regime failed the UNSCR 1441 "final" compliance test to trigger Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Kenneth Pollack:
And once the administration starts coming to grips with this realization, it makes a profound judgment about Iraq. Very important, I think, absolutely correct, but that really sets the stage for the rest of the entire confrontation with Saddam and then with American policy toward Iraq. Which is, actually, Saddam Hussein is irredeemable. ... And worth recognizing, worth remembering, regime change in Iraq starts with Bush 41. It’s Bush 41 who makes that his policy. ... That is the moment when the United States realizes we’ve got to get rid of this guy. And each subsequent administration eventually travels that same path in its own way.
This is also an important point for critics. Despite the conclusion in 1991 that Saddam's threat was "irredeemable" and necessitated regime change, the US attempted to resolve Saddam's threat diplomatically for twelve more years with the Gulf War ceasefire "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441). Yet Saddam constantly responded to America's attempts at a diplomatic resolution by reaffirming the Iraqi threat with "continued violations of its [Iraq's] obligations" (UNSCR 1441) that eventually compelled the US to resume and complete the Gulf War pursuant to UNSCR 678.
Charles Duelfer:
But if you’re the president, or Saddam Hussein, for that matter, you’re in a difficult—you’ve got all these people telling you all the things. How do you know who you believe?
... one of my relevant experiences was running what was known as the Iraq Survey Group.
... one of my relevant experiences was running what was known as the Iraq Survey Group.
According to President Clinton's precedential determination for Operation Desert Fox and President Bush's determination for Operation Iraqi Freedom, the President believed in the UNSCR 687 compliance process that the US enforced per Public Laws 102-1 (102-190) and 107-243 pursuant to UNSCR 678. The President believed Saddam's responses to UNSCRs 1154, 1194, 1205, and UNSCR 1441, the UNSCOM Butler report and UNMOVIC Clusters document, which confirmed Iraq did not disarm per UNSCR 687.
For Mr. Duelfer's question of "who do you believe", the frustrating answer is 'Not Charles Duelfer'. He exemplifies why it's crucial to clarify the Iraq issue with OIF's primary sources and hold experts who contradict them to account. Mr. Duelfer habitually misleads the public by obscuring the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441) and its governing procedure. Worse, he misrepresents his own findings with the Iraq Survey Group.
For more detail, see the OIF FAQ retrospective #duelferreport section and my Rebuke of and advice to Charles Duelfer.
Stephen Rademaker:
You’d mentioned the Iraq Liberation Act in your introduction of me. That was the law that passed Congress and was signed into law by the president in 1998. It fundamentally did two things. It wrote into law, that it was the object of the United States to change the regime in Iraq, to remove Saddam Hussein from power. The second thing it did, it gave the president some tools to do that.
... the surmise that everyone was drawing at the time, incorrectly, as it turned out, but the surmise was, you know, if he’s preventing these inspections from taking place, it must be because he has something to hide. He must be doing something with weapons of mass destruction.
... the surmise that everyone was drawing at the time, incorrectly, as it turned out, but the surmise was, you know, if he’s preventing these inspections from taking place, it must be because he has something to hide. He must be doing something with weapons of mass destruction.
Public Law 105-338 also fundamentally did a third thing: Section 7 of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 made "assistance for Iraq upon replacement of Saddam Hussein regime" (P.L. 105-338) an "object of the United States". Section 7 of Public Law 105-338 was "expected" in section 4 of Public Law 107-243, which contradicts the Congress members, such as then-Senators Biden and Clinton, who later claimed that they did not countenance regime change with the 2002 AUMF. In fact, the 2002 AUMF plainly "expected" regime change. Part 7 also belies critics who claim the US role with post-Saddam Iraq was an ad hoc choice by the Bush administration when in fact it was ingrained in the controlling law and policy on Iraq that the Bush administration inherited.
Mr. Rademaker is incorrect that "the surmise that everyone was drawing at the time...He [Saddam] must be doing something with weapons of mass destruction" was "incorrectly [surmised], as it turned out". Actually, as it turned out, Congress's "surmise" was correct: The Iraq Survey Group's nuclear, biological, chemical, and missile-related findings show an active WMD program in violation of UNSCR 687. At the same time, ISG's non-findings amount to "unresolvable ambiguity" (Kay) due to Iraq's non-pareil "denial and deception operations" (ISG) that "sanitized" (ISG) much of the evidence during and after the OIF invasion.
Kenneth Pollack:
Iraq was in that have to category. We have to do something to keep Saddam out of the way so that he doesn’t create problems for us, in particular, with Arab-Israeli peace, which was going to be a major issue for the Clinton administration.
... And it was clear that Saddam was Hussein could be the spoiler. So he had to be contained.
... And it was clear that Saddam was Hussein could be the spoiler. So he had to be contained.
It's important to clarify that, according to the Clinton dual-containment framework for Iran and Iraq, "contained" for Saddam was defined as Iraq's mandated compliance with the Gulf War ceasefire terms, not a conventional containment.
Kenneth Pollack:
Saddam comes to the conclusion, Charles details this brilliantly both in his book and the famous Duelfer Report, that about 1996, ’97, Saddam decides he really does need to get rid of his WMD. He tries that briefly. And again, it’s always in Saddam’s version, right? So he comes clean in his version of events. It’s not necessarily what we would have expected.
... Containment is absolutely breaking down. ... much of that is because of the deliberate efforts of Saddam Hussein, using the millions and then billions of dollars that he got from Oil for Food to pay people off all over the place.
... Containment is absolutely breaking down. ... much of that is because of the deliberate efforts of Saddam Hussein, using the millions and then billions of dollars that he got from Oil for Food to pay people off all over the place.
There were no competing 'Clinton said, Saddam said' versions of events. The Hussein Kamel al-Majid revelation in 1995 did not alter the UNSCR 687 standard which had been in force since 1991. In 1996-1997, the UNSCR 678 enforcers "would have expected" Iraq to prove it disarmed in accordance with UNSCR 687, the same as Iraq had been obligated to do since 1991. Either Iraq proved to UNSCOM it disarmed per UNSCR 687 or Iraq was not disarmed as mandated. At no point did the Saddam regime comply with UNSCR 687 as "the Iraqis never intended to meet the spirit of the UNSC’s resolutions" (ISG).
"Saddam's...version of events" is plainly false. Whatever Saddam decided "about 1996, '97", the UNSCOM record shows Iraq did not "[come] clean" per UNSCR 687. And the Iraq Survey Group findings show Iraq did not "get rid of his WMD" per UNSCR 687. For example, "the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) maintained throughout 1991 to 2003 a set of undeclared covert laboratories...The existence, function, and purpose of the laboratories were never declared to the UN" (ISG).
And, Saddam paid for Iraq's "continued violations of its obligations" (UNSCR 1441) with "the millions and then billions of dollars that he got from Oil for Food". The corruption of the OFF program was part and parcel with Iraq's UNSCR 687 violations that continued through 1996-1997: "The successful implementation of the Protocols, continued oil smuggling efforts, and the manipulation of UN OFF contracts emboldened Saddam to pursue his military reconstitution efforts starting in 1997...These efforts covered conventional arms, dual-use goods acquisition, and some WMD-related programs" (ISG).
Danielle Pletka:
But one of the things I think is important as a framing matter, is that you go, as Ken describes it, and as Stephen describes it, from the early 1990s, where you have this real sort of kumbaya moment of international consensus, right? We can all agree Saddam Hussein is a bad man, and he did a bad thing. And we are shocked, shocked to see that he has a WMD program. This is sort of the 1991 consensus. But that consensus frays not simply on the question of containment, that consensus frays also inside the US government. Where those of us who watched George H. W. Bush, as Ken very rightly says, and I think underappreciated, say to the Iraqi people in the aftermath of the end of the war, when there’s a decision made, not to continue with the war and oust Saddam Hussein.
Something else that's "underappreciated" but fundamental to the Iraq issue is the legal basis for the Gulf War versus the legal basis for the Gulf War ceasefire enforcement pursuant to UNSCR 678.
President HW Bush chose to approach the Iraq-Kuwait crisis fundamentally as a US-led international law enforcement based on the United Nations. Therefore, President HW Bush was dissuaded from pursuing Operation Desert Storm to the logical conclusion of regime change since doing so may have exceeded the mandate of the UNSC resolutions that were in force at the point of ODS, even though the President recognized that stopping short meant Saddam's Gulf War-established threat remained unresolved. The legal deficiency underlying ODS was cured by UNSCR 687 and related resolutions, including the human rights mandates of UNSCR 688.
If UNSCRs 687 and 688 had been in force when President HW Bush encouraged an Iraqi revolt, the US would have had an operative legal basis to intervene on humanitarian grounds pursuant to UNSCR 678. As it happened, given his focus on international law, President HW Bush erred by encouraging an Iraqi revolt with an implied promise of US support prior to the ceasefire resolutions. Notably, President Obama repeated President HW Bush's inhumane mistake twenty years later when Obama pledged, and then reneged, support for the Arab Spring activists who had regained faith in American leadership of the free world due to President Bush's resolute principled commitment to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Danielle Pletka:
And that is, a lot of the data that we used to see at the time, people starving, children dying, lack of medicine, right? This was all coming from Saddam Hussein, being reported uncritically by various UN specialized agencies, the World Food Program, and others, because that’s actually how they work. None of us had ever really understood that, we thought that they were going in and seeing how many people were actually hungry there on the ground and who didn’t have medicine. No, no, no, they take direct reporting from the government, understandable, but in this case, from Saddam Hussein.
Accepting Saddam's IO-laundered propaganda at face value was a political failure. That being said, for the Iraq humanitarian issue, where the "UN specialized agencies" did independent investigation, the Saddam regime's violation of the UNSCR 688 human rights mandates was confirmed for casus belli.
Charles Duelfer:
But it was UN Special Commission on Iraq. This hadn’t been done before. I mean, it sounds like arms control, because we have weapons inspectors and they’re supposed to do two things. They’re supposed to account for all the weapons that Iraq had and get rid of them. And the second thing is to create a monitoring system which would provide the security council with assurance that Saddam isn’t going to restart these programs.
... There was a gradual shift in responsibility for the burden of proof. And this was kind of skillfully done by the Iraqis, mostly Tarek Aziz. But what it did was it caused the Security Council to not challenge Iraq, to prove that it had gotten rid of everything. But gradually, the burden of proof shifted as if they were challenging UNSCOM. Well, you know, these people are suffering, are we suffering because you can’t find the last hex bolt on some Scud warhead? Or, you know, what’s left? And that shift in the burden proof was critical in the mid-’90s.
... There was a gradual shift in responsibility for the burden of proof. And this was kind of skillfully done by the Iraqis, mostly Tarek Aziz. But what it did was it caused the Security Council to not challenge Iraq, to prove that it had gotten rid of everything. But gradually, the burden of proof shifted as if they were challenging UNSCOM. Well, you know, these people are suffering, are we suffering because you can’t find the last hex bolt on some Scud warhead? Or, you know, what’s left? And that shift in the burden proof was critical in the mid-’90s.
Mr. Duelfer's "They’re [UNSCOM is] supposed to account for all the weapons that Iraq had and get rid of them" is misleading. Mr. Duelfer is correct that the Iraq issue was distorted in the politics. But there was never a "shift in the burden of proof", gradual or otherwise, in the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441). The burden of proof in the Gulf War ceasefire disarmament was always on Iraq, never on UNSCOM. UNSCR 687 obligated Iraq to declare and yield all proscribed items and activities and eliminate them under UNSCOM's supervision. UNSCOM's obligation was to verify whether Iraq fulfilled its obligation per UNSCR 687, which the Saddam regime never did. UNSCOM was never "supposed to account for all the weapons that Iraq had" in the face of Iraq's "denial and deception operations" (UNSCR 1441), which breached the ceasefire in and of themselves.
Charles Duelfer:
So it turns out that by 1997, ’98, we’d basically accounted for most of the stuff that he had, but we didn’t know it. We couldn’t verify it.
Mr. Duelfer's "by 1997, ’98, we’d basically accounted for most of the stuff that he had" is misleading because that's a guess, not knowledge. He can't know UNSCOM "basically accounted for most of the stuff that he had" because the Iraq Survey Group's findings don't "verify" that claim. ISG's non-findings are heavily qualified due to "the degradation of the Iraqi infrastructure and dispersal of personnel" (ISG) and "extensive looting and destruction at military facilities" (ISG) that prevented a complete account of Saddam's WMD by ISG.
In fact, ISG found much evidence of an active WMD program. The UNSCR 687 violations that ISG found constitute a floor only since Iraq's "denial and deception operations" (ISG) made sure that "There will be always unresolved ambiguity here" (Kay), for example, "ISG cannot determine the fate of Iraq’s stocks of bulk BW agents" (ISG). The unaccounted for mass of "sanitized" (ISG) evidence against the backdrop of Iraq's "large covert procurement program" (ISG) and "extensive, yet fragmentary and circumstantial, body of evidence suggesting that Saddam pursued a strategy to maintain a capability to return to WMD" (ISG) means that ISG can't know the actual extent that Saddam's WMD program was retained and reconstituted.
Stephen Rademaker:
In northern Iraq, you know, there was an area of Iraq that was not controlled by Saddam Hussein. Actually, the United States was providing air cover. The Operation Northern Watch, Operation Southern Watch. There were no fly zones enforced by the US Air Force, actually a coalition operation.
Kenneth Pollack:
1996, we have a Kurdish Civil War, the United States does nothing for either side. We eventually do broker a peace, but both sides feel like we’ve betrayed them. It causes the PUK to join up with the Iranians. And the KDP, then of course, having no one else to turn to turns to Saddam.
Mr. Rademaker's "there was an area of Iraq that was not controlled by Saddam Hussein" is partially misleading. Mr. Rademaker's "Bay of Pigs" analogy, which presumably refers to Saddam's 1996 attack on Erbil, showed that if short of full control, the Saddam regime was still active in areas covered by the UNSCR 688 no-fly zones.
The no-fly zones were not "air cover" as that term implies support for ground operations or at least interdiction of ground actions. In fact, the no-fly zones focused on Iraqi air operations per UNSCR 688, and surface action was only taken to defend against Iraqi surface-to-air attacks. As President HW Bush cautioned about the limits of the no-fly zones, "The southern no-fly zone and Operation Southern Watch were established in August 1992 to assist the monitoring of Iraq's compliance with Security Council Resolution 688. Since that time, Iraq has stopped aerial bombardments of its citizens in and around the southern marsh areas ... Operation Southern Watch cannot detect lower-level acts of oppression, however".
Kenneth Pollack:
Well, there aren’t any targets related to WMD because it’s all gone. Right? The inspectors can’t find any at this point in time, because it is all gone.
Dr. Pollack's "The inspectors can’t find any at this point in time" is misleading because, again, UNSCR 687 obligated Iraq to declare and present all proscribed items and activities to the UN weapons inspectors. The UN weapons inspectors—and US intelligence for that matter—were not obligated by UNSCR 687 to "find" Saddam's WMD at any point in time.
And again, "because it is all gone" is incorrect given that the Iraq Survey Group found many UNSCR 687 violations and ISG's non-findings are largely due to "the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was directly intentional, designed by the security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program" (Kay) during and after the OIF invasion. As far as "there aren’t any targets related to WMD" in 1998, that was due to the Saddam regime's expertise at hiding WMD program elements, e.g., "the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) maintained throughout 1991 to 2003 a set of undeclared covert laboratories" (ISG), not "because it's all gone".
Kenneth Pollack:
As part of that, after Desert Fox, because again, the administration is striking for the sake of striking, because it can’t not strike. So there’s no political goal to it.
Stephen Rademaker:
So by the late 1990s, if there’d ever been a serious policy of regime change, it was history at that point.
Dr. Pollack's "So there's no political goal to it [Operation Desert Fox]" ignores the legal value of ODF. The ODF executive action, together with the legislative actions of Public Laws 105-235 and 105-338, moved the Gulf War ceasefire compliance enforcement to the point of Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441) by using up the penultimate enforcement measure and declaring "Iraq has abused its final chance" (President Clinton). ODF finished the operative set of law, policy, and precedent for President Clinton's successor to enforce Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441).
I agree "their heart wasn’t in it" (Pollack) and it wasn't "serious policy" (Rademaker) in terms of practical action. But Mr. Rademaker is incorrect in terms of law and policy. The Congressional mandates and the President's ODF announcement and action established a firm US position of Iraqi regime change in response to the Saddam regime's ceasefire breach.
You only need to read the 2002 AUMF to learn that the legal basis for OIF was not novel. The Clinton administration and Congress did all the creative legal heavy lifting with ODF and handed a finished set to the Bush administration. The OIF action simply followed ODF's precedent and reiterated ODF's law and policy for Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441).
Danielle Pletka:
Well, people could differ about that. But the UNSCOM inspectors are turfed out at a certain moment.
Kenneth M. Pollack:
That’s a consequence of Desert Fox.
Charles Duelfer:
A technical thing on how we left in 1998. We withdrew, we were not thrown out, which in Saddam’s defense, which is a position I awkwardly take from time to time.
To clarify, whether or not the UN weapons inspectors were "thrown out" of Iraq is irrelevant since the determinative finding that triggered ODF was UNSCOM's assessment that Iraq remained noncompliant with UNSCR 687 versus UNSCRs 1154, 1194, and 1205. Iraq was obligated to actively cooperate with the UN weapons inspectors in accordance with UNSCR 687, not just passively permit the UN weapons inspectors to be in Iraq.
Dr. Pollack and Mr. Duelfer leave out that Saddam nullified UNSCR 687 under Iraqi law and rejected subsequent attempts to restore the UN weapons inspectors to Iraq under UNSCR 1284.
Danielle Pletka:
What we see is that the Saddam Hussein regime is increasingly owning the Oil for Food Program and using it to both illicitly bribe people and import things illicitly, but also to illicitly import lots and lots of dual use things that could have helped it reconstitute.
Charles Duelfer:
And a lot of it is derivative of the UN weapons inspectors. Because when we left in 1998, we spent a lot of time putting together something called a compendium. It was a long, detailed stuff. ... Here’s what we know, and here’s the remaining issues which are unresolved. And, you know, if they’re important to you, they’re important to you. And those were not trivial issues.
Kenneth Pollack:
So once the inspectors are gone, we’ve already got the trajectory already mapped out...So the analysts are now going based on worst case fears, assumptions about what Saddam would do, which of course turned out to be completely wrong.
Based on the Iraq Survey Group, Dr. Pollack is incorrect that "the worst case fears, assumptions about what Saddam would do...turned out to be completely wrong".
Again, ISG's findings are rife with UNSCR 687 violations, including, as Ms. Pletka alluded to, the IIS's "large covert procurement program ... for conventional weapons, WMD precursors, and dual-use technology" (ISG).
The UNSCR 687 findings that informed the intelligence assessments, plus the Saddam regime's "covert desire to resume WMD activities" (ISG), plus the ISG-confirmed "activities that could support full WMD reactivation", plus the unaccounted for mass of WMD evidence that's missing due to "the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was directly intentional, designed by the security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program and their other programs as well" (Kay), plus Saddam's "regional and global terrorism" (IPP) do not add up to "the worst case fears, assumptions about what Saddam would do...turned out to be completely wrong" (Pollack). Rather, they add up to an active WMD program in violation of UNSCR 687 and confirmation of the distinctive Iraqi combined WMD-terrorism threat that most concerned the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Stephen Rademaker:
I think the guy who actually summarized the situation best was Hans Blix, who was one of the UN inspectors. And he wrote his book. And basically what he said happened was that Saddam Hussein was like the guy who puts up a sign in front of his house and says, “Beware of the dog when he doesn’t have a dog.”
Hans Blix is incorrect. Taken together, ISG and IPP's findings show that Saddam's "dog" was more dangerous than we knew. Even if we ignore the mass of WMD evidence that's unaccounted for due to Iraq's "denial and deception operations" (ISG), we still know that Saddam possessed at least ready terrorism-level chemical and biological capability hidden in the IIS and that Saddam's "regional and global terrorism" (IPP), also managed by the IIS, had been substantially underestimated.
Kenneth Pollack:
there really isn’t any good evidence, and I’ve been looking for it, but I don’t see any good evidence that this [Faith campaign] actually does help introduce al Qaeda into Iraq.
Dr. Pollack's "I don’t see any good evidence that this [Faith campaign] actually does help introduce al Qaeda into Iraq" is misleading as al Qaeda was "introduce[d]" into Iraq by Saddam's terrorists. The Iraqi Perspectives Project found that "From 1991 through 2003, the Saddam regime regarded inspiring, sponsoring, directing, and executing acts of terrorism as an element of state power" with "regional and global terrorism" that included "considerable operational overlap" with al Qaeda. That's how al Qaeda was "introduce[d]" into Iraq.
Kenneth Pollack:
So Curveball was the name given to a guy who came out of Iraq claiming to have tremendous access to Iraq’s WMD programs, particularly the BW program, and turned out to be a complete fabricator.
The blinkered focus on "Curveball" has obscured that, whether or not "Curveball" himself was full of shit, the Iraq Survey Group's BW-related findings show that Saddam had an active biological program in violation of UNSCR 687, with greater evidence of production that ISG was unable to verify due to the Iraqi "denial and deception operations" (ISG). Besides the evidence of a reconstituting BW program, ISG was unable to account for Iraq's older BW program; for example, "ISG cannot determine the fate of Iraq’s stocks of bulk BW agents ... There is a very limited chance that continuing investigation may provide evidence to resolve this issue."
I hope these comments help clarify the Iraq issue for you, particularly regarding the Iraq Survey Group's findings. If you have questions about my work, please ask.
This e-mail will be posted here. Next up for review is AEI's "The Iraq War Series: Operation Iraqi Freedom" panel discussion.
from: [Eric LC]
to: [Jack Keane], [Emma Sky], [Frederick Kagan], [Larisa Satara], [Ben Lefkowitz]
cc: [Christopher Paludi], [Gary Schmitt], [Clara Keuss]
date: Apr 9, 2024, 1:32 AM
subject: Critical comments on "The Iraq War Series: The Conduct of the War" (AEI panel, 14APR23)
General Petraeus, Professor Sky, General Keane, Dr. Kagan, and Ms. Pletka,
I clarify the Iraq issue at Operation Iraqi Freedom FAQ by correcting misconceptions with the controlling law, policy, precedent and determinative facts, i.e., the primary sources, that define OIF's justification.
I'm currently reviewing panel transcripts and articles from the American Enterprise Institute's The Iraq War Series 20 Years Later. You can read my critical comments on "The Iraq War Series" panel discussions "The Run-Up to the War" (21FEB23) and "Operation Iraqi Freedom" (27MAR23) and series op-eds at my Review of the American Enterprise Institute's "The Iraq War Series 20 Years Later".
These comments respond to the 14APR23 "The Iraq War Series" panel discussion, The Conduct of the War.
Jack Keane:
The chairman said this, he said, “The administration has made up its mind to go to war in Iraq.” And I was the first to speak. Surprised, I think I can speak from my compatriots there. The other chiefs felt the same way.
I asked the question why, he said he didn’t know. I asked the question when, he said he didn’t know. But a planning directive was being issued ... We were never consulted at all about that plan. We were never asked an opinion as senior members of the military establishment. The Secretary of Defense and others were consulted, but not uniform military.
David Petraeus:
I asked the question why, he said he didn’t know. I asked the question when, he said he didn’t know. But a planning directive was being issued ... We were never consulted at all about that plan. We were never asked an opinion as senior members of the military establishment. The Secretary of Defense and others were consulted, but not uniform military.
We were back in Washington in October of 2002. I had just returned a couple of months earlier from a year in Bosnia, prior to which I had been the Chief of Staff of 18th Airborne Corps, which at that time [2000-2001], had the plan for the invasion of Iraq. We always had a plan for this.
I'm surprised by General Keane's reaction of "Surprised", "The other chiefs felt the same way", and General Myers's response of "he [Myers] said he didn’t know" when Keane "asked the question why". Even without an explanation from the White House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff should have understood "why". As General Petraeus points out, the "planning directive" wasn't for a new mystery Iraq policy.
The Saddam regime never complied with the Gulf War ceasefire mandates that were purpose-designed for "the need to be assured of Iraq's peaceful intentions [and] ... to secure peace and security in the area" (UNSCR 687), so resumption of the Gulf War was always on the table. By 2000, "The crisis between the United States and Iraq that led to the declaration on August 2, 1990, of a national emergency has not been resolved" (President Clinton 28JUL00) had reached its culmination point. The situation with, standing policy for, and political view of the Iraq crisis were well known. As well, the senior generals should have understood why 9/11 heightened the evaluation of the Iraq crisis given that President Clinton marked the distinctive threat of Saddam's WMD and terrorism violations at the Pentagon in 1998.
After UNSCOM's failure triggered Operation Desert Fox in 1998, the only options left with the intransigent noncompliant Saddam regime were the ad hoc post-ODF 'containment', which on its face could not "enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq" (Public Law 107-243), or else resume the Gulf War in order to "bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations" (Public Law 105-235). The law and policy pursuant to UNSCR 678 did not permit the US to let Saddam wriggle free of Iraq's ceasefire obligations. So when the ad hoc post-ODF 'containment' failed by 2000-2001, the US was left with one option for the Iraq crisis. Hence the "planning directive" in December 2001.
In 2002, President Bush agreed with Prime Minister Blair to construct another option by applying America's full diplomatic power to resurrect the four-year-dead diplomatic procedure for UNSCR 687. The December 2001 "planning directive" was necessary to resurrect the diplomatic option since Saddam's cooperation with UNSCR 1441 depended on the credible threat of regime change. Unfortunately, all the work put in at the Pentagon wasn't credible enough for Saddam. He chose to fail the diplomatic procedure for Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441), and the Gulf War resumed to "enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq" (Public Law 107-243).
For more detail about the situation with and policy for Iraq by 2000, see the OIF FAQ answer to "What were President Bush’s alternatives with Iraq" and the OIF FAQ answer to "Why did Bush leave the ‘containment’ (status quo)".
For insight on the political view of the Iraq crisis by 2000, see the 22MAR00 Senate hearing, Saddam's Iraq: Sanctions and U.S. Policy (notice then-Senator Biden was a hawk on Iraqi regime change), 26JAN98 Project for the New American Century letter to President Clinton on Iraq, 13AUG99 New York Times article, With Little Notice, U.S. Planes Have Been Striking Iraq All Year, and 04DEC99 New York Times article, Bush Has Tough Words and Rough Enunciation for Iraqi Chief.
Emma Sky:
But for Tony Blair, he took the decision that the most important thing for the UK was the close relationship with the United States. He also believed that Saddam Hussein was the type of leader that the international community should intervene to remove.
Prime Minister Blair's reasons for OIF were more particular than that. The OIF FAQ answer to "Why did Bush leave the ‘containment’" works for Blair, too. As President Bush's senior in the UNSCR 678 enforcement, Blair understood what the failure of the ad hoc post-ODF 'containment' meant at least as well as Bush. Notably, Blair convinced Bush to set aside the standing US policy on direct confrontation and instead apply the UK policy to enforce Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441).
Even more than Bush, Blair was proved right on Iraq. We know now that Saddam's direct threat to the UK was more acute than his threat to the US: Saddam was deploying terrorists to London. Excerpt from the Iraqi Perspectives Project:
Under Saddam, the Iraqi regime used its paramilitary Fedayeen Saddam training camps to train terrorists for use inside and outside Iraq. In 1999, the top ten graduates of each Fedayeen Saddam class were specifically chosen for assignment to London, from there to be ready to conduct operations anywhere in Europe.
A Fedayeen Saddam planner outlines the general plan for terrorist operations in the Kurdish areas, Iran, and London, to "His Excellency, Mr. Supervisor" (the title for the head of the Fedayeen Saddam, a position occupied by Uday Hussein, Saddam's oldest son). This memorandum (Extract 1) specifically states that these "trainees" are designated for martyrdom [suicide or suicidal] operations.
... Two other documents present evidence of logistical preparation for terrorist operations in other nations, including those in the West. It is not clear from these documents if these weapons were being staged for a specific purpose or stockpiled for future contingencies. Extract 2 is a response from the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) to a letter from Saddam asking for a list of weapons available in Iraqi embassies overseas.
A Fedayeen Saddam planner outlines the general plan for terrorist operations in the Kurdish areas, Iran, and London, to "His Excellency, Mr. Supervisor" (the title for the head of the Fedayeen Saddam, a position occupied by Uday Hussein, Saddam's oldest son). This memorandum (Extract 1) specifically states that these "trainees" are designated for martyrdom [suicide or suicidal] operations.
... Two other documents present evidence of logistical preparation for terrorist operations in other nations, including those in the West. It is not clear from these documents if these weapons were being staged for a specific purpose or stockpiled for future contingencies. Extract 2 is a response from the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) to a letter from Saddam asking for a list of weapons available in Iraqi embassies overseas.
Of course, Saddam's assignment of terrorists to London breached the Gulf War ceasefire for casus belli.
Emma Sky:
Now, I want to say a few words about CPA Central, because this is also where ideology comes into play as well. Amb. Bremer was adamant that the US was not a colonial power. If it was a colonial power, you’d have come in, removed Saddam, kept the structures in place, and just put in another colonel, they were usually colonels, put them in charge. He said, you know, we were about building democracy. America’s legacy in Iraq is not going to be this beautiful colonial buildings. It’s going to be democracy. And to create a democracy, you can’t do it from the foundations of the Ba’ath Party. You have to put Iraq on new foundations. And those foundations meant dissolving the military and dissolving the Ba’ath Party.
The US wasn't acting as a "colonial power" because the US, UK, and other coalition members were legally mandated as international law enforcers pursuant to UNSCR 678. The US could not "[keep] the structures in place, and just put in another colonel, they were usually colonels, put them in charge" because the UNSCR 678 enforcement covered UNSCR 688 and related resolutions. See the OIF FAQ retrospective #unscr688 section.
For example, "dissolving the military and dissolving the Ba’ath Party" as instruments of Saddam's UNSCR 688 violations was in line with UNSCR 1483:
Resolved that the United Nations should play a vital role in humanitarian relief, the reconstruction of Iraq, and the restoration and establishment of national and local institutions for representative governance,
...
Affirming the need for accountability for crimes and atrocities committed by the previous Iraqi regime,
...
3. Appeals to Member States to deny safe haven to those members of the previous Iraqi regime who are alleged to be responsible for crimes and atrocities and to support actions to bring them to justice;
...
Affirming the need for accountability for crimes and atrocities committed by the previous Iraqi regime,
...
3. Appeals to Member States to deny safe haven to those members of the previous Iraqi regime who are alleged to be responsible for crimes and atrocities and to support actions to bring them to justice;
"He [Bremer] didn’t just get these ideas on the plane on the way over" because from inception, the Gulf War ceasefire compliance enforcement prioritized the UNSCR 688 human rights mandates. The US worked with the Iraqi expats in the context of UNSCR 688. Ambassador Bremer wasn't proselytizing an "ideology...about building democracy" with the CPA; the US law and policy on Iraq, e.g., Public Law 105-338, mandated Iraqi democratic reform as a UNSCR 688 enforcement measure.
Jack Keane:
But looting led to lawlessness, general lawlessness. Saddam had let out 70,000 plus prisoners. And they were obviously on the streets. And general lawlessness eventually led to targeted attacks against US troops. And we were slow to react to that.
Emma Sky:
You know, straight after the invasion, people were uncovering these mass graves, hundreds of thousands buried in these mass graves. And so you had a very traumatized population, a traumatized population that really hoped for better. And yet what came afterwards was lawlessness, chaos, and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
David Petraeus:
So that’s where we were as we enter into the spring [2004?], having actually had things going reasonably well. We’d gotten the looting back under control ultimately. Of course it burned itself out, essentially. We got some additional forces in. We start getting Iraqis helping us, they’re back at work, we’re starting to move along. And these two decisions [by Dr. Chalabi's de-Ba’athification Commission] really cut the effort off at the knees.
General Keane draws a line from "looting" to "lawlessness" to "targeted attacks against US troops". Professor Sky seems to agree with him. However, I believe that chain of causation is wrong and infers the wrong lesson.
As General Petraeus points out, the temporary "looting" and "lawlessness" that were incidental to the regime change were brought under control or "burned itself out" relatively soon. Therefore, General Keane's takeaway of "we were slow to react to that" infers the wrong lesson of overreacting to incidental "looting" and "lawlessness". It also leads to overlooking the real cause of the "targeted attacks against US troops".
From what I gather, the temporary "looting" and "lawlessness" in post-Saddam Iraq did not cause the "targeted attacks against US troops" and "deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis". Rather, the real cause of the "targeted attacks against US troops" and "deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis" is the Saddamists whose version of 'rule of law'—i.e., "The systematic, widespread and extremely grave violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law by the Government of Iraq, resulting in an all-pervasive repression and oppression sustained by broad-based discrimination and widespread terror" (UNCHR, 19APR02)—caused the "hundreds of thousands buried in these mass graves" that were uncovered "straight after the invasion".
I assume the Saddamist insurgents exploited the temporary "lawlessness" and other opportunities to create "chaos" like General Petraeus's reconciliation working at cross purposes with Dr. Chalabi's de-Ba’athification. But they were minor factors compared to leveraging Saddam's world-leading "regional and global terrorism" (IPP), their own unique expertise at terrorizing and mass-murdering Iraqis, and the societal dysfunctions that were created by the genocidal, sectarian, terrorist Saddam regime to begin with.
David Petraeus:
And I said I fear we’re also too light if they . . . we’re definitely too light if they collapse. In other words, you know, a country of 27 million people or whatever it was, 30 million people, all of a sudden, if order breaks down, and of course, sadly, that proved to be true.
... There were five weeks of increasingly dangerous demonstrations. ... The final week, I stood on a wall with a loudspeaker to 10,000 or 13,000 soldiers, some of whom had . . .former soldiers had weapons, and I said, “I’ll go to Baghdad right now. I’ll convey your concerns.” I did. I literally confronted the individual who was in charge of that policy for Amb. Bremer, told him that his policy was killing our troops. And we needed to pay stipends to these individuals. We got that done. But the damage had been done. That was the seeds of the insurgency.
Jack Keane:
... There were five weeks of increasingly dangerous demonstrations. ... The final week, I stood on a wall with a loudspeaker to 10,000 or 13,000 soldiers, some of whom had . . .former soldiers had weapons, and I said, “I’ll go to Baghdad right now. I’ll convey your concerns.” I did. I literally confronted the individual who was in charge of that policy for Amb. Bremer, told him that his policy was killing our troops. And we needed to pay stipends to these individuals. We got that done. But the damage had been done. That was the seeds of the insurgency.
The fact of the matter is, we were dealing with an enemy force that Saddam Hussein had before the invasion, that planned to do what he was doing. And we were conducting likely the most formidable insurgency the West has ever encountered.
Why am I saying that? Human capital is usually an issue for insurgents. Sometimes they get it outside. But human capital, they had somewhere in the neighborhood, if you add up the Fedayeen, the Ba’ath Party militia, special Republican Guard, excuse me, and [inaudible 01:10:58] intelligence service, the numbers 130,000. I’m not suggesting that we’re all involved. But I’m suggesting to you that was a good place to start. Remember, this is Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-based insurgency to start with. He had an unlimited amount of money, billions and billions of dollars. Normally, in the typical Mao based insurgency, they’re starving for what? For capital. They had an unlimited amount of money. They had unlimited amount of arms and ammunition. ... And what else did they have? Well, hell, they ran the country for 35 years, and they wanted to take it back.
Why am I saying that? Human capital is usually an issue for insurgents. Sometimes they get it outside. But human capital, they had somewhere in the neighborhood, if you add up the Fedayeen, the Ba’ath Party militia, special Republican Guard, excuse me, and [inaudible 01:10:58] intelligence service, the numbers 130,000. I’m not suggesting that we’re all involved. But I’m suggesting to you that was a good place to start. Remember, this is Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-based insurgency to start with. He had an unlimited amount of money, billions and billions of dollars. Normally, in the typical Mao based insurgency, they’re starving for what? For capital. They had an unlimited amount of money. They had unlimited amount of arms and ammunition. ... And what else did they have? Well, hell, they ran the country for 35 years, and they wanted to take it back.
General Petraeus draws a line from "order breaks down" to "the seeds of the insurgency". I don't think he's right. From what I gather, General Keane has the right of it with "the most formidable insurgency the West has ever encountered" was "planned...before the invasion" by the Saddamists. It wasn't caused by temporary incidental effects of the regime change that, as General Petraeus points out, peace operators were visibly, if not smoothly, working to solve.
I'm not saying General Petraeus was wrong to advocate for the Iraqis in his purview. That was necessary for COIN and the nation-building mission. Rather, I think General Petraeus is wrong to evaluate their concerns as the cause of the insurgency. Again, I assume the Saddamists exploited any rift, but it's more likely that the insurgency orchestrated the "increasingly dangerous demonstrations" than the demonstrations were "the seeds of the insurgency".
David Petraeus:
And I said I fear we’re also too light if they . . . we’re definitely too light if they collapse. In other words, you know, a country of 27 million people or whatever it was, 30 million people, all of a sudden, if order breaks down, and of course, sadly, that proved to be true.
Jack Keane:
The one thing we didn’t do, and I fought myself on this, is we never considered the reality that Saddam Hussein would not surrender. That he would take us on using indirect, unconventional means. I had operated in the Vietnam War as a platoon leader and company commander. I’d read everything there is to read on insurgency. I’m very familiar with it. And it never occurred to me, and it never occurred to anybody else.
Would that have changed a lot? It would have changed some, because if we played that in an exercise, the Army leadership, at that time, had no experience in counterinsurgency. We had purged our doctrine post-Vietnam and focused on the Soviet Union. So all of the . . . even the senior generals, by and large, had no experience with it. And it would have forced us to reawaken ourselves about doctrine and how to deal with this. And then we would have looked at the force structure we had, and said, well, look, if we see signs of this, and what are the signs, those cues are important, should we have that force structure that we need to deal with that reality in the tool kit and move them, maybe into Kuwait in advance, and then bring them in to deal with it? So that was not considered.
Would that have changed a lot? It would have changed some, because if we played that in an exercise, the Army leadership, at that time, had no experience in counterinsurgency. We had purged our doctrine post-Vietnam and focused on the Soviet Union. So all of the . . . even the senior generals, by and large, had no experience with it. And it would have forced us to reawaken ourselves about doctrine and how to deal with this. And then we would have looked at the force structure we had, and said, well, look, if we see signs of this, and what are the signs, those cues are important, should we have that force structure that we need to deal with that reality in the tool kit and move them, maybe into Kuwait in advance, and then bring them in to deal with it? So that was not considered.
General Keane makes a critical point that matches my view on the primary weakness of US forces at the start of the contest for post-Saddam Iraq: The fundamental flaw at the outset was lack of counterinsurgency method (strategy, plans, tactics, techniques, procedures, etc.), not lack of troops. Pumping more US soldiers into the OIF occupation at the start would not have countered the Saddamist insurgency as long as their structure and approach on the ground were not designed for COIN.
Where I disagree with General Keane is his implied suggestion that the Pentagon could have put in place a preventive COIN strategy if it had only been "considered" during the pre-war planning. In a vacuum, maybe. However, "the Army leadership, at that time, had no experience in counterinsurgency. We had purged our doctrine post-Vietnam and focused on the Soviet Union" glosses over the Vietnam Syndrome. Based on my experience, "it never occurred to me [Keane], and it never occurred to anybody else" because the Army reflexively resisted anything like COIN that recalled the trauma of Vietnam. It was an institutionalized taboo. Even the Army's Civil Affairs branch, which might have otherwise made a pivotal difference in the early days of the occupation, was relegated to an afterthought, castrated, and focused on hand-off transition rather than community liaison.
The Vietnam Syndrome meant that the COIN adjustment with Iraq needed a stronger catalyst than General Keane's foresight. As he recalls, even when the insurgency had become obvious to him, when he "visited the other division commanders...they didn’t have a clue." The compulsion of the complementary Saddamist and Iran-driven insurgencies and the resolute principled commitment of President Bush were necessary to overcome the Vietnam Syndrome.
A vital lesson of Iraq is the need to eradicate the Vietnam Syndrome and its heir, the Iraq Syndrome, from the schema of the Pentagon and policymakers.
Jack Keane:
And I think the weakest part of the plan was post-invasion operations. I believe the Defense Department and the President made a mistake here. And they delegated that responsibility not to the theater commander, they delegated that responsibility to an envoy.
The 24FEB03 White House briefing on humanitarian reconstruction issues makes clear that the reason that the "post-invasion operations" was the "weakest part of the plan" and "they delegated that responsibility not to the theater commander, they delegated that responsibility to an envoy" was the initial post-war plan was consciously based on the premise that the uniformed military would step back once the major combat operations concluded. When President Bush marked the transition point with his 01MAY03 speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln, civilian agencies became the center of gravity for the nation-building tasks. That didn't mean the fighting was over. The uniformed military would stay to "secure access"—"We're bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous" (Bush, 01MAY03)—, but US forces would otherwise transition to a progressively receding support role as post-Saddam Iraq gained its feet.
Criticism of the initial post-war plan usually assumes that the uniformed military was totally responsible for the nation-building tasks. But that's a revisionist premise. The planned role for the uniformed military was just one part, and not the central part, of the plan. Rather, the initial post-war plan was centered on civilian GOs, including civilian DoD, IOs led by the UN, NGOs, and the Iraqis themselves. Unfortunately, as General Petraeus recounts, the civilian agencies proved to be inadequate for their planned role, as well as fragile when terrorized by the Saddamists. And the Iraqis, who were deeply traumatized and divided by Saddam's rule, needed more American intercession than originally anticipated. So the uniformed military was compelled by circumstances to become the center of gravity for the nation-building tasks. That wasn't the initial plan.
I agree with General Keane that, in hindsight, US forces should have been ready and oriented for COIN right away: that's a lesson. Nevertheless, it's worth recalling the basic theory behind decentering the uniformed military—i.e., the Iraqi people taking ownership of Iraq together with an inclusive political process was the best way to protect Iraq from sectarian conflict and neighborly interference; whereas too much foreign military presence would alienate and discourage the Iraqi people. Professor Sky summed up the sentiment, "I didn’t want the only foreigner that Iraqis would ever meet to be a man with a gun." UN envoy Sérgio Vieira de Mello tragically rejected US military protection with the same thinking.
We know now that more US military presence is vitally constructive for Iraq, not alienating and discouraging as originally premised, but the mission had to work its way from initial misconceptions like Professor Sky's to find that constructive footing.
David Petraeus:
I remember calling Gen. Wallace, my boss. I said, “We have good news and bad news. The good news is we own Najaf. The bad news is we own Najaf. What do you want us to do with it?” And he said, “Call those guys, ORHA,” the Organization for Reconstruction Humanitarian Assistance, headed by two retired three stars.
Now, I’d asked these guys actually, before the actual invasion, in the final session that the three-star ground forces commander called, for all the marine and army commanders. And they said, “You know, anybody got any final questions?” I said, “Excuse me. Yeah, but can you give us a little more detail about what happens when we get to Baghdad and topple the regime?” And the retired three star and the deputy, who I knew, said, “Dave, you just get us to Baghdad, we’ll take it from there.” Obviously, that did not exactly work out the way that response indicated. And the real flaw here was an assumption that we would topple the regime, but everybody else would roughly stay in place. You know, the local police, the local officials, all the rest of that. So we’d provide a little oversight for that in the absence of the regime, but they would still roughly be there. And this is why after taking Najaf and seeing the entire structure flee, I turned to Rick Atkinson, my embedded reporter, and asked that question that would haunt me for many years after. “Tell me how this ends.”
Now, I’d asked these guys actually, before the actual invasion, in the final session that the three-star ground forces commander called, for all the marine and army commanders. And they said, “You know, anybody got any final questions?” I said, “Excuse me. Yeah, but can you give us a little more detail about what happens when we get to Baghdad and topple the regime?” And the retired three star and the deputy, who I knew, said, “Dave, you just get us to Baghdad, we’ll take it from there.” Obviously, that did not exactly work out the way that response indicated. And the real flaw here was an assumption that we would topple the regime, but everybody else would roughly stay in place. You know, the local police, the local officials, all the rest of that. So we’d provide a little oversight for that in the absence of the regime, but they would still roughly be there. And this is why after taking Najaf and seeing the entire structure flee, I turned to Rick Atkinson, my embedded reporter, and asked that question that would haunt me for many years after. “Tell me how this ends.”
General Petraeus reiterates the recurring theme, which jibes with my experience, that US soldiers are expected to focus on warfighting and just accept that some other entity will take care of the part of war that sequentially follows major combat.
Recall that President HW Bush withdrew US forces from Iraq after the major combat operations in 1991 with similar reasoning that someone else, UN forces in that case, would enforce the Gulf War ceasefire mandates. Predictably, Saddam reacted to HW Bush's mistake by immediately violating the ceasefire, which locked in the path to OIF. The HW Bush officials who returned as Bush officials evidently failed to learn the lesson. They tried to withdraw US forces from Iraq after the major combat operations in 2003 with the reasoning that other entities would take care of the next part. Once again, withdrawing US forces from Iraq proved to be a path-setting error that Saddamists exploited. After the US corrected the 1991 and 2003 mistakes with much difficulty and cost, incredibly, President Obama repeated the mistake a third time in 2011.
I applaud General Petraeus for challenging the ingrained assumption. It needs to be changed.
David Petraeus:
And then of course, the Coalition Provisional Authority is established. And with the very first two decisions, our knees are cut right off. The decision to fire the military without telling them what their future was.
We needed to do disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration, a typical process, DDR, always done around the world. But we didn’t need to fire all of them and not tell them how they’re going to be able to provide for their families.
... And coupled with the decision to fire the entire Ba’ath Party down to level four, which is the bureaucrat level. Level one is, you know, Saddam and his immediate, and his sons, and so forth. Without an agreed reconciliation process. Once again, we needed to do deep advocation, without question. But you need to give hope to the tens of thousands of people, particularly in level four, who, as Gen. Keane mentioned, are the bureaucrats. They just had to be in that system.
Jack Keane:
We needed to do disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration, a typical process, DDR, always done around the world. But we didn’t need to fire all of them and not tell them how they’re going to be able to provide for their families.
... And coupled with the decision to fire the entire Ba’ath Party down to level four, which is the bureaucrat level. Level one is, you know, Saddam and his immediate, and his sons, and so forth. Without an agreed reconciliation process. Once again, we needed to do deep advocation, without question. But you need to give hope to the tens of thousands of people, particularly in level four, who, as Gen. Keane mentioned, are the bureaucrats. They just had to be in that system.
And policies that were immediately put out, most of us disagreed with, and that is not bringing back the army. We knew where the army was. We had been communicating with them ahead of time to make certain that the regular army, which we knew lacked will would surrender. And they did when we got the Basra. We could have actually brought them back. The three-star retired person who was going to be the envoy initially, that was a plan of his to do that. Bremer did not want to do it, police did not come back, and all government services was shut down because if you were a Ba’ath Party member, you were not permitted to provide any service whatsoever.
I wish that Ambassador Bremer or another senior "CPA Central" official was on the panel because their telling of the de-Ba'athication contradicts General Keane and General Petraeus's telling of it.
For example, see the 17NOV05 New York Times article, Too Few Good Men, by senior CPA officials Dan Senor and Walter Slocombe. In their telling, the Iraqi military dissolved itself. The CPA rubber-stamped the fait accompli because the interim measure of reconstituting Saddam's security forces, which had carried out Saddam's UNSCR 688 human rights violations, would have been at least as onerous as building post-Saddam institutions right away with a clean slate. They explain that, contrary to "The decision to fire the military without telling them what their future was," Iraqi military and civil servants were in fact welcomed back into service in short order provided they passed the vetting process, which would have been required anyway.
I discuss this issue at OIF FAQ post Demobilizing Iraq Army: a good call, after all?.
David Petraeus:
Once again, we needed to do deep advocation, without question. But you need to give hope to the tens of thousands of people, particularly in level four, who, as Gen. Keane mentioned, are the bureaucrats.
... And then with respect to the military, again, you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people, who with a single signature, now are incentivized to oppose the new Iraq rather than to support it. And those were very, very damaging policies.
... And then with respect to the military, again, you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people, who with a single signature, now are incentivized to oppose the new Iraq rather than to support it. And those were very, very damaging policies.
In the panel, General Petraeus recounts "we’re going to even more relentlessly pursue the irreconcilables" as part of the COIN adjustment. "The predominant targets of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside of Iraq" (IPP). Imagine if the CPA had reconstituted Saddam's security forces first as General Keane and General Petraeus wanted. How many of them would have been "irreconcilables", really Saddamist insurgents themselves, yet sent back out into the Iraqi populace or partnered with coalition soldiers under the US banner?
The Saddam regime's UNSCR 687 terrorism and 688 human rights violations were extreme, "far worse" (UN Special Rapporteur on Iraq, 18MAR04) than we knew before OIF. So it makes sense that the mandated de-Ba'athification touched more of Iraq's civil and military infrastructures than we had anticipated. It also makes sense that some measure of the justice we promised to the Iraqi people needed to be sacrificed to maintain a functional level of Iraqi civil and military infrastructure. Balancing that kind of weighty calibration doesn't happen right away.
David Petraeus:
I should note that I thought for many years, I was puzzled by why did the CPA get established rather than just establishing an embassy? My only explanation is that Secretary Rumsfeld wanted to run the war, the post-war, rather than handing off to an embassy, as would naturally be the case. If you have an ambassador, the ambassador is going to report to the State Department, not to the Department of Defense. And in this case, the CPA ambassador was reporting directly still to the Department of Defense.
I guess that an embassy is a long-term manifestation of the diplomatic ties between two sovereign nations. Whereas the CPA was a short-term manifestation of the UN-mandated ad hoc occupying power with Iraq. UNSCR 1546 restored Iraq's sovereignty on 08JUN04, the CPA was officially dissolved on 28JUN04, and the US embassy in Iraq was officially reopened on 01JUL04.
That being said, the CPA's conceptual basis is separate from the practical issue of whether the CPA should have been housed in State or Defense. I don't know the practical difference it would have made since either way, Ambassador Bremer's authority derived from the President and the CPA had ready access to the resources of both departments.
David Petraeus:
And the challenge here was that what we were trying to do policy-wise, was such an incredible seismic change, that it was in truth, unrealistic. It reminded me often of the words of Bernard Lewis, the great Princeton Professor Near East studies, who famously said, “Democracy is strong medicine in the Middle East, it should be given small doses at a time.” Don’t get me wrong. I am a huge believer in democracy, free market capitalism, and all the rest of that. The question is, how do you take a country that has known none of this, and that was best exemplified by an individual . . . When I would walk the streets of Mosul, everyone would come up to you because you are the executive, the legislative, and the judicial all in one, per the Geneva Convention.
Emma Sky:
And if I could add, we didn’t know how long we were going to be there for. And so when you get to, was it September or to November, when you start to see rising insurgency, it’s then announced that we’re going to be leaving in June 2004. That we have to hand over everything to the Iraqis by then. So you see the quick drafting of an interim constitution, the early holding of elections, and the cementing of sectarianism, institutionally. And it started with the establishment of the Iraqi Governing Council, having X amount of positions for Shia, for Kurds, for Sunni, for Turkoman, institutionalizing sectarianism, and making that, for the first time in Iraq’s history, the governance system of a country. And that permeated down everything that we did. The political parties that existed at the time in Iraq were those returning from exile, that were sectarian and came with their militias. So there wasn’t time to really go through this process, a long consultation process of a constitution. It was done very, very quickly, pushed through very quickly.
To clarify, the US mission with Iraq wasn't ending in June 2004. Only the CPA, which was based on the ad hoc occupying authority, was "going to be leaving in June 2004" due to the restoration of Iraq's sovereignty.
Professor Sky and General Petraeus make an important point about the mismatch between the long time needed to build up Iraqi democratic reform and the short timeframe of OIF. Democratic reform was an "incredible seismic change" that seemed "unrealistic" at times for Germany, Japan, and Korea, too. The difficulties of the Korea intervention in particular, mainly but not limited to the war, dwarf the difficulties of the Iraq intervention. The fundamental difference between them and Iraq is that US forces have backstopped their reconstruction and reform through their ups and downs for decades longer than we did with Iraq. In contrast, OIF lasted less than nine years from start to finish. That's brief. A decade is normal for just the first stage of a nation-building project.
It's just one reason why President Obama's choice was An irresponsible exit from Iraq.
Emma Sky:
And understanding the nature of the violence was key, because we had gone well beyond insurgency. We were now in a fully-fledged civil war in a failing state.
So understanding who all these different groups were, what they wanted, why they were fighting, was really paramount. You know, we’d not called it an insurgency when it was an insurgency. Now that it was a civil war, we were calling it an insurgency.
So understanding who all these different groups were, what they wanted, why they were fighting, was really paramount. You know, we’d not called it an insurgency when it was an insurgency. Now that it was a civil war, we were calling it an insurgency.
I disagree with Professor Sky that "We were now in a fully-fledged civil war in a failing state". At their peak, the complementary Saddamist and Iran-driven insurgencies achieved a quasi-civil war. It looked like a civil war with a lot of sectarian death and destruction. But the fact that the Iraqis responded so positively and rapidly to the COIN "surge" with a "virtuous cycle" exposed that the two insurgencies did not actually represent the Sunni and Shia populations. Therefore, it wasn't a real civil war.
Jack Keane:
And as Emma points out, 2005, purple fingers, all taken place, in terms of elections, constitution being written. But what’s happened in 2005 on the ground? Level of violence is going up, up, and up. What are we doing, the United States military? We’re training the Iraqi Security Forces so they can defeat the insurgency, and we’re transitioning control of the country to them. Problem, Iraqi Security Forces cannot defeat the insurgency. They don’t have the ability to defeat the insurgency without us, but we’re transitioning to them. Why? Because we want to leave. We want to get out of it.
... So by end of 2006, we’re failing. ... And what do we have? We have Rumsfeld and Abizaid telling the Senate Armed Services Committee that the strategy is working. I’m serious.
... I said, “Mr. President, if you make this decision, understand you’re escalating the war. If we don’t turn it around, you’re gonna kill American soldiers based on that decision unnecessarily. If we do turn it around, it’ll collapse quickly and we’ll save lives in the long run.” ... Three days later, we got a phone call saying the president’s going to change his strategy in Iraq. And this was mid-December [2006], he announced it in early January.
... Let me just add to that. The president, remember the timeframe. He loses the midterm election over the war in Iraq, 2006, November. He fires Rumsfeld after that. And so he’s always had Democratic opposition. Now, he’s got serious Republican opposition. And he’s got a military that’s arguing for the status quo, yet he made that decision. It was a very remarkable decision that he made. And while he’s having advice, you know, to help him make the decision, it’s his own strong moral compass and courage that enables him to make it. And he deserves a huge amount of credit for that.
... So by end of 2006, we’re failing. ... And what do we have? We have Rumsfeld and Abizaid telling the Senate Armed Services Committee that the strategy is working. I’m serious.
... I said, “Mr. President, if you make this decision, understand you’re escalating the war. If we don’t turn it around, you’re gonna kill American soldiers based on that decision unnecessarily. If we do turn it around, it’ll collapse quickly and we’ll save lives in the long run.” ... Three days later, we got a phone call saying the president’s going to change his strategy in Iraq. And this was mid-December [2006], he announced it in early January.
... Let me just add to that. The president, remember the timeframe. He loses the midterm election over the war in Iraq, 2006, November. He fires Rumsfeld after that. And so he’s always had Democratic opposition. Now, he’s got serious Republican opposition. And he’s got a military that’s arguing for the status quo, yet he made that decision. It was a very remarkable decision that he made. And while he’s having advice, you know, to help him make the decision, it’s his own strong moral compass and courage that enables him to make it. And he deserves a huge amount of credit for that.
It stands out that even as the insurgency was defeating the initial post-war plan, the plan was actually succeeding according to its own metrics. So, while I've criticized President Bush for waiting until 2006 to correct course, I can forgive Bush for standing by a plan that looked like it was working when it really wasn't. Changing course wasn't a simple decision to make. There was a lot invested in the initial post-war plan, and as General Keane laid it out for the President, COIN would be costly and risky. When the situation became clear to him, President Bush made the right leadership decision.
David Petraeus:
Because there were a number of actions that were taken, actually starting in the summer of 2004, that were really very important. I’ve often noted, for example, that in Afghanistan, we didn’t even get the inputs right for nine years. And by inputs, I mean, the organizational architecture, the right level of resources, generally, the right people, the right big ideas, the right strategy, a variety of other elements. We got a good bit of that right in Iraq, beginning in 2004.
... I’d gone back into spring at Rumsfeld’s request to do an assessment of the training of the Iraqi Security Forces after I’d gotten home from the first year. I went back and gave him a whole bunch of recommendations, basically, to do what we’d been doing in Iraq, or in Mosul, which seemed to make sense and had done pretty well when the others had collapsed.
He said, “Great, you know, give up the 101st, go back and execute those.”
... It was really not until later that you start to see what turns out to be a premature transition to the Iraqi Security Forces. ... The problem is that we were now pulling out of these neighborhoods and handing off to the Iraqi Security Forces. And as the violence goes up, they can no longer handle it.
... I’d gone back into spring at Rumsfeld’s request to do an assessment of the training of the Iraqi Security Forces after I’d gotten home from the first year. I went back and gave him a whole bunch of recommendations, basically, to do what we’d been doing in Iraq, or in Mosul, which seemed to make sense and had done pretty well when the others had collapsed.
He said, “Great, you know, give up the 101st, go back and execute those.”
... It was really not until later that you start to see what turns out to be a premature transition to the Iraqi Security Forces. ... The problem is that we were now pulling out of these neighborhoods and handing off to the Iraqi Security Forces. And as the violence goes up, they can no longer handle it.
Secretary Rumsfeld gets blamed for everything wrong with the initial post-war plan. I don't think he gets enough credit for the incremental adjustments that laid the groundwork for the success of the COIN "surge". Despite Rumsfeld's infamous personal aversion to peace operations, he faithfully carried out the initial post-war plan, which met its primary benchmarks even as it was being defeated by the insurgency. Rumsfeld failed, but he failed while doing his duty.
Emma Sky:
President Obama didn’t have such a close relationship with Iraq as his predecessor. But he appointed then Vice President Joe Biden as his point man on Iraq. ... Biden thought he had formed the government, not realizing it had actually been the Iranians.
Secretary of State Clinton was President Obama's original "point man on Iraq", and she had a promising start. See her 25APR09 remarks in Iraq. Excerpt:
We’re going to be putting real meat on the bones of the strategic framework agreement, which as you know, was adopted at the same time as SOFA – didn’t get as much attention, but now it’s the primary focus of our efforts. Because we have to translate into reality what we mean when we talk about economic assistance and good governance and rule of law, and many of the other services and changes that we would like to be part of.
See the US-Iraq Strategic Framework Agreement. As Secretary Clinton pointed out, the US-Iraq SFA was the overarching document that defined the long-term US-Iraq relationship, not the SOFA.
It's still a mystery to me why President Obama replaced Secretary Clinton with Vice President Biden. I wonder if Clinton would not have made Biden's errors with Iraq, which were pivotal. I wonder if Clinton would have convinced President Obama to adopt President Bush's resolute principled commitment to Iraq. I wonder if Obama replaced Clinton with Biden because Clinton dutifully prioritized Iraq in good faith and Obama wanted the destructive errors that Biden made.
Frederick Kagan:
And then everyone, will we convene after lunch for the second part of this panel?
There's no audience question-and-answer and no second part of the panel in the transcript. Nor is there further content in the embedded Youtube video. If the second part of the panel happened, I would like to watch it or read its transcript.
I appreciate the insights from this panel. I hope my comments help clarify the Iraq issue. I look forward to your feedback. If you have questions about my work, please ask.
This e-mail will be posted here. My review of the "The Iraq War Series: The Aftermath" panel discussion is next.
from: [Eric LC]
to: [James Jeffrey], [Ben Lefkowitz] || [Joel Rayburn]
cc: [Clara Keuss] [Gary Schmitt], [Elissabeth Buckles]
date: Apr 11, 2024, 1:36 AM
subject: Critical comments on "The Iraq War Series: The Aftermath" (AEI panel, 21JUN23)
Ambassador Jeffrey, Colonel Rayburn, and Ms. Pletka,
I clarify the Iraq issue at Operation Iraqi Freedom FAQ by recentering OIF's primary source authorities to correct the endemic distortion of the Iraq issue by expert authorities. It's essential to cure the Iraq Syndrome.
I'm currently reviewing panel transcripts and articles from the American Enterprise Institute's The Iraq War Series 20 Years Later. You can read my critical comments on the "The Iraq War Series" panel discussions, "The Run-Up to the War" (21FEB23), "Operation Iraqi Freedom" (27MAR23), and "The Conduct of the War" (14APR23), and series op-eds at my Review of the American Enterprise Institute's "The Iraq War Series 20 Years Later".
These comments respond to the 21JUN23 "The Iraq War Series" panel discussion, The Aftermath.
Danielle Pletka:
There is a history of this war that has been written, that has become accepted wisdom, that is far from accurate. And while there are a lot of people with a lot of integrity, who have written very well, the conventional wisdom, I would say, is not one that represents the decisions that were made, how they were made, and why they were made at the time. And that’s really why we’re doing this series, to be followed by a small documentary. And what I would call an Iraq War primmer that we are putting together here in the foreign and defense policy department at AEI.
... I also before I forget, will say one more word, which is that, unfortunately, my co-conspirator, Gary Schmidt, couldn’t be here with us today, because he’s traveling. But this was very much a cooperative project on our part.
... I also before I forget, will say one more word, which is that, unfortunately, my co-conspirator, Gary Schmidt, couldn’t be here with us today, because he’s traveling. But this was very much a cooperative project on our part.
The primary sources of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the core set of controlling law, policy, precedent and determinative facts that define OIF's justification, are straightforward, thorough, and plainly stated—immutable and incontrovertible. They unequivocally show "There is a history of this war that has been written, that has become accepted wisdom, that is far from accurate."
However, while gathering preeminent expert testimony, Ms. Pletka and Dr. Schmitt neglected to lay a proper foundation with OIF's primary sources. That's a fundamental flaw in their project. "The Iraq War Series 20 Years Later" panel discussions and op-eds impart good information, but absent a proper foundation, they also repeat critical misinformation. If the AEI "Iraq War primer" reflects the content in the panel discussions and op-eds, then Ms. Pletka and Dr. Schmitt need to use the OIF FAQ to fix it. Otherwise, AEI will certify and further entrench the misinformation transmitted by their panelists and op-ed writers.
See the OIF FAQ guide. The OIF FAQ is purpose-designed to lay a proper foundation for the Iraq issue starting with the OIF FAQ post, which synthesizes OIF's primary sources into a coherent narrative form. The OIF FAQ also serves as a study guide to help readers learn the primary source authorities for themselves, so they can determine where any expert authority—of any rank—credibly accords with the operative law and facts and where he or she has misinformed the public contra the operative law and facts.
James Jeffrey:
... it wasn’t Obama’s idea to withdraw the troops. ... It was George Bush’s idea to withdraw the troops. ... And so we signed up, as part of what we called the Status of Forces Agreement, an agreement that all US troops would leave by the end of 2011. ... Obama came in and he endorsed this .... ["]under the Status of Forces Agreement, I intend to remove all US troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.” So he essentially adopted the Bush administration policy.
... And also, and I’ve heard this from many senior Bush administration officials later, I didn’t hear it at the time. And I’ve never quite heard it from Iraqis. It was the idea of, but after we get reelected, or John McCain gets elected, we’re going to come back and change this.
Joel Rayburn:
... And also, and I’ve heard this from many senior Bush administration officials later, I didn’t hear it at the time. And I’ve never quite heard it from Iraqis. It was the idea of, but after we get reelected, or John McCain gets elected, we’re going to come back and change this.
So Jim was inside that decision in 2008. He’s 100 percent correct about the thinking behind it.
Danielle Pletka:
So this rigid set of ideas, both from the latter days of the Bush administration, and then from the opening days of the Obama administration, really governed what our policy was, rather than a read of the situation on the ground.
James Jeffrey:
No, the read on the situation on the ground I think was correct. I don’t think the Iraqi parliament would have endorsed an unlimited American Status of Forces Agreement. I think they wanted an end date. ... the problem is that unlike all of our pals in the Middle East, in places like Egypt and Jordan, where we just sit in the back corner with the king, or the prince, or the president’s advisor, we actually had to get an agreement through parliament because it granted legal immunity for US troops, which was the whole point of a status of forces agreement. ... I think they were also . . . And in the end, I believe they would have gone along with a non-legally binding agreement. Maliki offered that to us, we turned it down. He offered it again to us in 2014 after a third of the country had collapsed, and we took it. And I think we were right in 2014, and we were also right in turning it down when everything was peaceful and such in 2011.
I have to redress a key omission that skews this panel discussion, particularly Ambassador Jeffrey's portion. No one on the panel or in the audience references the US-Iraq Strategic Framework Agreement, which came into force concurrently with the 2008-2011 status of forces agreement. Yet the open-ended conditions-based SFA, not the bounded SOFA, constituted (and still constitutes) the overarching law-and-policy frame for the US-Iraq relationship.
Excerpt from U.S.-Iraqi Relations, Embassy of the United States Baghdad, Iraq:
The Strategic Framework Agreement for a Relationship of Friendship and Cooperation between the United States and the Republic of Iraq...guides our overall political, economic, cultural, and security ties with Iraq. This agreement is designed to help the Iraqi people stand on their own and reinforce Iraqi sovereignty, while protecting U.S. interests in the Middle East. The SFA normalizes the U.S.-Iraqi relationship with strong economic, diplomatic, cultural, and security cooperation and serves as the foundation for a long-term bilateral relationship based on mutual goals.
...
After a long and difficult conflict, we now have the opportunity to see Iraq emerge as a strategic partner in a tumultuous region. A sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq that can act as a force for moderation is profoundly in the national security interests of the United States and will ensure that Iraq can realize its full potential as a democratic society. Our civilian-led presence is helping us strengthen the strong strategic partnership that has developed up to this point.
...
After a long and difficult conflict, we now have the opportunity to see Iraq emerge as a strategic partner in a tumultuous region. A sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq that can act as a force for moderation is profoundly in the national security interests of the United States and will ensure that Iraq can realize its full potential as a democratic society. Our civilian-led presence is helping us strengthen the strong strategic partnership that has developed up to this point.
Colonel Rayburn is wrong that Ambassador Jeffrey is "100 percent correct about the thinking behind it [that decision in 2008]" given that he omits the SFA. Since the SFA is the overarching document of the US-Iraq relationship, it's fair to say that Ambassador Jeffrey is less than 50 percent correct "about the thinking behind it".
The SFA is how "after...John McCain gets elected, we’re going to come back and change this". For that matter, the SFA is what obligated the Obama administration to negotiate with Iraq, however passive-aggressively, to continue the mission in spite of the "rigid" SOFA.
President Bush's successor didn't need to "change" the SOFA. The "rigid" SOFA expired in 2011 and neither barred nor required a particular subsequent arrangement. The overarching SFA did not mandate the removal of US forces and was designed to be flexible. Working with our nascent Iraqi ally, Bush's successor simply had to decide what Iraq needed from America pursuant to the SFA.
Looking ahead from Iraq's progress in 2008, it seemed plausible that by 2011, the SFA could be satisfied while also withdrawing US forces. But if pursuing the SFA called for US forces in Iraq, that took precedence. As Ambassador Jeffrey and Colonel Rayburn point out, the circumstances at the time strongly called for US forces in Iraq. Instead, President Obama abused the flexibility of the SFA and contravened the spirit of the SFA by reducing and then ending OIF prematurely.
The "non-legally binding agreement" that Iraq offered to the US in 2011, and by which US forces returned to Iraq in 2014, is not legally based on nothing. It's based on the SFA. That means the Obama administration's excuse that "we actually had to get an agreement through parliament" was false and they always could have made an executive agreement "[like] all of our pals in the Middle East, in places like Egypt and Jordan, where we just sit in the back corner with the king, or the prince, or the president’s advisor".
For more about the SFA and President Obama's Iraq exit, see the sources and exposition at OIF FAQ post An irresponsible exit from Iraq.
Audience question—Kenneth Pollack:
From my perspective, one of the biggest mistakes we made during that whole enterprise was we turned it into a purely military operation. The political and economic pieces kind of went out the window. ... What was your sense of what happened there? I mean, there were all these plans, where we were going to do all these different things politically with the Iraqis, all these different things economically with the Iraqis, that just kind of fell away over the course of time. And the only thing that continued to march on soundly, were those military lines of effort.
James Jeffrey:
That’s a good question. It was a deliberate action, or decision, deliberate decision, not to not have a economic, political, diplomatic, financial, and propaganda side to this thing. ... I think that the last thing the Obama administration wanted, but I would say more generally, the last thing almost everybody in America, other than all of us who attend meetings like this, spend our time doing these things, wanted, was to try to turn this country into Denmark.
... he [Obama] literally said, “What we cannot do is let the pursuit of the perfect stand in the way of achievable goals. We cannot rid Iraq of all of its problems, etc., ourselves. It’s up to them now.["]
Joel Rayburn:
... he [Obama] literally said, “What we cannot do is let the pursuit of the perfect stand in the way of achievable goals. We cannot rid Iraq of all of its problems, etc., ourselves. It’s up to them now.["]
Well, I never thought we were trying to turn Iraq into Denmark. My feeling was we should just try to turn Iraq into Iraq.
Danielle Pletka:
But at the end of the day, this is the problem. There are all these countervailing forces that are at work, that mean that any simple explanation doesn’t work.
"My feeling was we should just try to turn Iraq into Iraq." Right, the SFA is tailored to Iraq, not Denmark[.]
We didn't turn Germany, Japan, and Korea into Denmark, either. Neither were the historic difficulties we confronted in those missions "simple". Our challenges with Korea in particular, mainly but not limited to the war, have dwarfed anything we faced with Iraq. The cardinal precedent for American leadership of the free world is that we've stood fast with our former enemies and faithfully nurtured them as allies while working through the problems imperfectly but persistently, mitigating them and preventing other problems over the course of decades. With Iraq, President Bush established a traditional course with the SFA. In contrast, the hyperbolic "Denmark" and "We cannot rid Iraq of all of its problems" excuses appear to be a "deliberate decision" to degrade the best practices that the US has used to compete in the global arena since World War II and undermine America versus any serious clash of civilizations or essential threat to the liberal international order.
As far as a sufficient "economic, political, diplomatic, financial" strategy with Iraq, Senator McCain wasn't the only 2008 presidential candidate who would have been a better choice than President Obama. If we take Secretary of State Clinton at her word, she wanted to "do all these different things politically with the Iraqis, all these different things economically with the Iraqis" pursuant to the SFA. Bill Clinton would have helped his First Lady, Al Gore too, if we take them at their word.
Excerpt from Secretary Clinton's 25APR09 remarks in Iraq:
We’re going to be putting real meat on the bones of the strategic framework agreement, which as you know, was adopted at the same time as SOFA – didn’t get as much attention, but now it’s the primary focus of our efforts. Because we have to translate into reality what we mean when we talk about economic assistance and good governance and rule of law, and many of the other services and changes that we would like to be part of.
I would like Ambassador Jeffrey to explain why, after Secretary Clinton pledged to the Iraqi people that America would pursue the SFA in good faith, President Obama replaced her with Vice President Biden as his point man on Iraq.
Ken Katzman from Danielle Pletka:
Now, my nemesis, literally the guy whose extension at the Congressional Research Service I still remember is haunting me to this day and has a question, from Ken Katzman, Senior Fellow at the Soufan Group. ... I hope you’re watching, Ken. Why did the Bush administration ignore all the warnings by Iraq experts before the invasion, that would not include me then, that the invasion would end up empowering Iran as the preponderant influence in Iraq?
James Jeffrey:
In defense, I’ll get back to what you just said. Because I actually was involved with it before 2004. [Crosstalk 01:39:49]. Look, Saddam Hussein was a huge problem. We didn’t invent that problem. And we were running out of options. Mass sanctions weren’t working, there was a new oil line that was being set up through Syria. He was challenging us every day, shooting at northern watch southern watch planes, and on and on and on. It was a constant drain on our entire Middle East and overall foreign policy resources. So the idea that you had to do something, and screw all the advisors saying, worry about this group, worry about Iran, worry about . . . You know, we gotta go do something.
Danielle Pletka:
If we worried about everything, we would never do anything.
President Obama's premature end to OIF empowered Iran. As Peter Rodman explains, OIF set up a better stable and ethical path to deal with Iran that relied on three prongs: stabilize Iraq as an American ally, increase sanctions pressure, and support civil reform in Iran. The three prongs were well within reach for President Obama when he entered office. Instead, he did the opposite of all three.
Regarding "the warnings by Iraq experts before the invasion...that the invasion would end up empowering Iran", I imagine the Roosevelt administration being warned by Germany and Japan experts that declaring war on the Axis would consequently empower the Soviet Union and Communist Chinese and lead to practically permanent heavy deployments of US forces in Europe and Asia for the next 80-plus years. Dealing with ethnic neighbor danger has featured in American foreign affairs throughout the modern era. The US has protected West Germany from East Germany, South Korea from north Korea, Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina from Serbia, and Taiwan from China, not to mention South Vietnam from North Vietnam. But for Obama's contravention of the SFA, we would have protected Iraq from Iran.
In the law and policy on Iraq inherited by President Bush, particularly the Clinton Iran-Iraq dual-containment framework, the 'something' of "we gotta do something" about "Saddam Hussein was a huge problem" was prescribed: "bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations" (Public Law 105-235) per Public Law 102-1 (102-190) pursuant to UNSCR 678. By procedure, when Saddam failed Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441) with the Gulf War ceasefire terms, the Gulf War resumed in order to "enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq" (Public Law 107-243). And that's what the mission did.
Secretary of State Albright, 26MAR97:
Our view, which is unshakable, is that Iraq must prove its peaceful intentions. It can only do that by complying with all of the Security Council resolutions to which it is subject. Is it possible to conceive of such a government under Saddam Hussein? When I was a professor, I taught that you have to consider all possibilities. As Secretary of State, I have to deal in the realm of reality and probability. And the evidence is overwhelming that Saddam Hussein's intentions will never be peaceful.
... Clearly, a change in Iraq's government could lead to a change in U.S. policy. Should that occur, we would stand ready, in coordination with our allies and friends, to enter rapidly into a dialogue with the successor regime. That dialogue would have two principal goals.
First, because we are firmly committed to Iraq's territorial integrity, we would want to verify that the new Iraq would be independent, unified and free from undue external influence, for example, from Iran.
... Clearly, a change in Iraq's government could lead to a change in U.S. policy. Should that occur, we would stand ready, in coordination with our allies and friends, to enter rapidly into a dialogue with the successor regime. That dialogue would have two principal goals.
First, because we are firmly committed to Iraq's territorial integrity, we would want to verify that the new Iraq would be independent, unified and free from undue external influence, for example, from Iran.
As Ambassador Jeffrey says, "Saddam Hussein was a huge problem." As Secretary Albright pointed out, the operative policy on Iraq considered Iran, but resolving Saddam's threat with Iraq's mandated compliance was the priority. In fact, we know now that Saddam was a greater threat than we thought then. The whitewashing myths propagated by experts that Saddam was exonerated on WMD, Saddam was anti-terrorist, that the Saddam regime was secular and stabilizing, and that Saddam neutralized Iran are all part of the revisionist project to discredit OIF's justification, blame OIF for the consequences of ending OIF, and enable the loaded question, "Why did the Bush administration ignore all the warnings by Iraq experts before the invasion...that the invasion would end up empowering Iran as the preponderant influence in Iraq?", in the service of undermining the essential paradigm of American leadership embodied by the Iraq intervention.
Joel Rayburn:
There was an overlearning, still is, of the lessons of the collapse of the Iraqi state in 2003. And there’s been a revulsion for 20 years, not just to nation building, but essentially just having a political strategy at all to further US interest in these places. I mean, Afghanistan is case in point. Syria mostly is the same. And in that context, the US government made a decision early on to respond to the ISIS problem without any political strategy at all. And just to start zapping Sunnis from the air, ad infinitum.
... Because I think the received opinion about the Iraq conflict, which is now 20 years old, because it’s still going on, is that the current state of affairs, whenever it is, is an outcome that flows uninterruptedly from the Bush administration’s decision to invade in early 2003. But there have been many, many, many decision points since then. And what happens is that, the people who made good decisions aren’t credited. But the many people who made bad decisions aren’t held accountable, because they’re able to just point, ah, Bush 2003. So the entire withdrawal . . . I think the horrible state of affairs in Iraq owes much more to the decision to pull the plug on the US mission in Iraq, not just the military mission, but also all the things that the diplomatic mission was supposed to inherit, than from the invasion of Iraq.
... Because I think the received opinion about the Iraq conflict, which is now 20 years old, because it’s still going on, is that the current state of affairs, whenever it is, is an outcome that flows uninterruptedly from the Bush administration’s decision to invade in early 2003. But there have been many, many, many decision points since then. And what happens is that, the people who made good decisions aren’t credited. But the many people who made bad decisions aren’t held accountable, because they’re able to just point, ah, Bush 2003. So the entire withdrawal . . . I think the horrible state of affairs in Iraq owes much more to the decision to pull the plug on the US mission in Iraq, not just the military mission, but also all the things that the diplomatic mission was supposed to inherit, than from the invasion of Iraq.
As I said, it's essential to cure the Iraq Syndrome. It's a disease vector for an inimical paradigm shift.
Excerpt from my comments on the 27MAR23 "The Iraq War Series: Operation Iraqi Freedom" panel discussion:
But the vast majority, including experts who should know better, propagate a false narrative of OIF. In domestic and international politics, the Iraq Syndrome festers at the premise level, more implicitly than explicitly these days, to devalue and marginalize anything, person or policy, positively associated with OIF as the fruit of a poisoned tree. For example, note President Trump's political weaponization of the Iraq Syndrome and the construction of the deviant Obama Doctrine.
The Iraq Syndrome is able to foment a paradigm shift because the Gulf War ceasefire compliance enforcement pursuant to UNSCR 678, established at the dawn of the post-Cold War, was by presidential design paradigmatic and baseline for post-Cold War US-led liberal international order. When experts are confused by the varied reasons for OIF, the explanation is that OIF had a diverse basis because the UNSCR 678 enforcement was programmed with all the essential elements of American leadership of the free world. That's why stigmatizing the Iraq intervention can fuel a paradigm drift.
The Iraq Syndrome is able to foment a paradigm shift because the Gulf War ceasefire compliance enforcement pursuant to UNSCR 678, established at the dawn of the post-Cold War, was by presidential design paradigmatic and baseline for post-Cold War US-led liberal international order. When experts are confused by the varied reasons for OIF, the explanation is that OIF had a diverse basis because the UNSCR 678 enforcement was programmed with all the essential elements of American leadership of the free world. That's why stigmatizing the Iraq intervention can fuel a paradigm drift.
In order to properly credit "the people who made good decisions" and hold to account "the many people who made bad decisions" over the "many, many, many decision points since...the Bush administration’s decision to invade in early 2003", it's first necessary to demonstrate that President Bush's decision on Iraq was correct and justified in the first place. As it happens, OIF's primary sources clearly show that OIF was correctly decided and justified. That sets the keystone premise needed to persuasively argue that President Obama's radical deviation with Iraq was incorrectly decided, unjustified, and responsible for still-compounding consequential harms.
The political task begins by discrediting the keystone premise of the Iraq Syndrome, i.e., the preponderant "bumper sticker, right, Bush lied, people died, we ruined Iraq, blah, blah, blah" (Pletka) false narrative, and clarifying OIF's actual justification for the public as defined by OIF's primary sources. Establishing the premise that OIF was justified in the first place and Iraq was progressing on the right path when Bush handed off the mission to Obama sets up the public to identify President Obama's contravention of the SFA as the critical deviation that took America and Iraq onto the wrong path.
More important than upholding the people who made good decisions and holding to account the people who made bad decisions on Iraq, the political understanding that Bush was right and Obama was wrong on Iraq enables us to backtrack to the pivot point of Obama's deviation, turn back onto the right course from there, and revive the resolute, principled, competitive, essential American leadership that crystallized with OIF in the crucible of Iraq.
See my related advice to Frank Sobchak and the OIF FAQ epilogue answer to "Was Operation Iraqi Freedom a strategic blunder or a strategic victory".
I hope my comments are helpful. I look forward to your feedback. If you have questions about my work, please ask.
This e-mail will be posted here. It completes my review of the American Enterprise Institute's "The Iraq War Series 20 Years Later".
from: [Eric LC]
to: [Michael Rubin], [Caleb Dixon]
cc: [Gary Schmitt], [Gavin D'Souza]
date: Mar 26, 2024, 4:26 AM
subject: How to cure the Iraq Syndrome, response to "Learning too Much from Iraq" (National Review, 16MAR23) and "The Iraq War Looks Better with Time" (Washington Examiner, 20MAR23)
Dr. Schake and Dr. Rubin,
I clarify the Iraq issue at Operation Iraqi Freedom FAQ by realigning the Iraq issue with OIF's primary sources. I'm currently reviewing panel transcripts and articles from the American Enterprise Institute's The Iraq War Series 20 Years Later. My review is a work in progress, which you can read here.
This comment responds to Michael Rubin's 20MAR23 Washington Examiner op-ed, The Iraq War Looks Better with Time, and Kori Schake's 16MAR23 National Review op-ed, Learning too Much from Iraq, with guidance on how to cure the degenerative Iraq Syndrome with the OIF FAQ. To do that, you and AEI need to clarify the Iraq issue and discredit the prevailing false narrative for the public, and politically embrace the mission in order for the US to build on OIF's vital corrective lessons.
Dr. Rubin's contention, "Will historians judge it better than its contemporaries did? Of that I am sure," is unrealistic as long as the prevailing narrative is based on the expert-made conjecture, distorted context, and misinformation obfuscating the Iraq issue. In order for historians to ever clarify the Iraq issue against revisionist experts, it is necessary to re-lay a proper foundation for the public with OIF's primary sources, i.e., the controlling law, policy, and precedent and determinative facts that define OIF's justification.
To that end, Dr. Schake's contention, "Invading Iraq proved to have been a mistake", is incorrect legally and factually. The facts show President Bush's determination for OIF was correctly decided on the governing procedure for the Gulf War ceasefire "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441) in Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441).
We further know that the OIF regime change was necessary to fulfill the controlling mandate to "bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations" (Public Law 105-235) pursuant to UNSCR 678, which was always required to resolve the Gulf War-established manifold "threat Iraq’s non-compliance with Council resolutions...poses to international peace and security" (UNSCR 1441). As Secretary of State Albright summed up the US policy on Iraq, "Our view, which is unshakable, is that Iraq must prove its peaceful intentions. It can only do that by complying with all of the Security Council resolutions to which it is subject." The Iraq Survey Group's ex post investigation confirmed, "ISG judges that Iraq failed to comply with UNSCRs...the Iraqis never intended to meet the spirit of the UNSC’s resolutions".
Regarding 9/11-induced "Fear skewed its [the US's] risk tolerance" (Schake), Dr. Schake is correct that "We didn’t understand the dimensions of the problem" of Saddam's noncompliance as we know now that the "nature and magnitude of the threat" (Schake) was substantially underestimated by pre-war analysts.
We know now that the threat of Iraq's "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) of the Gulf War ceasefire, especially the distinctive combined Iraqi WMD-terrorism threat which most concerned the Clinton and Bush administrations, was more dire than we knew. We know now that the "Fear [that] skewed its [the US's] risk tolerance" for Saddam's UNSCR 687 WMD and terrorism violations was well founded: The Iraq Survey Group confirmed Saddam covertly possessed at least ready terrorism-level WMD capability, while the Iraqi Perspectives Project found that Saddam's terrorism, which included "considerable operational overlap" (IPP) with al Qaeda, had been substantially underestimated. Based on the alarming combination of ISG and IPP's findings, IPP director Jim Lacey concluded, "Given the evidence, it appears that we removed Saddam’s regime not a moment too soon."
Saddam's extreme UNSCR 688 human rights violations, "the consequences of which threaten international peace and security in the region" (UNSCR 688), were also found to be "far worse" (UN Special Rapporteur on Iraq, 18MAR04) than we knew. (More on that below.)
Dr. Schake's assertion, "Had the same problems regarding Iraq loomed even a couple of years later rather than in 2002–03, the Bush administration would have likely chosen to manage them differently," is unrealistic given the shrunken set of viable alternatives by 1999-2000, let alone 2002-2003. With or without 9/11, it was evident by the time Bush entered office that the UNSCR 678 enforcement had come to a head after a decade of intransigent Iraqi noncompliance. Moreover, we know now that Saddam's manifold threat was worse than we thought, and it was only growing worse the longer we let it fester with less than a comprehensive solution. Dr. Schake's assertion only works as a hypothetical if we ignore both the precedential path pursuant to UNSCR 678 that shaped Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441) and that adding to the shrunken set of enforcement alternatives depended on resolving the standing "threat Iraq’s non-compliance with Council resolutions...poses to international peace and security" (UNSCR 1441). To that end, OIF achieved Iraq's mandated compliance "a couple of years later" (Schake).
Here's how to cure the degenerative Iraq Syndrome with the OIF FAQ:
1. The concept of the case sets the frame for everything else. First and foremost, you must re-lay a proper foundation for the public with the primary sources that define the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441) and its governing enforcement procedure, like a jury instruction. The OIF FAQ base post synthesizes OIF's primary sources into a coherent narrative form that's purpose-designed to lay a proper foundation and provide a study guide for the Iraq issue. Other featured posts, such as my 10th anniversary of OIF retrospective, examine key facets of the Iraq issue with additional scope and depth. The expository content should provide sufficient grounding to assimilate OIF's basic essential sources and then the comprehensive table of sources compiled at Perspective on Operation Iraqi Freedom.
For example, Dr. Schake points out that "As the chief advocate and enforcer of the nuclear-nonproliferation regime, the U.S. also had an interest in preventing Iraq from acquiring nuclear weapons." Which is true. But Dr. Schake's focus on a general policy overlooks that for Iraq, the US enforced the specifically tailored "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441) for nuclear, biological, chemical, missile, and conventional disarmament per UNSCR 687. As a result, Dr. Schake omits that after UNMOVIC confirmed Iraq's "continued violations of its obligations" (UNSCR 1441) for casus belli, the Iraq Survey Group corroborated UNMOVIC and confirmed proscribed Iraqi nuclear, biological, chemical, and missile activities that amount to an active WMD program in violation of UNSCR 687. To clarify, see the OIF FAQ retrospective #duelferreport and #nuclear sections.
2. As you clarify the Iraq issue with OIF's primary sources, you need to simultaneously discredit the prevailing false narrative of the degenerative Iraq Syndrome. To correct the experts who propagate the false narrative, the OIF FAQ is designed to help readers learn the primary source authorities for themselves, so they can determine where any leader or pundit credibly accords with the operative law and facts and where he or she has misinformed the public contra the operative law and facts.
For example, see my model answers to revisionist experts at the OIF FAQ's Critical responses to leaders and pundits (expanded list).
3. Regarding Dr. Schake's lament, "We missed so many opportunities to strengthen international participation", explain to the public that the fault for that lies not with the US but rather with the mission opponents, led by Russia and France, who were complicit with the Saddam regime's "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) of the Gulf War ceasefire: "The [Saddam] Regime’s strategy was successful to the point where sitting members of the Security Council were actively violating the resolutions passed by the Security Council" (ISG).
For example, while Dr. Schake "[would] have loved to see...then-secretary Powell give a speech in Germany about the responsibilities free societies have to those suffering under authoritarianism", convincing Germany to do right by Iraq first required holding Germany to account for, one, "Germany and France outstripped all others in selling the most important thing [to Iraq] — specialized chemical-industry equipment that is particularly useful for producing poison gas" (Iraq Watch), two, undermining the diplomatic coercive tool of sanctions which compelled military enforcement with Iraq, and, three, politically encouraging Saddam to not comply in Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441), i.e., casus belli.
It's fair to criticize the Bush administration for neglecting to hold Saddam's international accomplices, including Germany, to account.
4. Explain that the HW Bush, Clinton, and Bush administrations could not compromise the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441) with less than "full and immediate compliance by Iraq without conditions or restrictions with its obligations under resolution 687 (1991) and other relevant resolutions" (UNSCR 1441) because from its inception, the UNSCR 678 enforcement of the Gulf War ceasefire was baseline-setting and paradigmatic for US-led enforcement of post-Cold War liberal international order. Excerpt from the OIF FAQ retrospective #americanprimacy section:
The Gulf War ceasefire terms were purpose-designed to resolve Saddam's manifold threat established with the Gulf War. The scope of the ceasefire terms meant that enforcing Iraq's mandated compliance resonated beyond the 4 corners of the Saddam problem or even the Iraq intervention itself. In 1991, at the dawn of the post-Cold War, the Gulf War ceasefire was invested with all the essential international norms, including strict aggression, disarmament, human rights, and terrorism-related mandates, and vital enforcement principles that were required to reify the aspirational "rules" of the post-Cold War world order.
Due to the historical context, threats and interests at stake, comprehensive spectrum of the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441), model enforcement procedure, and US-led UN-based structure, the UNSCR 660-series compliance enforcement was tantamount to the flagship and litmus test of the US-led post-Cold War liberal international order.
In other words, the resolution of Saddam's probation with Iraq's mandated compliance per the Gulf War ceasefire represented the primary test case for US-led international enforcement with a readily measured pass/fail gauge. The paradigmatic set of international norms that defined Iraq's ceasefire obligations was enforced with a clear UN-mandated compliance standard and a strict US-led compliance process. Iraq's mandated compliance set the gold standard for enforcing post-Cold War liberal international order, whereas Saddam's noncompliance risked a model failure for US-led enforcement of the liberal international order, a theme that permeated the US law and policy on Iraq through the HW Bush, Clinton, and Bush administrations.
Due to the historical context, threats and interests at stake, comprehensive spectrum of the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441), model enforcement procedure, and US-led UN-based structure, the UNSCR 660-series compliance enforcement was tantamount to the flagship and litmus test of the US-led post-Cold War liberal international order.
In other words, the resolution of Saddam's probation with Iraq's mandated compliance per the Gulf War ceasefire represented the primary test case for US-led international enforcement with a readily measured pass/fail gauge. The paradigmatic set of international norms that defined Iraq's ceasefire obligations was enforced with a clear UN-mandated compliance standard and a strict US-led compliance process. Iraq's mandated compliance set the gold standard for enforcing post-Cold War liberal international order, whereas Saddam's noncompliance risked a model failure for US-led enforcement of the liberal international order, a theme that permeated the US law and policy on Iraq through the HW Bush, Clinton, and Bush administrations.
5. Explain the HW Bush and Clinton missteps, starting with the HW Bush administration's path-setting errors at the very outset, that developed "the crisis between the United States and Iraq that led to the declaration on August 2, 1990, of a national emergency has not been resolved...Iraqi actions pose a continuing unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States" (President Clinton, 28JUL00), which President Bush inherited at its culmination point and resolved with OIF.
6. Regarding Dr. Rubin's criticism, "Was the Iraq War mishandled? Yes. Was occupation bungled? Certainly," it's important to explain that the OIF occupation was not "bungled". Rather, the standard of preemptive perfection imposed by OIF critics is abnormal. "Mishandled" setbacks to initial plans that compel responsive adjustments are normal for any kind of real competition, including military contests versus vicious unbounded opponents like Saddamists. The OIF occupation would have been "bungled" had the US abandoned Iraq to the insurgents instead of adjusting to the competition. As it happened, historically speaking, the COIN "surge" adjustment was relatively fast.
As recounted by Doug Feith, the initial post-war plan per section 7 of Public Law 105-338, was valid based on what we knew about Iraqi society before OIF. Dr. Rubin's pushback, "Nor is it fair to blame the United States for a million deaths in Iraq. U.S. forces did not kill 1 million Iraqis; insurgents and Iranian-backed militias did,"* points to the fundamental flaw in the initial post-war plan: Pre-war analysts severely underestimated the Saddam regime's radical sectarian turn, extreme corruption of Iraqi society, and deep domestic, regional, and global terrorism. Because the Saddam regime's UNSCR 688 human rights violations and UNSCR 687 terrorism violations were "far worse" (UNCHR) than we knew, the initial post-war plan was calibrated to pre-Iran-Iraq War, pre-Gulf War concepts of Iraqi society that were outdated by 2003. The inadequate initial post-war plan was beaten by Saddamists who knew the actual corrupted state of Iraqi society since they created it. The Saddamists smoothly converted their genocidal terrorist governance of Iraq and "regional and global terrorism" (IPP) to the terrorist insurgency against post-Saddam Iraq. There was no way for the UNSCR 678 enforcers to anticipate that before the regime change was actual. But again, setback and adjustment is normal in real competition.
* Note, according to Iraq Body Count, "a million deaths in Iraq" (Rubin) is a big exaggeration, even if we include the deaths that followed President Obama's inhumane choice to end OIF and thereby make nascent post-Saddam Iraq vulnerable to Iran on one side and the danger growing in the Arab Spring on the other side.
7. Explain that on top of its ground-level tactical value, OIF's course of setbacks and adjustment constituted a vital corrective at the policy level for the schematic weakness of the debilitating Vietnam Syndrome that caused the HW Bush and Clinton administrations' missteps that led to OIF in the first place. If properly embraced, the Iraq intervention with President Bush's resolute commitment will inform the construction of sufficient competitive American leadership suited to the 9/11 era like the Korea intervention was instrumental in constructing the American leadership that competed in the Cold War era. I discuss OIF's corrective aspect in the OIF FAQ retrospective #americanprimacy and #postwarmil sections.
8. Finally, regarding the "Beltway wisdom is that President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and oust dictator Saddam Hussein was a strategic disaster," (Rubin), see the OIF FAQ epilogue answer to "Was Operation Iraqi Freedom a strategic blunder or a strategic victory".
As Dr. Rubin alludes, with President Bush's resolute commitment, OIF was a strategic victory that turned Iraq from the manifold threat of noncompliant Saddam into a key building block for peace. The "strategic disaster" (Rubin) has been President Obama's irresponsible exit from Iraq that contravened both the US-Iraq Strategic Framework Agreement and the cardinal precedent of America's leadership with Germany, Japan, and Korea. Obama's radical deviation with Iraq has been a pivotal, profoundly inhumane, still-compounding strategic blunder.
In order to correct Obama's historic error with Iraq and begin to cure the harm it has caused, the public needs to understand at premise that President Bush's decision on Iraq was correct in the first place, and that from inception, the UNSCR 678 enforcement was essential for US-led liberal international order. Moreover, OIF needs to be politically embraced in order to build on the hard-earned lessons of the mission's adaptive adjustments and set a vital corrective standard for sufficient competitive American leadership of the free world.
It matters for current events. As Will Roberts wrote in his 16FEB24 Providence article, The Road to Deterring Iran Goes Through Iraq, "Only through robust American and international engagement can Iran’s malign influence over the Near East be countered, and that’s only possible with an American military presence in Iraq." Roberts's advocacy requires curing the degenerative Iraq Syndrome and reviving the resolute adaptive American leadership that crystallized in the crucible of Iraq, which requires the steps I've outlined here.
I hope this helps you and AEI clarify the Iraq issue for the public. I look forward to your response. If you have questions about my work, please ask. Again, this e-mail will be added to my review of AEI's "The Iraq War Series 20 Years Later", a work in progress you can read here.
from: [Eric LC]
to: [Gary Schmitt], [Clara Keuss]; add [Ben Lefkowitz]
cc: [Elissabeth Buckles]
date: Mar 21, 2024, 1:16 AM
subject: You're incorrect to say "as we all know now, by the start of war, Saddam had no hidden stockpiles of weapons" (American Purpose, 01MAY23)
Dr. Schmitt and Ms. Pletka,
I clarify the Iraq issue at Operation Iraqi Freedom FAQ.
In your 01MAY23 American Purpose Op-ed, Mission Accomplished?, you say, "as we all know now, by the start of war, Saddam had no hidden stockpiles of weapons, and the intelligence consensus that he did turns out to have rested on the thinnest of evidence."
The first part of your statement, "as we all know now, by the start of war, Saddam had no hidden stockpiles of weapons", is incorrect and omissive. The second part, "the intelligence consensus that he did turns out to have rested on the thinnest of evidence", is misleading.
For the Iraq Survey Group, absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence because ISG's finding failures are mainly the product of Iraq's non-pareil "denial and deception operations" (UNSCR 1441) that continued through the "start of the war" and after the regime change. The ISG report, corroborated by the 2019 Army study on OIF, cautions that much of the missing evidence, maybe even most of it, was "sanitized" (ISG) after the regime change.
According to the ISG report, "by the start of war, Saddam had no hidden stockpiles of weapons" cannot be something "we all know". Rather, the fate of Saddam's WMD stockpile is a guess on an "unresolvable ambiguity" (David Kay, see below). Note the ISG quotes that heavily qualify their failure to find Saddam's WMD stockpile, excerpt from the OIF FAQ answer to "Did Bush lie his way to war with Iraq":
Six, OIF opponents who accuse Bush of lying his way to war with Iraq cite the ISG finding, "While it appears that Iraq, by the mid-1990s, was essentially free of militarily significant WMD stocks, Saddam’s perceived requirement to bluff about WMD capabilities made it too dangerous to clearly reveal this to the international community, especially Iran."
However, although OIF opponents represent the ISG finding as unequivocal, it is in fact heavily qualified in the Duelfer report:
However, although OIF opponents represent the ISG finding as unequivocal, it is in fact heavily qualified in the Duelfer report:
With the degradation of the Iraqi infrastructure and dispersal of personnel, it is increasingly unlikely that these questions will be resolved. Of those that remain, the following are of particular concern, as they relate to the possibility of a retained BW capability or the ability to initiate a new one.The Iraq Survey Group can offer a guess, but with its practical limitations, ISG can't be sure about the fate of all Saddam's secret stores and the extent Iraq's WMD program was retained and reconstituted. In many instances where ISG cited a lack of evidence, it meant the evidence required for a definite determination was missing or lost, not that absence of evidence was evidence of absence. With the burden on Iraq to prove the mandated disarmament and no mandate for the ceasefire enforcers to demonstrate Iraq's proscribed armament, the Iraq Survey Group's post hoc investigation was handicapped by that the UN inspections, OIF invasion, and post-war occupation simply were not designed to scour for, guard, and preserve evidence like a crime-scene forensic investigation. Concurrently, the systematic Iraqi "concealment and deception activities" (ISG), much unfettered, rid evidence of proscribed armament, e.g., "many of these [WMD-related] sites were either sanitized by the [Saddam] Regime or looted prior to OIF", "M23 [Directorate of Military Industries] officers also were involved in NMD [National Monitoring Directorate] document concealment and destruction efforts", and "extensive looting and destruction at military facilities during OIF" (ISG). The resulting evidentiary gaps prevented a complete account of Saddam's WMD by ISG.• ISG cannot determine the fate of Iraq’s stocks of bulk BW agents remaining after Desert Storm and subsequent unilateral destruction. There is a very limited chance that continuing investigation may provide evidence to resolve this issue....
• The fate of the missing bulk agent storage tanks.
• The fate of a portion of Iraq’s BW agent seed-stocks.
• The nature, purpose and who was involved in the secret biological work in the small IIS laboratories discovered by ISG.
ISG’s investigation of Iraq’s ammunition supply points—ammunition depots, field ammunition supply points (FASPs), tactical FASPs, and other dispersed weapons caches—has not uncovered any CW munitions. ISG investigation, however, was hampered by several factors beyond our control. The scale and complexity of Iraqi munitions handling, storage, and weapons markings, and extensive looting and destruction at military facilities during OIF significantly limited the number of munitions that ISG was able to thoroughly inspect.• ISG technical experts fully evaluated less than one quarter of one percent of the over 10,000 weapons caches throughout Iraq, and visited fewer than ten ammunition depots identified prior to OIF as suspect CW sites.
• The enormous number of munitions dispersed throughout the country may include some older, CW-filled munitions, and ISG cannot discount the possibility that a few large caches of munitions remain to be discovered within Iraq.
The inconclusive assessment of Saddam's WMD stockpile, "unlikely that these questions will be resolved", "cannot determine", " ISG investigation...hampered by several factors beyond our control", "cannot discount" (ISG), exemplify Iraq Survey Group director David Kay's statement to Congress on the "unresolvable ambiguity" (Kay) of ISG's finding failures, excerpt from the OIF FAQ retrospective #duelferreport section:
The Iraq Survey Group heavily qualified its findings in the report's Transmittal Message, Scope Note, and various sections by cautioning that the Saddam regime was expert at hiding proscribed items and activities, much evidence was lost prior to, during, and after the war, key Saddam regime officials were not forthcoming, statements conflicted, there were clear signs that suspect areas were "sanitized", and other practical factors, such as the terrorist insurgency, limited its investigation. For example, on January 28, 2004, David Kay informed the Senate Armed Services Committee:
I regret to say that I think at the end of the work of the [Iraq Survey Group] there's still going to be an unresolvable ambiguity about what happened.In other words, what ISG found constituted a floor only, not a complete account of Saddam's WMD. In many instances, ISG concluded it could not determine Iraq had disarmed as mandated. Significant questions remained undisposed. Therefore, what ISG found corroborating Iraq's material breach of UNSCR 687 in the post-war investigation is more material than what ISG did not find matching the pre-war intelligence estimates.
A lot of that traces to the failure on April 9 to establish immediately physical security in Iraq -- the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was directly intentional, designed by the security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program and their other programs as well, a lot of which was what we simply called Ali Baba looting. "It had been the regime's. The regime is gone. I'm going to go take the gold toilet fixtures and everything else imaginable."
I've seen looting around the world and thought I knew the best looters in the world. The Iraqis excel at that.
The result is -- document destruction -- we're really not going to be able to prove beyond a truth the negatives and some of the positive conclusions that we're going to come to. There will be always unresolved ambiguity here.
Again, "by the start of war, Saddam had no hidden stockpiles of weapons" can only be a guess. It cannot be knowledge based on the ISG findings.
The first part of your statement also significantly omits that despite Iraq's "denial and deception operations" (ISG), the Iraq Survey Group was able to find much evidence of an active WMD program in violation of UNSCR 687, including large covert procurement of WMD precursors and dual-use technology, a covert lab network, and ready production capability. Saddam's confirmed capability was equally proscribed by UNSCR 687 and just as much a strategic threat as a stockpile.
You also omit the stocks that were confiscated by the CIA's Operation Avarice separately from the Iraq Survey Group, consistent with ISG's caveat, "ISG cannot discount the possibility that a few large caches of munitions remain to be discovered within Iraq".
The second part of your statement, "the intelligence consensus that he did turns out to have rested on the thinnest of evidence", is misleading because the "intelligence consensus" was not based on any nation's intelligence "evidence" per se, but rather the universal consensus of the UNSCR 687 (UNSCOM/UNMOVIC) record. For example, from the UNMOVIC Clusters document, "UNSCOM considered that the evidence was insufficient to support Iraq’s statements on the quantity of anthrax destroyed and where or when it was destroyed", "UNMOVIC has credible information that the total quantity of BW agent in bombs, warheads and in bulk at the time of the Gulf War was 7,000 litres more than declared by Iraq", and "With respect to stockpiles of bulk agent stated to have been destroyed, there is evidence to suggest that these was [sic] not destroyed as declared by Iraq".
It wasn't a secret. Intelligence assessments outright cited the UNSCR 687 record, which was reflected in Bush administration statements. Reliance on the UNSCR 687 record was practical and sensible from a procedural standpoint since UNSCR 687 findings were determinative for the President's decision to use force with Iraq per Public Laws 102-1 (102-190) and 107-243 pursuant to UNSCR 678. The intelligence was not determinative for the President's decision to use force with Iraq.
I hope that clarifies the issue. If you have a question, please ask.
For your information, I'm writing to you now because AEI's 20th anniversary "Iraq War Series" is next on my very belated list of high-expert 20th anniversary content to critically review. The "Mission Accomplished?" article was the first item I clicked on the AEI page. For a preview of what to expect, besides this e-mail, see my correction of then-president of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass's 20th anniversary of OIF article and critique of Iraq Survey Group director Charles Duelfer's 20th anniversary post.
---------------
from: [Eric LC]
to: [Gary Schmitt], [Clara Keuss]; add [Ben Lefkowitz]
cc: [Elissabeth Buckles]
date: Mar 21, 2024, 5:13 AM
subject: Thoughts on "Decision II: What Comes Next?" (American Purpose, 01MAY23)
Dr. Schmitt and Ms. Pletka,
Some thoughts in response to the "Decision II: What Comes Next?" portion of your 01MAY23 article, Mission Accomplished?:
1. The schema with Iraq that US forces would win the major combat stage and then hand off the next stage to other forces was not new in 2003. The HW Bush administration applied that schema in 1991 when President HW Bush declared that the US forces that won Desert Storm/Shield would come home and be replaced by UN forces who'd enforce the Gulf War ceasefire mandates. That didn't work. Saddam watched the US forces leave, sized up the UN replacements, and immediately violated the ceasefire. The week that HW Bush left office, he was compelled to order US forces back to bomb Iraq pursuant to UNSCR 678. Thereafter, under Clinton, US forces were compelled to escalate in the Gulf War ceasefire compliance enforcement.
Yet the same essential schema that US forces would step back after winning the war and other entities would handle the next stage was evident in the Bush administration's pre-war thinking about the post-war stage. Perhaps it was favored by Bush officials who made the original mistake of drawing down US forces in 1991 and ignored the lesson of Saddam's immediate intransigence. It's not that the Bush administration was heedless. Rather, Bush officials expected that once the mission reached the transition point from war to nation-building, other entities would come aboard to take on the bulk of the nation-building stage while US forces stepped back. The demarcation between the major combat stage and, in essence, the nation-building stage in President Bush's 01MAY03 USS Abraham Lincoln speech clearly marked the transition point that restructured the mission for other entities to join in.
2. More troops = more peace was not the only theory on the table. There was also the theory of more troops = less progress and more resistance (insurgency). We had to figure out the right balance of US forces for the nation-building stage: not too much, not too little, not too forward, not too back. Iraqi expats advised a 'light footprint' approach with the US military receding to a background support role following the invasion based on the belief that a 'heavy footprint' (scare quotes) "FOREIGN MILITARY OCCUPATION" would alienate Iraqis in the wake of Saddam's tyranny and discourage Iraqis from nation-building. That fear had traction with US officials who suffer from the Vietnam Syndrome. On the ground, we saw the expat advice reflected in the initial background support role for US troops and the rush to put an Iraqi face on the government and security forces, and the rapid restoration of Iraqi sovereignty. As it turned out, the Iraqi expats whose advice that Bush officials accepted were wrong. We learned instead that more US troops in Iraq = more peace and progress, and less insurgency. But that's what happens when a theory is tested for real, and we find out that the Vietnam Syndrome is bullshit.
That being said, keep in mind that it wasn't just Iraqi expats and Vietnam-traumatized US officials who accepted the more troops = less progress theory. Recall that UN envoy Sérgio Vieira de Mello rejected US military protection in order to not alienate the Iraqis whom he was committed to help. Viera was assassinated for making that mistake.
3. I think your blame on Secretary Rumsfeld is too harsh. As I said in my Critique of Matt Latimer's "The Don Rumsfeld the Obituaries Won’t Write About", "...the COIN adjustment didn't start from scratch. He [Rumsfeld] adjusted to the competition, too. Achievements with Rumsfeld, albeit overshadowed, laid the groundwork for the success of the COIN "surge"." Historically speaking, the 2006-2007 COIN "surge" was a relatively fast adjustment, and that's because the "surge" followed the incremental adjustments made under Rumsfeld.
4. General Shinseki was wrong. Several hundred thousand US soldiers were not needed to garrison Iraq. We needed more troops than what the initial 'light footprint' background support role called for, because that plan failed when put to the test. But at no point did the OIF peace operations need the number of US soldiers that Shinseki suggested. The US post-war troop level in Iraq peaked at 157,800 in FY2008.
5. You should blame every analyst, politician, and pundit who downplayed Saddam's terrorism or tyranny. We know now that the Saddam regime's UNSCR 687 terrorism violations, including Saddam's "considerable operational overlap" (Iraqi Perspectives Project) with al Qaeda, and UNSCR 688 human rights violations, which we found to be "far worse" (UN Special Rapporteur on Iraq, 18MAR04) than we knew, were severely underestimated. As a result, the initial post-war plan was calibrated to a concept of Iraqi society that was obsolete. An accurate and precise pre-war assessment of the Saddam regime's extreme terrorism and tyranny would have given US officials a better read on the needs of 2003 Iraqi society, as opposed to the pre-Iran-Iraq War or pre-Gulf War Iraqi society envisioned by Iraqi expats and the stage-managed Iraq that Saddam showed to UN officials. A true understanding of the extreme depravity of the Saddam regime would have informed a more robust initial post-war plan.
You can read more of my thoughts on the post-war difficulties in the OIF FAQ retrospective #postwar section.
Again, I'm writing to you now because AEI's 20th anniversary "Iraq War Series" is next on my very belated list of high-expert 20th anniversary content to critically review. The "Mission Accomplished?" article was the first item I clicked on the AEI page. There's more to come.
from: [Eric LC]
to: [Michael Rubin]
cc: [Gavin D’Souza]
date: Mar 23, 2024, 3:36 AM
subject: Powell was correct, comment on "We Still Haven’t Addressed the Iraq War’s Real Intelligence Failure" (Washington Examiner, 18MAR03)
Dr. Rubin,
I clarify the Iraq issue at Operation Iraqi Freedom FAQ.
I'm currently reviewing panel transcripts and articles from the American Enterprise Institute's The Iraq War Series 20 Years Later. I've already emailed Danielle Pletka and Gary Schmitt with comments concerning fundamental flaws in their 01MAY23 American Purpose op-ed, "Mission Accomplished?". This comment responds to your 18MAR23 Washington Examiner op-ed, We Still Haven’t Addressed the Iraq War’s Real Intelligence Failure.
First of all, you and AEI should clarify to the public that "Powell did not knowingly mislead" the UN Security Council on February 5, 2023 because the opposite is true: Knowing what we know now, nearly all the main points of Secretary Powell’s case presentation are (apparently not knowingly by you) substantiated. I unpack the speech in detail at OIF FAQ post, Regarding Secretary of State Powell's speech at the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003.
As Secretary Powell said, "These are not assertions." In fact, the fundamental bulk of Powell's case was reiteration of the well-established UNSCR 687 enforcement procedure for Iraq and the fact record established by UNSCOM/UNMOVIC and IAEA in the decade-plus course of the Gulf War ceasefire disarmament process.
As far as Powell's reference to the intelligence apart from the UNSCR 687 record, when I say his points are "substantiated", I don't necessarily mean the intelligence-estimated details were proven to be predictively precise, but rather that the substantive element in Powell's point is validated.
For example, the Iraq Survey Group famously did not find “mobile production facilities used to make biological agents” (Powell). Instead, ISG found the equivalent UNSCR 687 violation of "secret biological work in the small IIS [Iraqi intelligence service] laboratories discovered by ISG" and “The UN deemed Iraq’s accounting of its production and use of BW [biological weapon] agent simulants—specifically Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus lichenformis, Bacillus megaterium and Bacillus thuringiensis to be inadequate … the equipment used for their manufacture can also be quickly converted to make BW agent.”
In hindsight, the only part of Powell's UNSC speech that falls down is the extent to which the Saddam regime sought fissile material. But even there, the British stood by that assessment in their post-war (Butler) review of intelligence, and the Iraq Survey Group confirmed that Iraq was violating the UNSCR 687 nuclear mandates with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) modernization program and other proscribed activities.
See my clarification of the Iraq nuclear issue at the OIF FAQ retrospective #nuclear section.
Blaming Ahmad Chalabi is not the only "red herring". The biggest red herring has been the revisionist exclusive focus on the prediction precision of the intelligence estimates. You and AEI should clarify to the public that the Iraq Survey Group's findings are in fact rife with UNSCR 687 violations that show Saddam did not disarm as mandated and possessed an active WMD program. In other words, while the intelligence was not predictively precise, it correctly indicated the Saddam regime was violating the UNSCR 687 WMD mandates for casus belli.
You should also clarify to the public that the UNSCR 687 violations found by ISG constitute a floor only, not a complete account of Saddam's WMD, since according to ISG, much of the evidence was "sanitized" (ISG) by Iraq's "denial and deception operations" (ISG) which continued during and after the OIF invasion.
See the exposition and sample of ISG excerpts at the OIF FAQ retrospective #duelferreport section.
Most importantly, the public needs to understand that the intelligence was never determinative for the Gulf War ceasefire compliance enforcement of UNSCR 687 per Public Laws 102-1 (102-190) and 107-243 pursuant to UNSCR 678. Casus belli was always Iraq's "continued violations of its obligations" (UNSCR 1441), not the intelligence. That's why President Bush's 18MAR03 determination for OIF mainly cites to the 06MAR03 UNMOVIC Clusters document.
Based on the UNMOVIC and Iraq Survey Group's findings, the intelligence community did not fail on the Iraq WMD issue: The Saddam regime's UNSCR 687 WMD violations in "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) of the Gulf War ceasefire are confirmed.
Where the intelligence community did fail on Iraq was the substantial underestimation of the Saddam regime's UNSCR 687 terrorism violations and UNSCR 688 human rights violations, which also breached the ceasefire for casus belli. That intelligence failure is why the UNSCR 678 enforcers found the condition of Iraqi society to be "far worse" (UN Special Rapporteur on Iraq, 18MAR04) than what they had planned for and the OIF peace operations were caught off guard at first by the surprising terrorist insurgency. Every analyst, politician, and pundit who downplayed Saddam's terrorism or tyranny should be blamed for the failure of the initial post-war plan that compelled the COIN "surge" adjustment.
I hope that helps. I look forward to your response. If you have a question, please ask.
from: [Eric LC]
to: [Clara Keuss], [Ben Lefkowitz], [Gary Schmitt]
cc: [Elissabeth Buckles]
date: Apr 12, 2024, 12:02 AM
subject: I completed my review of the American Enterprise Institute's "The Iraq War Series 20 Years Later"
Ms. Pletka, Dr. Schmitt, and Ms. Keuss,
I completed my serial review of AEI's "The Iraq War Series 20 Years Later". It's posted here: https://operationiraqifreedomfaq.blogspot.com/2024/03/review-of-aei-iraq-war-series-20-years-later.html.
It's dismaying. The express purpose of your project was to set the record straight versus the Iraq Syndrome's false narrative—the same mission as my OIF FAQ. To that end, the preeminent experts you convened do give good information. The problem is they also repeat critical misinformation and misconceptions. Because you wholly relied on secondary expert testimony and did not refer to the primary law and fact sources that define OIF's justification, their misinformation and misconceptions pass unchecked. That's a fundamental flaw of your project that made AEI, in effect, certify and further entrench false premises of the Iraq Syndrome.
AEI needs to fix it. In order to fix it, you can learn OIF's primary sources on your own. They're well developed, straightforward, thorough, and plainly stated. The actual justification of the Iraq intervention isn't complicated. President Bush and Prime Minister Blair's decision on Iraq demonstrably was correct. The case against Saddam is substantiated. Nonetheless, I recommend using the OIF FAQ as a purpose-designed remedial crash course. See the OIF FAQ guide.
Critiquing "The Iraq War Series 20 Years Later" was made more sad by the passing of Senator Lieberman. When he and I corresponded leading up to the 20th anniversary of OIF, he had high hopes that the forthcoming AEI project would set the record straight. I know now that AEI fed into the prevailing false narrative instead. Fix it. He deserves that.
I hope my review is helpful. I look forward to your feedback. If you have questions about my work, please ask.
Also see Review of Washington Examiner symposium "What is the most important lesson of the Iraq War?".
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