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Choosing War

Choosing War: 

The Decision to Invade Iraq 

and Its Aftermath

by Joseph J. Collins

Institute for National Strategic Studies

Occasional Paper 5

National Defense University Press

Washington, D.C.

April 2008
NDU Press publications are sold by the U.S. Government Printing Office. For ordering information, call (202) 512–1800 or write to the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government 

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Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely 

those of the contributors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Defense Department or any other agency of the Federal Government. Cleared for public release; distribution 

unlimited.

Portions of this work may be quoted or reprinted without permission, provided that 

a standard source credit line is included. NDU Press would appreciate a courtesy copy of 

reprints or reviews.

First printing, April 2008
vii

Contents

Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

The Context. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

The War Plan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

International Support and 

Weapons of Mass Destruction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Military and Interagency Postwar Plans. . . . . . . . 11

Errors in Decisionmaking and Execution. . . . . . 16

Improving the National Security 

Decisionmaking and Execution Systems. . . . . . . 28

Notes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 

About the Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

ix

Preface

Since 2006, the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) has 

contributed to the Project on National Security Reform’s study of the 

interagency process. The Project’s mission is “to assist national leadership 

in improving the U.S. Government’s ability to effectively provide for the 

nation’s security in the 21st century.” This study is aimed at developing an 

interagency reform agenda that would parallel the historic GoldwaterNichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. The Project 

on National Security Reform is a nonpartisan initiative hosted by the 

Center for the Study of the Presidency. As part of this cooperative effort 

and in furtherance of the INSS mission to inform the national defense 

policy debate, INSS is publishing selected analyses on national security 

reform. This paper is a contribution to this endeavor.

The war in Iraq reminds us of the role that uncertainty and friction play in both the planning and the execution of military operations. 

Uncertainty and friction also apply to writing history and analyses of 

decisionmaking. At this juncture, there are no final truths about the war 

in Iraq, only early attempts to create a record. Those who demand complete and indisputable analysis of the war should remember that in the 

fall of 2007, some of our best scholars are still arguing over how World 

War I started.

While any errors in this paper are mine alone, many people lent 

their time and talents to help me. I learned much from colleagues and 

friends in the Department of Defense and in the interagency during 

my service in the Pentagon from 2002 to 2004. Frank Miller, late of the 

National Security Council staff, Colonel John Setter, USAF, late of the 

Joint Staff, and Regis Matlak, a senior intelligence officer, were key planners who were most generous with their time and observations. Dr. 

Catherine Dale, formerly of the Department of Defense and now with 

the Congressional Research Service, shared important recollections of 

her time in Iraq. I also expanded my knowledge of the intricacies of highlevel planning by reading parts of a book-length manuscript by my former boss, Under Secretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith. When published, 

his account will be a significant contribution to our understanding of the 

early war years.

Many of my National Defense University colleagues read various versions of the manuscript and contributed both general comments and observations from their particular expertise. At the National War College, Professor 
x

Cynthia Watson, Professor David Auerswald, Colonel David Head, USMC, 

and Professor John Ballard, a recent Iraq veteran, all contributed greatly. 

From the Institute for National Strategic Studies, Dr. Christopher J. Lamb, Dr. 

James A. Schear, and Colonel Michael S. Bell, USA, lent both their editorial 

wisdom as well as their crisis planning experience to the effort. Colonel Ike 

Wilson, USA, of the United States Military Academy’s Department of Social 

Sciences, and Colonel Tom Lynch, USA, the Army’s Brookings Fellow, both 

made important comments based on their Iraq planning and operational 

experience. Many others commented anonymously on various specific issues.

As always, none of my work could go forward without the support 

of my wife, Anita, and my ever-patient family. It is to my family and to the 

families of our Servicemembers, Foreign Service Officers, and civil servants in Iraq and Afghanistan that this modest study is dedicated.

National War College

November 2007
1

Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the 

status of a major war and a major debacle. As of fall 2007, this 

conflict has cost the United States over 3,800 dead and over 

28,000 wounded. Allied casualties accounted for another 300 dead. Iraqi 

civilian deaths—mostly at the hands of other Iraqis—may number as high 

as 82,000. Over 7,500 Iraqi soldiers and police officers have also been 

killed. Fifteen percent of the Iraqi population has become refugees or 

displaced persons. The Congressional Research Service estimates that the 

United States now spends over $10 billion per month on the war, and that 

the total, direct U.S. costs from March 2003 to July 2007 have exceeded 

$450 billion, all of which has been covered by deficit spending.1

 No one 

as yet has calculated the costs of long-term veterans’ benefits or the total 

impact on Service personnel and materiel.

The war’s political impact also has been great. Globally, U.S. standing 

among friends and allies has fallen.2

 Our status as a moral leader has been 

damaged by the war, the subsequent occupation of a Muslim nation, and 

various issues concerning the treatment of detainees. At the same time, 

operations in Iraq have had a negative impact on all other efforts in the war 

on terror, which must bow to the priority of Iraq when it comes to manpower, materiel, and the attention of decisionmakers. Our Armed Forces—

especially the Army and Marine Corps—have been severely strained by 

the war in Iraq. Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there 

were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at 

least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to 

expand its influence throughout the Middle East.

As this case study is being written, despite impressive progress in 

security during the surge, the outcome of the war is in doubt. Strong 

majorities of both Iraqis and Americans favor some sort of U.S. withdrawal. Intelligence analysts, however, remind us that the only thing 

worse than an Iraq with an American army may be an Iraq after the 

rapid withdrawal of that army. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate 

(NIE) on Iraq’s future stability said that a rapid withdrawal “almost 

certainly would lead to a significant increase in the scale and scope of 

sectarian conflict in Iraq, intensify Sunni resistance to the Iraqi government, and have adverse consequences for national reconciliation.” 

The NIE goes on to say that neighboring countries might intervene, 

resulting in massive casualties and refugee flows.3

 No one has calculated 

the psychopolitical impact of a perceived defeat on the U.S. reputation 

for power or the future of the overall war on terror. For many analysts 

(including this one), Iraq remains a “must win,” but for many others, 
2 INSS OCCASIONAL PAPER 5

despite the obvious progress under General David Petraeus and the 

surge, it now looks like a “can’t win.”

To date, the war in Iraq is a classic case of failure to adopt and adapt 

prudent courses of action that balance ends, ways, and means. After the 

major combat operation, U.S. policy has been insolvent, with inadequate 

means for pursuing ambitious ends. It is also a case where the perceived 

illegitimacy of our policy has led the United States to bear a disproportionate share of the war’s burden. U.S. efforts in Iraq stand in stark 

contrast to the war in Afghanistan, where, to the surprise of many, U.S. 

friends and allies have recently taken up a larger share of the burden of 

that conflict. Afghanistan has become the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s) war, but the war in Iraq has increasingly become only a 

U.S. and Iraqi struggle. The British drawdown in Basra in the summer of 

2007 heightened the isolation of the U.S. and Iraqi governments.

The goal of this case study is to outline how the United States chose 

to go to war in Iraq, how its decisionmaking process functioned, and what 

can be done to improve that process. The central finding of this study is 

that U.S. efforts in Iraq were hobbled by a set of faulty assumptions, a 

flawed planning effort, and a continuing inability to create security conditions in Iraq that could have fostered meaningful advances in stabilization, reconstruction, and governance. It is arguable whether the Iraqis 

will develop the wherewithal to create ethnic reconciliation and build a 

coherent national government. It is clear, however, that the United States 

and its partners have not done enough to create conditions in which such 

a development could take place. With the best of intentions, the United 

States toppled a vile, dangerous regime but has been unable to replace it 

with a stable entity. Mistakes in the Iraq operation cry out for improvements in the U.S. decisionmaking and policy execution systems. In turn, 

these improvements will require major changes in the legislative and 

executive branches, as well as in interagency processes.

A comprehensive narrative of the war is beyond the scope of this 

project.4

 Many key actors have not yet given their sides of the story. Given 

classification problems, the role played by intelligence and information 

operations can only be partially dissected. There is sufficient information, however, to make preliminary conclusions, especially since the focal 

point here is on the major decisions made at the Presidential, interagency, 

Cabinet department, and theater levels, all of which are areas of relatively 

rich documentation. The first four parts of this study will briefly analyze 

the context of the war and how the United States planned for it. The fifth 

section will analyze the decisionmaking process. The final section will 
choosing war 3

discuss potential changes to our decisionmaking, organizational, and 

operational systems.5

The Context

After favoring Saddam Hussein in his long war with Iran, the United 

States was shocked when the unpredictable dictator invaded Kuwait, a 

state to which he owed dozens of billions of dollars for its support in the 

struggle with Iran. In August 1990, the United States organized a vast 

international coalition and in the following year forced Saddam from 

Kuwait. Down but not out, Saddam managed to put down subsequent 

rebellions in the south (among the Shi’a) and the north (among the 

Kurds) of Iraq. Today, the coalition’s failure to “finish the job” in Iraq in 

1991 is often seen as a huge mistake. Critics have argued that Saddam was 

on the ropes and that he was ripe for not just a knockdown, but a knockout blow. In 1991, however, President George H.W. Bush and his National 

Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft, saw it differently. Years later, President 

Bush and Scowcroft wrote:

While we hoped that a popular revolt or coup would topple 

Saddam, neither the United States nor the countries of the 

region wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi state. We were 

concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head 

of the Gulf. Breaking up the Iraqi state would pose its own 

destabilizing problems. . . . Trying to eliminate Saddam, 

extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would 

have violated our guideline about not changing objectives 

in midstream, engaging in “mission creep,” and would have 

incurred incalculable human and political costs. . . . We would 

have been forced to occupy Baghdad, and, in effect, rule Iraq. 

The coalition would instantly have collapsed. . . . Under those 

circumstances, there was no viable “exit strategy” we could see, 

violating another of our principles. . . . Going in and occupying 

Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate, 

would have destroyed the precedent of international response to 

aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion 

route, the United States could conceivably still [in 1998] be an 

occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.6

From 1991 to 2003, Saddam continued to rule, putting down sporadic 

revolts, and turning the Iraqi state into a kleptocracy, a money-making 

enterprise for himself and his cronies. Public and private infrastructure 
4 INSS OCCASIONAL PAPER 5

decayed. The regular Iraqi army and air force declined in readiness but 

remained formidable by regional standards. Following a doctrine of dual 

containment for Iran and Iraq, the United States and coalition partners 

kept Saddam’s regime contained and constrained by using their air forces to 

enforce United Nations (UN)-supported (but not explicitly authorized) no 

fly zones in the northern and southern thirds of the country. This required 

complex and continuous air operations run out of the Gulf states—especially Saudi Arabia—and Turkey. On a daily basis, enforcing the two no fly 

zones required up to 200 aircraft and 7,500 airmen. In all, 300,000 sorties 

were flown. In 2002 alone, Iraq attacked coalition aircraft on 500 occasions, 

90 of which resulted in coalition airstrikes, some of which were calculated 

to be helpful in a potential future conflict.7

Saddam’s regime was also subject to strict sanctions, and the UN 

later came to provide food and medicine for the Iraqi people in return for 

regulated oil exports in the oil-for-food program. Over the years, Saddam 

found a way to profit from the sanctions, stockpiling cash and building 

palaces as his people withered. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, UN investigators exposed many people (including some foreign government and 

UN officials) who had taken bribes of one sort or another for cooperating with Saddam. As the 20th century came to an end, however, Saddam’s 

propagandists had convinced many in the West that the UN-approved 

sanctions were hurting the people and especially the children of Iraq. 

The sanctions regime was on thin ice. Indeed, the steady unraveling (and 

outflanking) of international sanctions became a subsidiary factor in the 

litany of reasons to go to war with Saddam.

After Operation Desert Storm in 1991, UN inspectors hunting 

weapons of mass destruction (WMD) played a long cat-and-mouse game 

with Saddam’s military and intelligence bureaucracies. In 1998, Saddam 

unilaterally ended the inspections, raising suspicion in the West and at 

the United Nations that he was accelerating his programs. President Bill 

Clinton later conducted punitive strikes on Iraq with the tacit support of 

many nations in the Security Council. 

To the incoming Bush administration in 2001, Saddam was a tyrant, 

a regional bully, and a supporter of terrorism. The new administration 

was also composed of many veterans of the first Gulf War—including 

Vice President Richard Cheney and his chief of staff Lewis Libby, National 

Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and her deputy Stephen Hadley, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and National Security Council 

(NSC) staff member Zalmay Khalilzad8

—who also saw Saddam Hussein 

as an ugly piece of unfinished business from their collective past.
choosing war 5

Saddam’s relationship with terrorists was always a concern. Years 

later, analysts would argue about whether Saddam had an operational 

relationship with al Qaeda, but in truth, his relationships with many terrorist groups were active and never in doubt.9

 He was among the most 

active supporters of Palestinian terrorism. The Mujahideen-e-Khalq, 

a leftist, anti-Iranian terrorist/military force, was resident in Iraq, conducted operations against Iran, and cooperated with Saddam’s paramilitary and armed forces. Also, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who became al 

Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, was resident for a time in a remote, Kurdish-controlled 

section of northern Iraq with his group, Ansar al-Islam, before the U.S. invasion. He had visited Baghdad and received medical treatment there.10

Zarqawi did not have an operational relationship with Saddam’s 

intelligence force, but they clearly had communications and a symbiotic 

coexistence. Initially, Zarqawi was independent and not a subordinate 

of Osama bin Laden. However, the similarities between Zarqawi’s and 

bin Laden’s organizations attracted the attention of U.S. friends in Kurdistan who brought Zarqawi’s group to the attention of U.S. planners. In 

the runup to the war, the radical Zarqawi was cooperating with both the 

Ba’athist regime and al Qaeda. After establishing his reputation as the 

most energetic Salafist terrorist leader in Iraq, he merged his group with 

al Qaeda and became its post-Saddam emir.11

Since the Republicans had last been in power, Saddam had tried to 

assassinate the elder President Bush. The sanctions against him were weakening. He had ignored many UN Security Council resolutions. His possession of chemical weapons and illegal missiles and his active WMD research 

and development (R&D) programs were widely held articles of faith among 

security experts. His relationship with terrorist groups was beyond question. Even the Clinton administration—after congressional pressure—had 

declared that regime change in Iraq was U.S. policy. Despite the now-wellknown decay in his regime, “what to do about Saddam” was an important 

issue for the new Bush administration.

After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the 

Pentagon in September 2001, Saddam’s regime took on a more ominous 

appearance. The vast majority of Bush administration officials did not 

believe that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11, but they saw new 

reason to be concerned about Saddam and his WMD programs. While 

an immediate attack against al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan was critical, so was the prevention of new attacks on the U.S. homeland, which many feared could include al Qaeda borrowing or stealing a 

nuclear device from a rogue state or former nuclear power.
6 INSS OCCASIONAL PAPER 5

When terrorists can strike the U.S. homeland and cause mass casualties, terrorism ceases to be only a law enforcement issue. In the eyes of 

the administration and most of the American people, the struggle with 

terrorism had become a war, and the use of military force was one of its 

available instruments. The President said in his introduction to the 2002 

National Security Strategy that:

The gravest danger our Nation faces lies at the crossroads of 

radicalism and technology. Our enemies have openly declared 

that they are seeking weapons of mass destruction, and evidence 

indicates that they are doing so with determination. The United 

States will not allow these efforts to succeed.12

Because of the new threat from al Qaeda and the dangers of proliferation, the President embraced the doctrine of preemption—which some 

saw as a doctrine of preventive war—and declared Iraq (along with North 

Korea and Iran) a member of the “axis of evil.” The doorway to war was 

wide open.

The War Plan

Suggestions about military operations against Iraq came from the 

Pentagon as early as September 12, 2001, but President Bush sidelined 

them during the fighting in Afghanistan. In November 2001, however, on the edge of achieving initial military success in Afghanistan, 

he asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to begin planning 

in secret for potential military operations against Iraq. That mission 

passed quickly to the U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM), headed 

by General Tommy Franks, USA.13 Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff General Richard B. Myers, USAF, and Vice Chairman General 

Peter Pace, USMC, played a supporting role with the activist Secretary 

exercising his legal authority to be the direct supervisor of the combatant commanders. Most Defense secretaries before this administration chose to work with the combatant commanders mainly through 

the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The role Secretary Rumsfeld played 

in the development of the details of the battle plan and the flow of the 

invasion force was unique in recent memory.

Over the next 15 months, Franks and Rumsfeld remained in close 

and near continuous contact. Not only were there dozens of briefings and 

face-to-face conversations, usually with the Chairman or Vice Chairman of 
choosing war 7

the Joint Chiefs of Staff in attendance, there was a steady stream of memos 

(known by his staff as “snowflakes”) from the energetic Secretary that 

posed issues for the Pentagon and Central Command staffs. In retrospect, 

Rumsfeld wanted to conduct a quick, lightning-like operation in Iraq, followed by a swift handover of power to the Iraqis. He did not want a largescale, ponderous operation like Desert Storm, which he saw as wasteful and 

outmoded. He also did not want U.S. troops unnecessarily bogged down 

in an endless postwar peace operation.14 Long, costly, manpower-intensive 

postcombat operations were anathema to Rumsfeld, who was as interested 

in force transformation as he was a potential war in Iraq. In some ways, the 

war in Afghanistan—with a small ground force (ably assisted by Central 

Intelligence Agency [CIA] paramilitary forces), mated to superb communications, high-tech air assets, precision guided munitions, and timely intelligence—was a conceptual model (but not a cookie cutter) for what Rumsfeld 

wanted to see in the new Iraq war plan.

Throughout their dialogue, and into the deployment of the force, 

the aggressive, hands-on Rumsfeld cajoled and pushed his way toward a 

small force and a lightning-fast operation. Later, he shut down the military’s automated deployment system, questioning, delaying, or deleting 

units on the numerous deployment orders that came across his desk.15

For his part, Franks—who shared Rumsfeld’s belief in the importance of 

speed—was caught between trying to placate his boss and to satisfy the 

physical needs of his forces. On the allied front, the United States made 

a concerted attempt to garner support within the UN and among allies, 

but unlike Operation Desert Storm or Operation Enduring Freedom, the 

permanent members of the Security Council decided that they wanted 

no part in either authorizing or participating in the operation. Rubbing 

salt in the wound, Germany and France led the battle against the United 

States on this issue.

According to secondary sources, Franks may have briefed the President on his war plan as many as 10 times. He started using a modified version of the old 1003V war plan but then developed three new varieties: a 

generated start plan, a running start plan, and a hybrid plan. In the end, the 

last version, Cobra II, was strongly influenced by “edits” from the field.16 It 

called for a force of about 140,000 troops—one-third the size of the force in 

the plan that was on the shelf when the administration came to power.

The main strike elements of the plan were a few thousand special 

operators and two ground divisions (one Army and one Marine), with 

elements of three other Army divisions and an Army parachute infantry brigade later inserted into the fray. Given the effects of previous air 
8 INSS OCCASIONAL PAPER 5

operations and the need to be unpredictable, the notion of a long, pre–

ground-attack air operation was discarded, which aided the element of 

surprise. Few U.S. allies would sign up for the initial assault. A low level 

of allied commitment no doubt encouraged an already reluctant Turkish government—faced with strong public opinion against the war—to 

disallow the use of its territory to launch a northern front in Iraq with 

the powerful U.S. 4th Infantry Division. 

Franks never briefed either Rumsfeld or Bush on options short of 

war. A simple soldier, Franks took his charge to prepare a war plan as 

a mission to develop a full-scale, direct military approach to the overthrow of Saddam’s regime. There were never plans for creating enclaves, 

supporting a guerrilla war, or using only special operations forces and 

airpower in a coercive manner. The CIA and the Office of the Secretary 

of Defense (OSD) Policy did look at the possibility of covert action or 

actions short of war, but no agency believed that such actions could take 

out this entrenched regime and replace it with a better one. The CIA also 

did not have an active set of relationships with resistance movements 

in Iraq as it did in Afghanistan.17 In addition, much critical intelligence 

about Iraq was not verifiable against sources on the ground. There were 

grave limits on the U.S. ability to confirm judgments that we believed 

were true.

For their part, the Joint Chiefs of Staff—statutory military advisors to the Secretary of Defense, the President, and the National Security 

Council—also met with the President twice on the war plan, the last time in 

January 2003—in this author’s assessment, around the time that the President finally decided in his own mind to go to war. Aside from Army General Eric Shinseki’s comments that the on-scene force was small and that 

“it would be important to keep reinforcements flowing,” all of the chiefs 

supported the plan.18 None of them brought up any misgivings about Phase 

IV, postcombat stability operations, but that issue would be raised a month 

later in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, discussed below.

The administration’s key congressional effort, however, had already 

taken place. In October 2002, President Bush sought congressional approval 

for a prospective military operation against Iraq. Propelled by a high threat 

perception, the resolution passed both houses handily. The Congressmen 

and Senators no doubt remembered the political penalty applied to those 

legislators, mostly Democrats, who had voted against Operation Desert 

Storm, which passed the Senate by only 5 votes. (In a case of historical 

irony, many mainstream Democrats in 2007 are finding that their vote to 

authorize and support the war in Iraq is now very heavy political baggage.)
choosing war 9

International Support and Weapons of Mass 

Destruction

On the international front, Secretary of State Colin Powell, with the 

strong backing of the United Kingdom and other U.S. allies, convinced 

the President in August 2002 to exhaust the diplomatic effort before going 

to war. Late in 2002, with strong U.S. support, weapons inspections began 

again, and, as always, Saddam’s regime continued to interfere with them. 

After 400 inspections, however, the UN inspectors came to no firm conclusions. Their cautious on-scene report was drowned out by many other 

briefings about Iraqi WMD, including one by Secretary of State Powell. 

In all, the existence of a large stockpile of chemical weapons and missiles 

and, perhaps more importantly, active missile, biological, and nuclear 

research programs became the top reason for invading Iraq and the reason that brought together many different factions in their desire to forcibly oust Saddam Hussein and his murderous regime.

On the eve of the 2003 war, all disputes on such details as aluminum 

tubes and uranium oxide from Niger aside, most international intelligence 

agencies believed, as did former President Clinton, that Saddam still possessed a major chemical weapons stockpile, a significant missile force, and 

active R&D programs for biological and nuclear weapons. I find nothing 

in credible sources to support the notion that the WMD threat was concocted by U.S. Government officials and then sold to a gullible public, nor 

do I believe that any one Iraqi source tricked us into our beliefs. No special 

offices within OSD or cabals of neoconservatives created the dominant perception of the danger of Iraqi WMD. We now know that there were many 

holes in our knowledge base, but senior officials and analysts were almost 

universally united in their core beliefs. As the lead key judgment in the 

Intelligence Community’s October 2002 NIE on WMD in Iraq stated:

We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass 

destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions 

and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons 

as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if 

left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during 

this decade.19

This perception was aided and abetted by Saddam himself, who 

wanted the great powers and his hostile neighbors to believe that he had 

WMD programs and stockpiles. His use of chemical weapons against Iran 
10 INSS OCCASIONAL PAPER 5

and the Kurds—Iraqi citizens—also gave weight to the belief in the danger 

of Iraqi WMD programs. Saddam’s complete destruction of his stockpiles 

and the suspension of much of his R&D work fooled the West, as well as 

it did his own generals.20 In Saddam’s eyes, this deception was critical to 

Iraqi security. According to the U.S. Joint Forces Command–Institute for 

Defense Analyses (USJFCOM–IDA) project on Iraqi perspectives:

Saddam walked a tightrope with WMD because, as he often 

reminded his close advisors, they lived in a very dangerous 

global neighborhood where even the perception of weakness 

drew wolves. For him, there were real dividends to be gained 

by letting his enemies believe he possessed WMD, whether it 

was true or not.21

The Catch-22 was that he also had many reasons to convince the 

great powers that he had destroyed these weapons and that the UN should 

end the sanctions. Inside his regime, a tangled web of lies and secrecy confused even his own generals during and after the war. According to the 

USJFCOM–IDA study, “the idea that in a compartmentalized and secretive 

regime other military units or organizations might have WMD was plausible to them.”22 Saddam’s record of deception was a key factor in why intelligence analysts could not bring themselves to believe that Iraqi WMD was 

a dead issue. His own duplicity became a factor in his undoing.

While Secretary Powell was successful in restarting weapons 

inspections in Iraq despite Iraqi trickery and foot dragging, he was 

never able to build a consensus for decisive action in the Security Council. Furthermore, Powell agreed to support the President’s decision to 

go to war. In mid-January 2003, with CIA Director George Tenet at his 

side representing the power of the U.S. Intelligence Community, Powell gave a highly publicized briefing on Iraqi WMD programs to the 

UN Security Council. He was later embarrassed to discover that some 

details that he highlighted were incorrect. When in the following month 

UN inspections came to naught, the die was cast for war without the 

public blessing of most key U.S. allies or the UN Security Council. Having found Iraq in material breach of UN Security Council Resolution 

(UNSCR) 1441 to come clean on its WMD programs, the United States 

decided to try for another resolution, one that might explicitly authorize 

the use of force. The attempt to get yet another resolution failed due to 

lack of support and ended up casting doubt on the legitimacy of U.S. 

efforts. Later, our failure to find either WMD stockpiles or active R&D 
choosing war 11

programs did still more damage to our credibility, further retarding our 

efforts to gain international support.

In the end, of the nations in the region, only Israel, Kuwait, and 

Qatar were obviously behind the coalition effort, although many other 

regional states privately supported the effort. Of major U.S. allies, only the 

United Kingdom and Australia were ready to ante up significant military 

formations for the fight.23

Military and Interagency Postwar Plans 

In many of his war plan briefings to the President, Franks mentioned Phase IV stability operations, the period after the end of major 

combat operations. Indeed, Franks did not underestimate the work 

that might have to be done. On two occasions, Franks’ memoirs indicate that he told first the Secretary of Defense and then the President 

and the entire National Security Council that Phase IV might require 

up to 250,000 troops, over 100,000 more combatants than were in the 

initial invasion force. He also noted that this phase might last for years, 

although he did believe that it might be done quicker with a smaller 

force under the right circumstances.24

It was ironic that the civilian Department of Defense (DOD) leadership severely criticized Army Chief of Staff General Shinseki when he mentioned a similar level of effort (“several hundred thousand”) in response to 

questions about postcombat troop requirements in a February 2003 Senate 

hearing. DOD leaders should have already been aware of Franks’ estimates, 

which were also consistent with those of USCENTCOM’s land component 

headquarters and its Phase IV planners. While it has never been confirmed, 

one may suspect that the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary were worried 

about not spooking the Congress on the eve of the war. It is also clear that 

they honestly expected a relatively easy and inexpensive occupation and 

that they were conscious of inflated cost and casualty estimates in previous 

conflicts, such as Operation Desert Storm.

Franks’ many briefings to the President did not cover critical postwar issues that were not ordinarily in the military’s sphere of competence: 

governance, constitutions, sectarian relations, and so forth. He emphasized 

tasks that the military had to do in the short run: security and humanitarian 

assistance. Some analysts have criticized Franks—a muddy-boots general 

who delayed his planned retirement to plan and run the war in Iraq—for 

not being interested in postwar Iraq, an area where many in uniform felt 

that civilians should dominate decisionmaking. Critics would point out that 
12 INSS OCCASIONAL PAPER 5

most war planning was handled by Franks and his staff, but most military 

postwar planning efforts were left to USCENTCOM’s land component.

While USCENTCOM and its land components had Phase IV plans, 

some of the divisions making up the force—including the 3d

 Infantry 

Division, the main attack division—did not have them. Division planners 

wrote in their after action review that the division had not been fully and 

completely briefed on the highly detailed postwar plan of its higher headquarters, the land component command. All of the invading divisions and 

separate brigades believed that they would be sent home as soon as practicable after the fighting stopped, no doubt a legacy of predictions that 

Operation Iraqi Freedom would take much longer than it actually did (a 

month).25 The Marine headquarters I Marine Expeditionary Force and its 

divisional element under Major General Jim Mattis did formulate plans 

and standard operating procedures (SOPs), but they were deployed in the 

south, a safer, less contested area in the immediate postcombat phase.26 In 

all, the Coalition Forces Land Component Command (CFLCC) plan did 

not generate supporting division and brigade plans, and this represents 

a shortcoming on the part of USCENTCOM and its land component 

headquarters. In all, while the military did begin to plan for this issue 

before civilians did, the USCENTCOM and CFLCC Phase IV planning 

efforts were not an effective guide for immediate post–conventional combat military policy, were not shared fully with implementing units, and 

did not make adequate allowances for supporting civilian entities in the 

reconstruction and stabilization business.

Adding to the confusion, after the conventional fighting, the original 

headquarters for Phase IV, the large and powerful land component command headquarters, was told to return home, and the Phase IV mission 

was given to the newly promoted Lieutenant General Rick Sanchez, USA, 

and his much smaller, tactically oriented V Corps staff. Sadly, this switch 

in headquarters in late spring 2003 (which has never been fully explained) 

came at the same time that the national plan for postwar Iraq was scrapped 

and replaced by more than a year of formal occupation under Ambassador 

L. Paul (Jerry) Bremer. In one turn of the screw, plans and management 

schemes were disrupted on both civil and military levels.

While formal war planning was in high gear from November 2001 

up to March 2003, civilian planners in the interagency world were not 

included in these close-hold briefings and did not begin to make meaningful independent contributions until the summer of 2002. By then, 

Franks had briefed the President six times on the battle plan. Thus, 

instead of a military plan being built to line up with a national plan, the 
choosing war 13

interagency work on Iraq generally followed in the wake of the war plan. 

Moreover, postwar issues were broken up and handled by different groups 

that sometimes worked in isolation from one another for security reasons 

or for bureaucratic advantage. Complicating matters, very few humanitarian planners had access to the war plan, and very few war planners cared 

about anything other than major combat operations.

It was also difficult for the kind of comprehensive interagency planning necessary for success to be performed while diplomatic efforts were 

still in train. The NSC-led Executive Steering Group did yeoman’s work 

to break down agency barriers and pull together the strands of a postwar 

plan. They began their work in the summer of 2002, taking over from a 

Pentagon-run interagency effort. The planning efforts of the Pentagon were 

so powerful and the nature of war so uncertain that the President—with the 

concurrence of Secretary Powell, first in October and then in December 

2002—put the Pentagon in charge of initial postwar operations.

Although the outline of the postwar plan was approved in October 

2002, the President did not formally approve the organization that would 

carry out initial stabilization and reconstruction activities, the Office of 

Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), until December, 

and it was not brought into existence until January 2003. This office was 

subordinated to the Secretary of Defense, who put it under U.S. Central 

Command. This action appeared to streamline the chain of command, 

but it also dampened interagency cooperation. The disruptive tension 

between clear lines of command and interagency cooperation continued 

when ORHA was replaced by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) 

led by Ambassador Bremer, who emphasized his status as the Presidential 

envoy and did not report consistently to or through either the Secretary 

of Defense or the National Security Advisor.27

In the end, available secondary sources indicate that the President 

received several major briefings that were relevant to postwar issues, all of 

which were arranged by the NSC-driven Executive Steering Group.

In January, based on interagency deliberations, Elliot Abrams of the 

NSC and Robin Cleveland of the Office of Management and Budget briefed 

the President on humanitarian issues during and right after the war. The 

work of this interagency group (of which I was a member) focused mainly on 

humanitarian assistance and the handling of refugees and internally displaced 

persons (IDPs). The group’s initial estimate of reconstruction costs was only 

a few billion dollars.28 In early February, the NSC staff briefed the President 

on postwar relationships in Iraq, and on February 24, 2003, the President was 

briefed on the status of the Iraqi oil industry and the oil-for-food program.29
14 INSS OCCASIONAL PAPER 5

On February 28, 2003, Lieutenant General Jay Garner, USA (Ret.), 

briefed the President and his advisors on the initial estimates of his 

interagency ORHA team, which reported to Franks and the Secretary of 

Defense and was to be the lead office in postwar operations.30 Because 

Garner had only been hired in January, his briefing was not very detailed. 

Indeed, Garner’s team was only partially formed when it deployed. Ever 

the loyal soldier, Garner also did not see it as his mission to seek interagency advice or to keep the other agencies informed. Although nominally a subordinate of General Franks, Garner tended to work directly 

with the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary of Defense. In all, his staff 

officers did not reach out well or consistently to the OSD or Joint Staff.

Right before the war began, the NSC staff briefed the President in 

two sittings on the postwar reconstruction, governance, and security plans 

that had been cleared by the deputies and the principals. The essence of the 

plan briefed to President Bush was essentially to turn over power quickly 

to an Iraqi entity, administer the country through the Iraqi ministries, 

use the existing police and military to help run the country, and pay for 

most reconstruction by using Iraqi funds.31 This briefing was entirely in 

keeping with Garner’s plans, as well as the State and Defense Department 

approaches. In a few weeks, however, it would be completely overcome by 

events and scrapped without further interagency discussions.

One final briefing deserves to be highlighted. On March 4, 2003, the 

President and the NSC reviewed for a final time the U.S. and coalition objectives in Iraq. Among the objectives noted were maintaining the territorial 

integrity of Iraq, having Iraq be seen as a democratic model for the region, 

maintaining the coalition’s freedom of action in counterterrorism, capturing 

and destroying WMD, and putting Iraqis in charge as fast as possible. This 

was one of the last major briefs before the war began, and in retrospect, was 

an important symbol of how high our hopes were for postwar Iraq.32

Starting on March 19, 2003, the major combat operations went 

well. The Iraqis never significantly challenged our weak supply lines. The 

overwhelming power of U.S. and British forces quickly accomplished tactical objectives, and the major conventional fight was over by mid-April, 

months ahead of schedule. The only real surprise during the fighting—

and a bad omen for the future—was the sporadic but vigorous resistance 

put up by paramilitary irregulars, such as the Fedayeen Saddam. The 

much-anticipated bloody battle for Baghdad and the use of WMD did not 

happen, nor was there a flood of refugees.

On May 1, after landing on a U.S. aircraft carrier, President Bush 

proclaimed “Mission Accomplished” and called for an end to major 
choosing war 15

combat operations, which was not only a public relations bonanza 

for the White House, but also a call (a premature one, as it turns out) 

to allies and the United Nations that their help was now needed and 

could be provided in safety. Although Franks had talked of the possible need for a long occupation, and many others warned of the complexity of postcombat events, some officials in OSD at the urging of 

the Secretary of Defense were soon speaking of a rapid turnover and 

withdrawal, with the invasion force possibly being reduced to 25,000 

to 30,000 by August 2003.33

In May 2003, war A was ending, but war B was about to begin. We 

had a complex, flexible plan for war A but no such plan for war B. War A

was a rapid, high-tech, conventional battle, war American style, but war 

B was a protracted conflict, an insurgency with high levels of criminality 

and sustained sectarian violence, just the sort of ambiguous, asymmetric conflict that the American public finds hard to understand and even 

harder to endure. The military had not prepared for insurgency and took 

more than a year to adjust well in the field. From 2005 on, although short 

of troops, our Soldiers and Marines did a much better job in dealing with 

the insurgency and laid the security groundwork for successful nationwide elections and the further development of Iraqi security forces. The 

flare in sectarian violence in 2006 cast a pall over military efforts until the 

start of the surge in spring 2007. Political development and progress continue to lag behind military efforts.

From 2003 to 2007, reconstruction and stabilization activities made 

even slower progress than military operations. Coalition efforts did not 

drastically improve under the CPA or the new Iraqi government in either 

of its forms. Indeed, many billions have been wasted, and electricity and oil 

production still only match prewar levels.34 There remains to this day a very 

limited capacity to execute meaningful reconstruction. Many projects never 

left the drawing board because of lack of security or capacity. Corruption and 

inefficiency also complicate everything. Billions have been spent with little 

return. Iraqi capacity to even accept and operate and maintain completed 

projects has been pathetic. According to a 2007 U.S. Government report, 

after the United States spent nearly $6 billion and completed nearly 3,000 

reconstruction projects, the new government of Iraq has agreed to take possession of just 435 of them, worth only half a billion dollars. The rest remain 

idle or have been turned over to weak local governments.35 The next section 

will attempt to distill what went wrong in the decisionmaking and execution 

before and during the early months of the war and subsequent occupation.
16 INSS OCCASIONAL PAPER 5

Errors in Decisionmaking and Execution 

Problems in planning on the ground and in Washington contributed 

to serious shortcomings in U.S. performance in Operation Iraqi Freedom. 

With 41⁄2 years of hindsight, it is clear that these shortcomings included:

•	underestimation of the problems of occupying a fractious Muslim

country the size of California

•	ineffective civil and military plans for stability operations and

reconstruction

•	inadequate on-scene manpower and poor military reaction to

rioting and looting in the immediate postconflict environment, 

which further encouraged lawlessness and insurgency

•	provision of inadequate forces to occupy and secure Iraq, which

encouraged the initiation and continuation of an insurgency

•	slow civil and military reaction to the growing insurgency

•	problematic funding and contracting mechanisms that slowed

services and basic reconstruction, both of which were a partial 

antidote to insurgency

•	failure to make effective use of former Iraqi military forces, which,

when coupled with de-Ba’athification, alienated the Sunni minority

•	slow and often ineffective development of new Iraqi security forces

•	continuing inability to provide enough trained civilian officials,

diplomats, and aid workers to conduct effective stabilization and 

reconstruction activities

•	slow creation of an interim Iraqi authority that could have minimized the perception of occupation and enhanced the perception 

of liberation.

Of all of these mistakes, a series of faulty assumptions was one of the 

most significant factors in our postwar policy. These initial assumptions 

were a thread that ran through many missteps, and thus it is important 

to ask where assumptions come from. In every case, assumptions are 

affected by wishful thinking, stress, predispositions of the key actors, 

uncertainty, and the process used to arrive at decisions. For example, the 

policy preference of key players for no or very short postwar occupations 

or peace operations is just the sort of predisposition that can affect planning priorities. In complex national security operations, intelligence estimates also play a vital role. In the case of Iraq, intelligence was faulty on 

WMD, the state of Iraqi infrastructure, and the usefulness of Iraqi police 
choosing war 17

and military. This incorrect or dated intelligence contributed in large 

measure to the “rosy scenario” assumptions that infected Iraq planning.

Policy queuing was also a problem. Not all policies can be seamlessly started or terminated with optimal timing. One reason for problems 

in postwar planning had to do with diplomacy. The tentative scheme 

to manage postwar Iraq was approved in October 2002, but little could 

be done as diplomats attempted in vain to solve the problem without 

recourse to arms. One can plan war in secret, but to do postwar planning 

and programming, diplomacy must be winding down and war must be 

nearly inevitable. The salience of prewar diplomacy retarded postwar 

planning and activities.

The core assumption held by many leaders in the national security 

establishment was that the war would be difficult, the peace relatively 

easy, and the occupation short and inexpensive.36 This assumption—as 

implicit as it was powerful—was reflected in many leadership statements, 

actions, and planning priorities. Right up until the start of operations, the 

amount of time and effort spent on the major combat operation war plan 

was impressive; the amount of time and effort placed on postwar planning was relatively slight in comparison. Battle plans had branches and 

sequels, and combat troops were prepared for eventualities. The postwar 

plans had little such flexibility built into them.

The supporting assumptions were five in number. First, the war was 

expected to include tough fighting and end in a climactic battle. Most 

senior national security officials expected (and realistically so) that Iraqi 

Freedom would be a bloody fight that could include the use of chemical 

or biological weapons. The battle for Baghdad in particular was seen as 

the logically bloody end to a multi-month war of maneuver. Every DOD, 

State Department, and CIA expert expected battle-related refugees and 

IDPs to be a major complicating factor in the war and its aftermath. These 

judgments were prudent, plausible, and consistent with previous conflicts, 

but none of them came to pass.

Second, our leaders were repeatedly told by exiles that the United 

States would be seen as liberators, welcomed with “sweets and flowers,” as 

renowned scholar Kanan Makiya told President Bush.37 Our most senior 

leaders apparently believed this and frequently said so, and many of our 

troops experienced heartfelt welcomes. No one estimated the time that 

it would take for humiliation and impatience to turn respected liberators 

into hated occupiers. It proved to be a painfully short interval.

While wiser heads had predicted a short honeymoon,38 and many 

officials like General John Abizaid, USA, Under Secretary of Defense 
18 INSS OCCASIONAL PAPER 5

Douglas Feith, the NSC staff ’s Zalmay Khalilzad, and ORHA’s Jay Garner wanted a quick turnover of authority to Iraqis, that policy was not 

executed. There were situational difficulties in Iraq. There was no Iraqi 

equivalent of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan. An international conference 

to legitimize an appointed government, as the UN-sponsored Bonn Conference did with Afghanistan, would have been very difficult to organize 

in the prevailing international climate. Many Iraqis were wary of a rapid 

turnover becoming Ba’athism without Saddam. Others worried about 

Shi’ite domination. The Kurds worried about both of these scenarios and 

also kept one eye on Turkey.39 In a similar vein, the few hundred Iraqi 

National Congress exiles, led by Ahmed Chalabi, were not well or widely 

employed and accomplished little when they were brought into theater 

to help put an Iraqi face on coalition efforts. By mid-May, any sense that 

Western-based Iraqi exiles—strongly distrusted in any event by the CIA 

and the Department of State—might come to lead that country had evaporated in the pre-summer heat.

Still, psychologically, a rapid, even if partial, turnover of power to 

an Iraqi entity would have helped to preserve the coalition’s image as a 

liberator and made it harder for insurgents and al Qaeda terrorists to 

win over adherents. In Afghanistan, the presence of an interim government from the start and the absence of a foreign occupation have made 

a huge difference on the ground in that nation’s foreign affairs and in the 

perceived international legitimacy of the enterprise. The cases of Iraq and 

Afghanistan were different, but judging from Afghanistan, some sort of 

Iraqi authority could have been useful and would probably have greatly 

helped our policy.

For many in OSD and on the Joint Staff, getting Iraqis in charge as 

soon as possible was an article of faith, one that had been briefed to and 

approved by the President. The rapid turnover of power to Iraqis was 

key to the U.S. postwar plan, but it could not be arranged in advance or 

imposed by fiat. Khalilzad and Garner wanted to start it off by holding 

a nationwide meeting of notables on May 15, 2003, a followup to three 

previous regional conferences in February and April 2003. Bremer, who 

had supplanted both of these officials, thought that such a meeting would 

be risky and cancelled it, as well as the move to turn over elements of 

governmental authority rapidly to some sort of interim Iraqi body. He 

also asked the President to end Zalmay Khalilzad’s status as a Presidential 

envoy, thus removing the administration’s de facto representative to all 

elements of Iraqi society. Khalilzad’s popularity in Iraq and his status as 

an empathetic Muslim-American were impossible to duplicate. Rumsfeld, 
choosing war 19

Powell, Rice, and Khalilzad were all surprised by this personnel shift, 

which was engineered by Bremer and approved by the President without 

benefit of interagency deliberation. The fact that Bremer did not favor 

a rapid turnover of power to an interim authority was not entirely clear, 

even in the Pentagon, until the end of the summer of 2003.40

Pursuant to UNSCR 1483, from May 2003 to June 2004, the United 

States and its coalition partners became the legal occupiers of Iraq, a fact 

that became more intolerable to the Iraqis as the days wore on and the 

dreams of reconstruction failed to come true. As Bremer settled into the 

headquarters—quickly canceling the nationwide meeting to prepare for 

an interim government, instituting de-Ba’athification, and disbanding 

the old Iraqi army—every major element of the plan briefed to President 

Bush had been abandoned because of changes on the ground, apparently 

without comprehensive reconsideration by the interagency or comprehensive rebriefing to the President.

In his back-brief to Rumsfeld, Jay Garner—who had complained 

to Bremer in Baghdad about these three policy initiatives—referred to 

them as the “three tragic decisions.”41 In place of a quick turnover to 

Iraqis, we now had a full-scale occupation of Iraq without the requisite 

increase in resources to carry it off. The imbalance between our aspirations and on-hand assets would continue through 2007. The President 

approved these changes to postwar policy, and he bears direct responsibility for not calling in all hands to create a new, well-balanced policy 

toward Iraq.

A third supporting assumption was that the Iraqi people hungered 

for democracy and human rights and that this hunger would suppress the 

urge to settle scores or to think in narrow tribal or sectarian terms. This 

presupposition undoubtedly was enhanced by Iraqi exiles, many of whom 

had not been home in decades. This assumption had some validity, but it 

came to live side-by-side with a sense that the United States and its partners were foreign occupiers and that democratic forms of government 

were another crusader imposition on Islamic Iraq.

As no interim Iraqi authority materialized under the CPA, the presence of a Christian-dominated coalition occupying a Muslim country 

became humiliating to the people of the region. Instead of being an example for the region, Iraq became an icon of perceived imperialism, a warning 

for all concerned not to get too close to a clumsy American leviathan that 

had lost much of its will and finesse. In the end, few Iraqis understood that 

democracy, in addition to majority rule, meant tolerance of and respect 

for minority rights. Ba’athists and al Qaeda–affiliated terrorists were able 
20 INSS OCCASIONAL PAPER 5

to create, magnify, and exploit sectarian tensions faster than we were able 

to imbue Iraqis with the true spirit of democracy. This was doubly tragic 

because after the failure to find WMD, the White House—against Pentagon advice—pounded the democracy drum so loudly that in the minds 

of many, creating a democracy in Iraq rather than bolstering U.S. national 

security became the centerpiece of our policy.42

A fourth assumption was that Iraq without Saddam could manage 

and fund its own reconstruction. Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq had not been 

devastated by over 20 years of war, and its middle-class, educated population was mostly intact, unlike that of Afghanistan. Oil could pay for its 

modest reconstruction, a process that would be made easier by a small 

invading force and a highly successful effort to avoid collateral damage.

In truth, unknown to policy planners and our intelligence agencies, 

the country’s prewar infrastructure was in disastrous shape. It was further 

devastated by the conventional battle, the looting, and the insurgency that 

followed the conventional combat operations. Disorder and instability later 

caused a brain drain, with millions of middle-class Iraqis fleeing into exile. 

Billions for reconstruction were required and were later provided, but any 

progress made has been degraded by a lack of security, inadequate capacity, and the ill effects of the insurgency. Compounding all of this, neither 

ORHA nor CPA had the right people or the assets to make their presence 

felt throughout the country. Despite great personal sacrifices on the parts of 

hundreds of Americans and their allies, both organizations were ineffective, 

and left the vast new U.S. Embassy with “mission impossible.”43

Finally, based on the best available U.S. intelligence, as Defense 

and NSC officials had briefed the President, U.S. officials assumed that 

they would receive great help from the Iraqi police, the army, and the 

ministries, all of which were seen by many experts as salvageable, malleable, and professional. None of those things turned out to be true. 

The police were corrupt, ill trained, and not at all concerned with the 

rule of law. The virtual evaporation of the army during the war and 

its formal disbanding by Bremer (which surprised many outside the 

Pentagon), and even the modest de-Ba’athification that was ordered 

(and then expanded by Iraqis on the ground), did nothing to replace a 

system where all national leadership had flowed from the Ba’ath party.44

The Sunni minority—dominant in the army and the party—was alienated and became fodder for the insurgency. The ministries, deserted by 

cadres and looted repeatedly, did not continue to function effectively 

as had been hoped, especially since for a year, the coalition asked those 

ministries to report not to Iraqi authorities but to the CPA. On top of 
choosing war 21

all this, the urge for sectarian score-settling that was encouraged by al 

Qaeda in Iraq was strong. Elected Iraqi officials are now in charge but 

have proven to be generally slow to act and less than effective in most 

cases. The coalition rests on this two-legged stool, 5 years after the first 

shots were fired.

Sadly, much of the postinvasion state of affairs had been predicted. 

Many government and civilian experts had spoken well and loudly about 

the dangers of postwar Iraq, but their warnings were not heeded. Many 

analysts believed that the war and the subsequent peace would both be 

difficult. Planners and senior decisionmakers could have made better use 

of the report of the Department of State Future of Iraq Project, the 2002 

National Defense University workshop “Iraq: Looking Beyond Saddam’s 

Rule,”45 or the Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute report, 

Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces 

in a Post-Conflict Scenario, all of which were U.S. Government–sponsored 

efforts. This Army study, previewed at a conference in December 2002, 

concluded that:

Iraq presents far from ideal conditions for achieving strategic 

goals. Saddam Hussein is the culmination of a violent political 

culture that is rooted in a tortured history. Ethnic, tribal, and 

religious schisms could produce civil war or fracture the state 

after Saddam is deposed. The Iraqi Army may be useful as a 

symbol of national unity, but it will take extensive reeducation 

and reorganization to operate in a more democratic state. Years 

of sanctions have debilitated the economy and created a society 

dependent on the UN Oil for Food Program. Rebuilding Iraq 

will require a considerable commitment of American resources, 

but the longer U.S. presence is maintained, the more likely 

violent resistance will develop.46

The study went on to recommend that the U.S. military prepare in 

detail for 135 postwar tasks. Senior NSC staff officials tried to get this 

study briefed in the interagency to no avail.47 A recently discovered study 

by planners in OSD Policy, completed right before the war, further highlighted the potential for widespread lawlessness in postwar Iraq.48 The 

OSD Policy leadership passed this study to the Pentagon’s uniformed 

leadership and asked them to send it to USCENTCOM. The command 

either was not able to respond to the analysis or did not have enough 

troops, as discussed below, to solve the problems that arose after the completion of conventional operations.
22 INSS OCCASIONAL PAPER 5

The recently declassified January 2003 Intelligence Community 

Assessment—a document of lesser stature than a full National Intelligence Estimate—on postwar Iraq also concluded that “an Iraqi democracy would be a long, difficult, and probably turbulent process, with 

potential for backsliding into Iraq’s tradition of authoritarianism.” It went 

on to highlight postwar Iraq as an environment offering opportunity to al 

Qaeda and to note the high probability of sectarian violence, “score settling,” and Iranian meddling.49 Warnings on various aspects of the postwar plan were also made by Representative Ike Skelton (D–MO), General 

Anthony Zinni, USMC (Ret.), Senator Joseph Biden (D–DE), and others.

Why senior decisionmakers did not fully integrate these warnings into postwar planning is puzzling. Full awareness of these potential 

problems and the inadequate preparations to deal with them might have 

resulted in creating branches and sequels to existing plans, delaying the 

start of the invasion, or providing a larger force that could control more 

effectively terrain and population.

Again, many participants have not spoken on this issue. Perhaps the 

most senior officials were concerned that too much overt attention to the 

postwar phase might dampen congressional ardor for the war. Perhaps 

they were too busy, or the details of these studies or estimates were lost 

in the cloud of static that surrounds them. Perhaps, having other future 

operations on their mind, they did not want to maintain a major troop 

presence in Iraq. In the end, whether due to faulty intelligence or personal 

preferences, most senior national security officials behaved as if they had 

internalized the core assumption: the war would be hard, the peace relatively easy, and the occupation short and inexpensive.

In addition to a complex set of sensitive, inaccurate assumptions, 

another problem has been the inability of the coalition and the United 

States to put enough security forces—U.S., allied, or Iraqi—on the ground 

to control the country and create the security needed for governance and 

reconstruction. The small initial combat force pushed by Rumsfeld and 

designed by Franks accepted significant risk in its rear area, but it accomplished its mission. The forces adequate to win the war, however, were 

neither sufficient for occupation duty or for enabling reconstruction to 

move forward, nor were they able to deter or defeat the insurgents and 

protect the population.

Sadly, while the looters were demonstrating the inadequacy of the 

force on hand and implicitly encouraging insurgents, senior defense 

officials “off ramped” the 1st Cavalry Division, leaving the in-country 

troops without additional reinforcements.50 Civilian DOD leaders did 
choosing war 23

not want to admit—perhaps for public relations or possible legal reasons—that by mid-summer 2003, there was an insurgency or guerrilla 

war going on.51 The August 2003 bombing by insurgents of the Jordanian embassy and the UN headquarters in Baghdad, as well as the assassination of the Shi’ite faction leader Ayatollah Hakim, left little doubt 

that a new war had started.

Any number of close observers, civilian or former military, told 

the President or the Secretary of Defense that the coalition needed more 

troops in Iraq. Colin Powell, a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff, told British Prime Minister Tony Blair in November 2004 that “we 

don’t have enough troops. We don’t control the terrain.”52 According to 

his memoirs, Bremer also told President Bush or his key deputies on a few 

occasions that security was poor and more troops were needed. Bremer 

concluded that the United States had become the worst of all things: an 

ineffective occupier. He asked Rumsfeld in spring 2004 for one or two 

more divisions; he did not receive a reply.53 Recent scholarship has also 

indicated that the Vice President was among those who were concerned 

over our level of effort in creating security in Iraq and wondered whether 

DOD and CIA were doing enough for the war effort.54

It is fair to ask: how many forces should be necessary to combat an 

insurgency in a country the size of California with a population of around 

25 million people? The new Army and Marine Corps manual on counterinsurgency provides a generic guideline. The appropriate number of 

counterinsurgents is not the number of troops needed for tactical combat 

operations, but the number needed to protect the population. The manual 

suggests that rarely have counterinsurgencies succeeded unless there were 

20 counterinsurgents for every 1,000 in the population. That means that 

U.S., coalition, and Iraqi forces (including policemen) should number 

about 500,000 reliable, trained personnel.55 With minimal allied help, the 

Iraqi army dissolved, and the police in tatters, we were not at all close to 

that number in 2003. We have improved over time with the development 

of the Iraqi security forces, but the insurgents, terrorists, and advocates of 

sectarian violence have cut into the effectiveness of that force.

Four years after the start of the insurgency, the United States still 

does not have the ground troops in its base force to support the kind of 

troop rotations and in-country force levels necessary to create an appropriate level of security that, in turn, could help to move us in the direction of 

political success in the insurgency. Did this systematic failure to respond to 

an environmental requirement occur because Secretary Rumsfeld vetoed 

it to keep the overall force small; or because key generals did not think the 
24 INSS OCCASIONAL PAPER 5

added troops were necessary; or because the generals knew that there were 

insufficient reinforcements at home and thus, more troops could not be 

forthcoming? More historical research is needed to explain this failure to 

respond to what most believe was an obvious requirement.

In 2007, the new Pentagon leadership has begun to build up the 

overall size of the Army and Marine Corps, but this effort is not likely to 

provide much relief in Iraq. Ironically, the surge is clearly proving that 

even another 30,000 troops on the ground could have a positive effect 

on population protection and counterterrorism. We still await political 

progress—the ultimate goal, and one that is entirely in Iraqi hands.

Three factors—independently or together—might have compensated for the low level of U.S. troops. First, additional U.S. troops would 

have been unnecessary if the anticipated allied forces had been forthcoming. Unfortunately, this did not happen. In the eyes of our allies and the 

United Nations, U.S. operations in Iraq never escaped the fact that they 

were viewed as illegitimate from the start, a perception enhanced by Abu 

Ghraib and war crimes, both real and imagined. Even after the elected 

Iraqi government asked for and received a UN Security Council Resolution that legitimized its status and that of coalition forces,56 major U.S. 

allies have hung back, usually making only token contributions. Only 

the British have made a significant contribution, and even that has been 

greatly diminished in 2007. Other allies—Spain and Japan, to name two—

contributed forces but with such stringent national employment restrictions that they were not useful for a wide range of military activities.

A second potential replacement for U.S. troops was Iraqi forces. 

Building a new police force and army has been expensive, painstaking, 

and problematic. Coalition trainers started slowly, underestimated the 

complexity of the task at hand, emphasized quantity over quality, became 

caught up in sectarian strife, and never gave the effort the priority that 

we give our own forces. Today, Iraqi security forces are becoming a key 

part of the solution, but they also remain part of the problem. Some are 

not well trained or equipped, although those problems are being rectified 

over time. Others are involved in sectarian violence or criminal behavior. 

Today, we are approaching the canonical 500,000 counterinsurgents, but 

quality, reliability, and force management remain issues, as does the specter of a civil war.

Finally, U.S. troops were (and are still) very much in the reconstruction and governance businesses. Experienced civilian officials could have 

taken on more of this burden, but to this day, we do not have sufficient 

State, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and 
choosing war 25

other civilian government experts in country. Our diplomats have done 

a lot with what they have, but there remains a larger issue: why do State 

and USAID lack the wherewithal to do their job in complex contingencies? In the absence of civil specialists, military commanders (and civilian 

contractors) have had to adopt governance, reconstruction, and stabilization responsibilities in their areas of operation, further taxing military 

manpower. In Iraq, 10 State Department–run provincial reconstruction 

teams (PRTs) and 10 embedded PRTs are helping to take pressure off the 

military and provide advice to local commanders, but we are still short of 

the right people in appropriate quantities for reconstruction work.

U.S. problems in Iraq highlight an issue that is a perennial favorite 

of pundits and political scientists. Are the problems the result of people 

or process? Does the secret of decoding the problems of Iraq lie in understanding Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush, or is it all about dysfunctional 

interagency decisionmaking and execution processes? While there are 

gaps in our knowledge, there appears to be some truth in both of these 

different perspectives.

One can trace decisions through the actions and psychology of the 

main actors. There is no understanding what happened in Iraq without 

understanding the players, their philosophies, and their associations. The 

tight link between Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld was 

a key association and one peculiar to this administration. One expert 

talked about the dominance of the Cheney-Rumsfeld viewpoint as a 

“thumb on the scales” of the national security decisionmaking process.57

Secretary Rumsfeld’s penchant for dealing one-on-one with the combatant commanders and diving into the details of war plans and unit deployments was also unprecedented in the postwar era. This is not to say that 

President Bush was manipulated by his powerful subordinates. He was 

very much in command and has demonstrated that he is fully capable of 

making decisions that run counter to the recommendations of his closest 

advisors. Still, in this case, the power wielded by Rumsfeld and Cheney 

was both considerable and unique.

Many have also commented on how the alliance of Cheney and 

Rumsfeld worked against the State Department under Powell. There is 

some apparent truth to this assertion, even if its effects are hard to assess. 

Pentagon bureaucrats were tightly controlled and often pushed issues to the 

Principals Committee, where the power of Bush and Cheney was strongest, 

often at the expense of the State Department. One key observer noted that 

many issues were later decided in private by the President and Vice President—a normal occurrence, but one that complicates our ability to account 
26 INSS OCCASIONAL PAPER 5

for decisions.58 Private talks between Presidents and Vice Presidents are not 

unusual, but such a close relationship between the two elected officials has 

seldom been combined with an unprecedentedly high level of Vice Presidential activism in the national security policy development process.

State-Defense relations, however, were a more complex issue than 

the relationship between their principals or the intramural to-and-fro 

of interagency meetings. Many State Department officers were against 

going to war. They favored slow rolling issues, hoping that the idea of war 

would go away. Others were concerned that war planning would derail 

diplomacy. Others knew that when it came to planning, they could not 

stand up to the Pentagon’s capabilities. Others hated the notion that the 

closer war came to starting, the more the Pentagon was in the driver’s 

seat. When the Pentagon, with Powell’s acquiescence, was given the initial 

lead for postconflict management, many at State and USAID grumbled 

loudly. Still, Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, supported the decision to go to war, a fact that in all likelihood did not sit well with many at 

State. Strife and leaks followed this significant level of dissonance at State 

and, to a lesser degree, CIA.

Dov Zakheim, the comptroller of the Defense Department and an 

early supporter of President Bush, noted:

A country that has its major agencies at war is not going to 

fight a war well. . . . And State and Defense were at war—don’t 

let anyone tell you different. Within policy circles, it was kneejerk venom, on both sides. Neither side was prepared to give 

the other a break. It began in 2001, got exacerbated during the 

buildup to Iraq, and stayed on.

He concluded that “people who had to work with and trust each other” 

did not do so.59 Can there be effective policy without such trust?

Some inside-the-Beltway cynics would say that State-Defense fighting has been a constant in national security decisionmaking, but that is 

not true. The interagency in the first Gulf War worked well and harmoniously. Indeed, the person who ran Middle East policy issues at that time 

for the Pentagon was a Senior Foreign Service officer. In the 1990s, many 

senior Pentagon officials, like Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby, came to 

the Pentagon having made their reputations in the State Department in 

the Reagan administration. Competition between ideas is essential, but 

significant bureaucratic conflict between State and Defense is not an 

organic or necessary part of our system.
choosing war 27

One consistent problem demonstrated by George W. Bush’s administration has been a failure to partner successfully, and this can be laid 

at the feet of the President and the people who dominated the national 

security apparatus. In the interagency, with the Congress, and with our 

allies, senior U.S. national security officials exhibited in many instances 

an imperious attitude, exerting power and pressure where diplomacy and 

bargaining might have had a better effect. In war planning, in managing 

the detainee issues with Congress, in routine discourse with allies, and in 

building international coalitions, the United States executive branch was 

often seen as trying to be lord and master, instead of primus inter pares.

In the end, the failure to partner successfully increased friction among 

Defense, State, and CIA, increased partisan bickering with an already 

fractious Congress, complicated the detainee policy, lowered allied participation in Iraq, and hurt U.S. standing abroad.

An effective interagency decisionmaking process can partly blunt 

the effects of ego or hubris and make the whole greater than the sum of 

its parts. Bad actors, to some degree, can be reined in by good process. 

Tough “horizontal managers” can push the vertically stovepiped agencies 

to work better together. In all, many of the problems associated with the 

invasion of Iraq had happened before but in less critical situations. U.S. 

decisionmaking problems in Iraq have much in common with problems 

present in other complex contingencies, such as Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, 

and Afghanistan. All of these cases have demonstrated the limitations of 

our interagency decisionmaking and policy execution processes.

The United States needs to do better in planning and executing complex contingencies, where all the elements of power must be applied simultaneously. To come full circle, though, no matter how the decisionmaking 

process is designed, it will be strongly affected by the beliefs and experience 

of the officials involved, especially the President who will set the tone for 

his or her administration. Sound national security decisions will require 

great people and effective and efficient processes. Both of these will require 

an engaged President attuned to both policy and process.

Future Presidents will have to adapt our decisionmaking and execution systems to a new, dynamic, challenging security environment. Not only 

will they have to do better in midrange interagency planning, but they will 

also have to develop and refine new capabilities to deal with the nonmilitary 

aspects of contingencies. In turn, this will require changes in the organizational cultures of the Armed Forces and the Department of State. The U.S. 

Government already has made many meaningful changes, but true reform 

will require concerted effort by the executive and legislative branches.
28 INSS OCCASIONAL PAPER 5

Improving the National Security Decisionmaking 

and Execution Systems

While some strategists believe that the United States should downplay irregular warfare and stability operations,60 the future is likely to 

present complex contingencies that will require significant capabilities in 

which the power of the entire government will be needed to make plans 

to solve multifaceted problems overseas. In the next decade, the United 

States, in addition to maintaining readiness for large-scale conventional 

wars, must:

•	continue stability operations, as well as stabilization and reconstruction activities, in Afghanistan and Iraq, even if the size and 

shape of those commitments are modified

•	help partners and allies resist subversion through training, advisory elements, and security assistance

•	execute coordinated counterterrorist operations activities in the

Middle East, Africa, and Asia

•	support future peace and stability operations in the Middle East

and Africa

•	be ready to manage system shocks from regime failure or radical changes in some hostile regional powers, such as Cuba or 

North Korea

•	deter or manage traditional threats or future peer competitors and

deal with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction

•	improve homeland defense against terrorist groups, including

those who might use weapons of mass destruction.

In the next decade, the need for effective joint, combined, and 

interagency policy planning and execution will remain significant. Major 

institutional planning changes will require complementary changes in 

training, resource allocation, and organizational cultures.

The U.S. Government has already begun to improve midrange planning. The aftermath of 9/11 saw the creation of a Department of Homeland Security, a Homeland Security Council, and a National Counterterrorism Center, as well as a set of Intelligence Community reforms. There 

are joint interagency coordination groups in many combatant command 

headquarters, and the Department of State—thanks to a push by Condoleezza Rice when she was the National Security Advisor—now has a 

senior Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS). State 
choosing war 29

also has changed assignment patterns to better support national priorities, 

interagency activities, and the war on terror. USAID has created an Office 

of Military Affairs to improve its connectivity with the Pentagon and its 

various field commands. State and USAID are paying more attention to 

harmonizing all foreign assistance spending.

Among senior civilian DOD leaders in 2004, there was enthusiastic 

support for establishing S/CRS and even sharing DOD appropriations with 

the new State office. Inside DOD, pushed hard by Under Secretary Feith 

and supervised by Deputy Secretary Gordon England, a new directive and 

action plan on stability operations is being implemented. Preparation for 

stability operations has been put on par with preparation for combat. A 

new State-Defense center for complex contingencies has been stood up. 

Stability operations and preparation for irregular warfare were emphasized 

in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), and Special Operations 

Forces will be dramatically increased.61 In Iraq and Afghanistan, amidst all 

the strife and bad news, there have been great improvements in counterinsurgency capabilities—including a new, joint Army and Marine Corps 

manual—and advisory training. Military, diplomatic, and USAID teams in 

both Afghanistan and Iraq are working together much more closely than 

they did even a year ago. In the fullness of history, however, these recent 

improvements will be recorded as the first steps toward improving our 

national decisionmaking and execution capabilities to deal with failed states 

and complex contingency operations. The following eight recommendations will build on these improvements and help planning in the future.

Develop New Planning Charter

First, we need a new charter for complex contingency planning. The 

Clinton administration’s oft-ignored bible on political-military planning for 

complex contingencies, Presidential Decision Directive 56, was headed in 

the right direction. Early in the first term of President George W. Bush, the 

Pentagon blocked an NSC staff draft of a new contingency planning policy, 

all in the name of preserving the freedom of action of Cabinet officers and 

keeping civilians out of the contingency planning business. More input into 

contingency planning from civilians, of course, is not the problem; it will be 

a key part of the solution. While war plan security is paramount, we need to 

strive for more integration in policy formulation and execution.

Improve Interagency Planning

War plans are rarely briefed outside military channels. Inside the Pentagon, only a handful of civilians have access to them. This prohibition may 
30 INSS OCCASIONAL PAPER 5

make sense for major conventional war plans, and it certainly makes sense 

for security purposes. However, since most conflicts do not end when the 

last hill is taken and will include stabilization and reconstruction activities 

that we want civilians to lead, there must be a broader sharing of contingency planning responsibilities.

The 2006 QDR’s recommendation for a new interagency document 

called the National Security Planning Guidance is a step in the right 

direction.62 The QDR calls on this new document to: “direct the development of both military and non-military plans and institutional capabilities. . . . [It] would set priorities and clarify national security roles and 

responsibilities to reduce capability gaps and eliminate redundancies.” 

Complex contingency planning will require a strong NSC staff, but it also 

will require savvy, clear-thinking Cabinet officers who put their egos and 

prerogatives in check to create good policy. Who will run such a system? 

Clearly, the overall director must be an engaged President who is well 

aware of how the recommendations made to him or her were developed.

The first step to improve interagency planning would be to improve 

the quality of agency personnel across the board and increase the number 

of the best and brightest who have lived and worked in the interagency 

world. The U.S. Government should also follow through on its plans to 

create a corps of civilian and military National Security Officers who will 

become the masters of interagency work. Plans are also in train to create a 

consortium among the Government’s higher learning institutions to ensure 

a better focus on the needs of interagency work.63 In all, this will mean a 

modest increase in personnel slots in the national security–sensitive departments to cover increased interagency manning as well as training.

In addition, every executive department should insist on interagency experience for its most senior civilians and make it mandatory 

for promotion to the Senior Executive Service or Senior Foreign Service. 

Interagency experience should count as the equivalent of joint experience 

for military officers. Too often, the best and brightest avoid interagency 

assignments, where the hours are terrible and the rewards are less than 

those at the home agency. Too many inexperienced junior personnel 

have occupied the positions in some NSC staff directorates in the last two 

administrations. National Security Council personnel at the director level 

should optimally be members of the Senior Executive Service or at least 

colonel- or GS-15–level personnel.

It is often said that we need a Goldwater-Nichols reform for the 

interagency community.64 This is a worthy ideal, but one must ask 

whether this landmark legislation for the Defense Department sets the 
choosing war 31

bar too high. The Goldwater-Nichols reforms of 1986 were stewing for 

many years and were only enacted after a series of disappointing operations in which the obvious national failure was military in nature or effect. 

Moreover, Goldwater-Nichols involved a department that is firmly under 

the command of one powerful secretary and a relatively small number of 

congressional committees. A full Goldwater-Nichols reform for the interagency would concern a wide array of departments and agencies and dozens of congressional committees, each of which is as resistant to changes 

in its power as any Cabinet department is. Finally, if one takes the thought 

of a Goldwater-Nichols reform literally, there would be a shift of power 

from the Cabinet departments to “the interagency,” which would, in some 

instances, mean shifting power away from confirmable Cabinet officers 

to NSC staff personnel, who are loyal to the President and his or her 

agenda but not accountable to Congress. If these staff officers were made 

confirmable, they might be pressured to testify to their very confidential 

deliberations with the President. Such a shift of power to the NSC staff 

would undermine hundreds of laws that empower Cabinet officers and 

ensure that many bucks stop before they get to the President’s desk.

While a full “Goldwater-Nichols for the interagency” has the right 

spirit and would create the maximum effect, it would be difficult to get 

through the Congress as a package. On the other hand, incremental 

changes can be watered down and might not create the right effects. In 

all, however, improving interagency policy decisionmaking and execution 

is clearly within our capability, whether we can achieve systemic change 

or a phased series of step-by-step improvements.

Strengthen Interagency Execution

Third, and in a similar vein, the U.S. Government needs a better 

system for exporting interagency efforts to the field. We often have good 

interagency policy decisions, but execution is usually done by stovepiped 

agencies. In the field during complex contingencies, the U.S. Government 

habitually has either a system in which one Cabinet department is nominally in charge, such as the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian 

Assistance or the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, or a more cooperative system, such as we have today in Kabul and Baghdad. This cooperative system features a senior military officer and a senior diplomat 

working together, with neither having overall charge of U.S. policy, and 

both answering to their respective superiors.

Today, in both Kabul and Baghdad, the arrangements are working fairly well, but that has not always been the case. Other, better 
32 INSS OCCASIONAL PAPER 5

arrangements may be possible. For example, civil-military tension in 

Baghdad was high during the CPA period. Jerry Bremer believed that 

he could issue direct orders to the military commander there, whom 

he treated as his subordinate. Bremer—whom many saw as a worldclass micromanager—also exercised uncomfortably close supervision 

over military activities, according to some military staffers.65 CPA even 

cancelled or curtailed planned or ongoing military operations. Tensions 

between CPA and the military command were high.66 Neither ORHA 

nor CPA had a clear chain of command. ORHA allegedly worked for 

USCENTCOM but reported directly to the Secretary of Defense. CPA 

was designed to report to the President through the Pentagon, but by 

fall 2003, Bremer was nominally reporting through the National Security Advisor, but sometimes directly to the President.67

The United States may never have a viceroy system, but more effective, efficient, and predictable arrangements that offer more unity of 

command are possible than the current situation. Witness, for example, 

the close working relationship (2004–2005) between Lieutenant General 

Dave Barno, USA, the former U.S. commander in Baghdad, and the U.S. 

Ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, an arrangement pushed 

strongly by Feith and Rumsfeld and strongly endorsed by Powell. To 

ensure seamless cooperation, Barno moved his office into the Embassy to 

be next to the Ambassador. Military staff worked closely and directly with 

the Embassy counterparts. Uniformed officers were even seconded to the 

USAID mission in the Embassy to ensure closer communication. This is 

the type of cooperation we should aim for in the future.68

We cannot afford situations where difficult personalities or ad 

hoc arrangements on the ground or in Washington stand in the way of 

effective national policy. While all potential solutions to this problem 

are subject to criticism, there is no excuse for avoiding and not talking 

about this critical issue. Getting it right in the future should be the subject 

of wargames and experiments conducted by cooperating agencies and 

supervised by U.S. Joint Forces Command and the S/CRS. Experiments 

and scholarly investigation may well lead to new SOPs or at least a set of 

common expectations.

For its part, S/CRS, which will have the national lead in reconstruction and stabilization operations, must have an active and a reserve 

response corps, full of volunteer interagency and civil specialists, whose 

contingency deployment is guaranteed ahead of time. This will take hundreds of millions of dollars per year, which—despite strong support at 

State and Defense—Congress has thus far been unwilling to appropriate. 
choosing war 33

In the future, S/CRS should be able to draw on the entire government as 

well as on the private sector to build a tailored multifunctional team for 

any specific mission. If the U.S Government fails to build this capability, 

there is little reason to maintain S/CRS and the entire conceptual system 

that has been built up around it.

Foster a Climate of Change

Fourth, all improvements to interagency advice and policy implementation will require cultural and organizational change. To start with, 

the military establishment needs to focus its planning and training more 

on victory in war, and not just on success in climactic battles. It is often 

folly to pretend that success in a final battle will lead directly to victory. 

Particularly in cases of regime change or failed states, postcombat stability operations will be the key to victory. They are every bit as important as 

the ability to move, shoot, and communicate in battle, the normal preoccupations of the soldier.

Occupation, stabilization, reconstruction, and other issues associated with state building must be better integrated into the curriculum of 

staff and war colleges. Language and cultural studies are already becoming more important for military officers. Wargames and experiments also 

need to focus more on stability operations. None of this is meant to imply 

that the military should take over critical postcombat activities from the 

State Department and USAID. The opposite is the case: State and USAID 

need to be resourced, organized, and directed so that they can fulfill the 

awesome responsibilities that they have been assigned.

Operationalize the State Department and USAID

Fifth, the Department of State and USAID personnel and organizations need to become more operational—that is, able to lead the management of grand enterprises in unsafe and austere environments. General 

Tommy Franks’ memoirs contain the right thought: after the battle, you 

need lots of “boots” and lots of “wingtips” on the ground.69 Absent the 

wingtips, the boots in Iraq have had to do much more than they should 

under optimal circumstances. This problem continues to the present day, 

where, for lack of civil presence in the field, there is still too much military supervision of reconstruction and governance issues. In Afghanistan 

(and now in Iraq), the provincial reconstruction teams, which include 

military, diplomatic, and USAID personnel, have mitigated the military/civilian imbalance that hampers coalition operations in Iraq.70 The 

personnel strength of State and USAID is clearly inadequate to meet 
34 INSS OCCASIONAL PAPER 5

their expanded roles in the war on terror. These critical assets should be 

expanded by adding permanent personnel, developing reserves, and using 

contractors and retirees.

At the national level, the Bush administration is grappling with 

this problem and has established State’s S/CRS to be the national lead. 

It must now follow through and ensure that this good idea becomes a 

powerful center of excellence. This office should also become the centerpiece for interagency planning and exercises throughout the Government. Interagency staffing has begun and should be increased. It needs a 

healthy budget, which will be a problem in a poorly funded department 

that is usually focused on current policy, not midrange contingency 

planning. S/CRS is a toddler. This administration and its successor must 

ensure that it becomes an adult.

There is a danger here in encouraging all of the Cabinet departments 

to get involved in postconflict stabilization and reconstruction activities. 

At times, this has represented real value added. The U.S. Army Corps of 

Engineers, long focused on projects at home and on bases abroad, has 

done superb work in Afghanistan and Iraq. Other departments, however, 

have not been so productive. Many of them are not manned to do these 

tasks and have fewer useable assets than one might imagine. Others are 

likely to lack cultural or historical perspective and may rush in to try to 

do things American-style. Others have and will continue to fall victim to 

standard departmental routines, reflecting the old saw, “If all you have is a 

hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

In Iraq and Afghanistan, participation by departments and agencies 

with a domestic focus—such as Health and Human Services and the Drug 

Enforcement Administration—has been a mixed blessing. Many wellintentioned efforts have ended up poorly coordinated or out of synch 

with cultural conditions. Better coordination by State and USAID and 

better peacetime preparation are needed before agencies that do not have 

overseas missions are ready to accept them. Stabilization and reconstruction operations should not become an interdepartmental pick-up game.

Increase Funding

Sixth, for the State Department and USAID to become more 

operational, they must be better funded across the board. Today, 

State and USAID spend (on all of their functions, including security 

assistance) less than one-tenth of what the Pentagon does on its many 

missions. There are fewer than 8,000 Foreign Service Officers in both 

State and USAID combined. With this small force, our diplomats and 
choosing war 35

development specialists have to cover their extensive Washington 

headquarters, as well as over 120 countries and 265 diplomatic and 

consular locations. The systematic underfunding of State and USAID 

is the single greatest impediment to the effective planning and execution of developmental assistance, reconstruction, and stabilization. 

State cannot be equipped only with good ideas while Defense has all 

the money and most of the deployable assets. This is a prescription for 

an unbalanced national security policy, one in which State will not be 

a mature player or will have to savage its worldwide diplomacy to keep 

up with operations in conflict areas.

If we want to fix planning and execution for complex contingencies, 

we must fund State and USAID as major players and not poor relations of 

the Pentagon. At a minimum, over the next 5 years, the Foreign Service 

personnel strength of State and USAID should be raised by 50 percent 

and the entire budget of State and USAID should be doubled across the 

board.71 Priorities for new spending should be given to public diplomacy, 

stabilization and reconstruction activities, and development assistance 

focused on preventing state failure. The transfer of monies from Defense 

to State should be loosened, but we may well need to spend more money 

on defense and foreign operations at the same time. Foggy Bottom should 

not overly rely on drawing-down money appropriated to the Pentagon. 

Congress too will have to play its part and overcome its aversion to funding nonmilitary operations overseas and to the creation of peacetime contingency funds at State.

Simplify Legal and Regulatory Regimes

Seventh, to get better at planning and executing complex contingencies, we will have to untangle the legal and regulatory authorities 

that hobble the Departments of State and Defense. This will be especially important if State begins to operate in the field on large-scale 

postconflict stabilization and reconstruction problems. Many of these 

legal provisions serve only to protect congressional committee prerogatives. Still others are meant to prevent human rights abuses or 

some other valid purpose. How else can you explain that a group at 

State proper is in charge of refugee affairs, but USAID is charged with 

looking after internally displaced people? Why, given the importance of 

law and order to development, is USAID—our principal development 

agency—forbidden from funding and managing police development 

programs, a major element in restoring stability in failed states? Again, 

another office in State was created to cover this problem, but it too is 
36 INSS OCCASIONAL PAPER 5

small and weak and relies mainly on contracting to get the job done. It 

is tempting to say that these dysfunctional legal or regulatory provisions 

should be waived or eliminated. This should only be done, however, 

after a full assessment of the rationale behind each of them and their 

continuing utility.

Turn Allies into Partners

Eighth, to gain legitimacy and promote better burdensharing, the 

United States should make its most powerful allies full partners in complex 

operations. Our European allies will become increasingly important for stability operations. Many of them have in large measure developed their forces 

for peace operations, and some have carabinieri/gendarme-type forces ideal 

for police work in postwar situations.

The United States has run two operations in which many allies were 

brought into the plan after the action began. This did no great damage in 

Afghanistan, where the perception of legitimacy has been high. Indeed, 

NATO has moved into the lead in Afghanistan and has now had a year 

where it has moved from peace operations into combat. In Iraq, however, 

the United States continues to pay a stiff price for its decisive, nearly unilateral action in 2003. History will judge the wisdom of these decisions, 

but in the future, bringing the allies in before the takeoff may make for a 

more complicated flight but a smoother landing.

In conclusion, the war in Iraq and its aftermath have exposed a 

flawed decisionmaking process and weak decision execution mechanisms. In planning for and executing operations in Iraq, basic organizations, organizational cultures, operational procedures, and legislative 

support systems all have been found wanting and in need of fundamental 

reform. Our National Security Council staff, Cabinet departments, and 

especially our Congress have not yet adapted to the demanding requirements of 21st-century complex contingencies. One hopes that, for all of 

its problems, the decision to invade Iraq and subsequent operations there 

may point the way to national security reform.

While the focus of this project has been on policy decisions and process, it is important to add a final word on the decision to go to war. The 

U.S. reputation for power rests heavily on the outstanding performance 

of its Armed Forces in wars of necessity—the wars that follow an attack 

on the United States or one of its key allies or partners. The U.S. record in 

wars of choice—such as Vietnam and Operation Iraqi Freedom—contains 

more than a few defeats or Pyrrhic victories. In the greater war on terror, 
choosing war 37

the United States cannot forswear wars of choice or disregard conflicts 

that might require postcombat stability operations or extended peace 

enforcement activities. Before the United States enters into wars, however, 

its leaders should remember the prophetic words of Winston Churchill:

Let us learn our lessons. Never, never, never believe any war will 

be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange 

voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. 

The Statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once 

the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the 

slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. Antiquated 

War Offices, weak, incompetent or arrogant Commanders, 

untrustworthy allies, hostile neutrals, malignant Fortune, ugly 

surprises, awful miscalculations—all take their seats at the 

Council Board on the morrow of a declaration of war. Always 

remember, however sure you are that you can easily win, that 

there would not be a war if the other man did not think that he 

also had a chance.72

choosing war 39

Notes

1

 The best sources on casualties of all types are <www.defenselink.mil/> and <http://icasualties.

org/oif/>. Iraq civilian casualties are hardest to track; estimates run from 38,000 to over 600,000. Most 

sources tied to actual incident-related counts show a maximum of 82,000. The U.S. Government does 

not keep statistics on these losses, which is a significant mistake. If counterinsurgency depends on protecting the population, Iraqi civilian casualties are a critical metric. For an up-to-date digest of financial 

costs, see Amy Belasco, The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations since 

9/11 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, July 16, 2007), 1–4. 2

 Dana Milbank, “Opinion of U.S. Abroad Is Falling, Survey Finds,” The Washington Post, 

March 17, 2004, A22; and the summary of the Pew poll of 47 nations at <http://pewresearch.org/

pubs/524/global-unease-with-major-world-powers-and-leaders>. 3

 Office of the Director of National Intelligence, National Intelligence Estimate: Prospects for 

Iraq’s Stability: A Challenging Road Ahead, January 2007, 8. The quotation is taken from the NIE’s key 

judgments. The full text of what was publicly released can be found at <www.dni.gov/press_releases>. 4

 A set of new books has informed my research on Iraq: Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New 

York: Simon and Schuster, 2004); Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside 

Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006); Thomas E. Ricks, 

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin Press, 2006); and Bob Woodward, State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006). For the muchneglected Iraqi leadership perspective, see Kevin M. Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives Project: A View of 

Operation Iraqi Freedom from Saddam’s Senior Leadership (Norfolk: U.S. Joint Forces Command Joint 

Center for Operational Analysis and the Institute for Defense Analyses, 2007), especially vii–xi and 

175–184. This project was based on 700 captured documents and interviews with over 25 top Iraqi 

national security officials. Another important book is Thomas G. Mahnken and Thomas A. Keaney, 

eds., War in Iraq: Planning and Execution (New York: Routledge, 2007). In that volume, war planning is discussed in detail in Isaiah Wilson, “America’s Anabasis,” 9–21. A seminal work on postwar 

planning can be found in Nora Bensahel, “Mission Not Accomplished: What Went Wrong with Iraqi 

Reconstruction,” Journal of Strategic Studies (June 2006), 453–473. 5

 This study on Iraq has been influenced by personal observations from my assignment as 

the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations (2001–2004), where I played a 

modest role in the initial humanitarian and reconstruction planning before the conflict. The analysis 

here borrows much from two of my previous papers: “Planning Lessons from Afghanistan and Iraq,” 

Joint Force Quarterly 41 (2d quarter, 2006); and “The Perils of Planning: Lessons from Afghanistan 

and Iraq,” presented in April 2007 at a conference at the Bush School at Texas A&M University. I have 

drawn freely on these papers without detailed citation. 6

 George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Knopf, 1998), 489. 7

 Suzanne Chapman, “The War before the War,” Air Force Magazine (February 2004), available 

at <www.afa.org/magazine/Feb2004/0204war.asp>. 8

 A number of these officials were behind a movement for regime change as U.S. policy, and 

some had even publicly opined about military options against Iraq. For example, see the series of articles in the Weekly Standard of December 1, 1997, that were bannered on the cover page as “Saddam 

Must Go: A How-to Guide,” with individual pieces by Paul D. Wolfowitz, Peter Rodman, and Zalmay 

Khalilzad, all of whom served as administration officials in the runup to the 2003 war. 9

 While most analysts reject the Saddam–al Qaeda connection, the best counterarguments can 

be found at Stephen Hayes, The Connection: How al Qaeda’s Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has 

Endangered America (New York: Harper Collins, 2004). 10 In his memoir, At the Center of the Storm, George Tenet confirms the activities of Zarqawi 

in Iraq and his relationship with Saddam’s regime. See the extensive excerpts from the memoir in 

William Kristol, “Inadvertent Truths: George Tenet’s Revealing Memoir,” Weekly Standard, May 14, 

2007, available at <www.weeklystandard.com/content/public/articles/000/000/013/615cglnt.asp>. On 

terrorist affiliations with Saddam, see also Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the 

Road to 9/11 (New York: Knopf, 2006), 295–296. 11 An Arab expert’s account of the inner workings of Zarqawi and al Qaeda can be found in Abdel 

Bari Atwan, The Secret History of Al Qaeda (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 179–206. 12 The National Security Strategy of the United States (Washington, DC: The White House, 

September 2002).
40 INSS OCCASIONAL PAPER 5

13 Tommy Franks with Malcolm McConnell, American Soldier (New York: Regan Books, 

2004). The best complete examination of planning is in Gordon and Trainor, 75–117. 14 One of the most developed arguments about how transformation ideas affected the war plan 

can be found in James Kitfield, War and Destiny: How the Bush Revolution in Foreign and Military Affairs 

Redefined American Power (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005). Rumsfeld’s clearest presentation 

on his postwar strategic concept—light footprint, quick occupation, avoid long-term presence—can be 

found in his “Beyond Nation Building” speech at the Intrepid Museum, New York, February 14, 2003. 15 For an example of Army shortages connected to interrupted or curtailed deployments, see 

Kitfield, 146. 16 The only book to cover the critical inputs to the plan made by LTG McKiernan and his staff 

at the land component command is Gordon and Trainor, 75–117. 17 Interview with a former National Security Council staff official, August 15, 2007.

18 Gordon and Trainor, 101.

19 The declassified key judgments of the 90-page National Intelligence Estimate can be found 

at <http://fas.org/irp/cia/product/iraq-wmd.html>. It should be noted that the Bureau of Intelligence 

and Research at the State Department objected to the timing and criticality of the Intelligence Community’s judgment about Iraq’s nuclear program. While this author maintains that we went to war on 

agreed-upon intelligence, some at CIA felt that analysts there had been pressured. See, for example, 

Paul Pillar, “Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 2006). 20 For a readily available summary of the USJFCOM–Institute for Defense Analyses study 

referred to in note 4 above, see Kevin Woods, James Lacey, and Williamson Murray, “Saddam’s Delusions: The View From the Inside,” Foreign Affairs (May/June 2006), 2–26. 21 Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives Project, 91. 22 Ibid., 92.

23 A former senior NSC official told the author in October 2007 that he believed that the Pentagon was not eager to have combat forces from allies other than Australia and the United Kingdom 

but wanted maximum allied participation in Phase IV operations. 24 Franks, 366, 393.

25 The 3d Infantry Division after action review can be found at <www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2003/3id-aar-jul03.pdf>. 26 For a précis of the Marine Phase IV planning effort, see Nicholas Reynolds, Basrah, Baghdad, and Beyond: The U.S. Marine Corps in the Second Iraq War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute 

Press, 2005), 42–46, 145–156. 27 Conversations and correspondence with a senior Joint Staff planner and a former senior 

NSC official, September 2007. 28 Woodward, Plan of Attack, 276–277. 29 Correspondence with a former senior NSC official in September 2007; and, on the oil briefing, Woodward, Plan of Attack, 322–323. 30 Woodward, State of Denial, 131–133. 31 Gordon and Trainor, 161–163.

32 Woodward, Plan of Attack, 328–329. 33 On plans for rapid drawdown, see Gordon and Trainor, 98, 103, 464; and Woodward, State 

of Denial, 162. Many in OSD continued to argue for a rapid turnover well into the CPA period. See 

L. Paul Bremer with Malcolm McConnell, My Year in Iraq (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), 

168–170, 188, 205–206. 34 The monthly U.S. Government statistics are promulgated in a comprehensive PowerPoint 

briefing. See, for example, The Iraq Weekly Status Report, compiled from various sources by the 

Department of State, Bureau of Near East Affairs, October 17, 2007, available at <www.state.gov/p/

nea/rls/rpt/iraqstatus/>. 35 For a mid-2007 report, see Dana Hedgpeth, “Report Says Iraq Lags on Rebuilding: Special 

Inspector Derides Iraqi Government’s Lack of Responsibility,” The Washington Post, July 29, 2007, A19. 36 These assumptions were reflected in numerous statements by Cheney, Rumsfeld, and 

Wolfowitz. They were also reflected by actions taken by various members of the national security 

team. For example, reaction by civilian leaders to the accurate judgments by General Shinseki (and 

USCENTCOM planners) as to the need for a large postwar force; the rush to begin postcombat 

withdrawal planning in the midst of looting; and the insistence that the Iraqis could pay for much of 

their own reconstruction all suggested that many leaders expected the peace to be easy relative to the 
choosing war 41

war and that reconstruction would not be expensive. For many other DOD and NSC officials, these 

assumptions remained unspoken, but no less powerful. As noted in the text, the sources for these 

assumptions included poor intelligence, the opinions of Iraqi exiles, and the policy predispositions of 

the members of the national security team. 37 Accounts of Kanan Makiya’s meeting with the President and the Vice President’s subsequent 

public declaration that we would be met as liberators can be found in George Packer, The Assassins’ Gate: 

America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux), 97–98. An Iraqi émigré who lived in the United 

States for many years, Makiya wrote Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq (Los Angeles: University 

of California Press, Updated Edition, 1998), which was a guide to the horrors of Saddam’s regime. 38 In the author’s personal conversations with him in 2003 and thereafter, General Abizaid 

has been a continuing supporter of a rapid turnover to Iraqi control and broadening international 

participation. See also Gordon and Trainor, 163, 314. Khalilzad, Wolfowitz, Feith, and Garner were 

all dedicated proponents of rapid turnover. Many in the Department of State, as well as Ambassador 

Bremer, saw that up to 2 years of occupation would be a necessary phase in the operation. State had 

even floated a paper to that effect in the months before the war. However, a rapid turnover of power 

to some sort of Iraqi authority had been approved by the NSC and the President in the runup to the 

war but was abandoned in the aftermath of the fighting. 39 On the issue of why rapid turnover to an unelected Iraqi government was problematic, see 

Bremer, 162–167. There remained adherents of rapid turnover to Iraqis in the Pentagon and NSC well 

into the year of occupation. 40 For new revelations on this surprise decision, see Roger Cohen, “The MacArthur Lunch,” 

The Washington Post, August 27, 2007, 17. This article recounts Khalilzad’s and Powell’s surprise that 

the quick turnover concept had been abandoned and that Khalilzad had been ousted as a Presidential 

envoy to Iraq by Bremer, who received the go-ahead from Bush, not at an NSC meeting, but at a luncheon with the President. The Pentagon’s confusion over Bremer’s intentions concerning the development of an interim authority was communicated to the author by a former senior DOD official in 

September 2007 and again in October 2007. 41 Woodward, State of Denial, 219. 42 Conversation with senior DOD official, October 2007.

43 For a précis on organizational and personnel problems, see Bensahel, “Mission Not Accomplished,” 460–466. 44 Ironically, some psychological operations and counter–command and control activities 

encouraged the Iraqi army to dissolve and for the soldiers to desert, while other plans were relying on 

Iraqi army units to remain intact to be used for reconstruction. See for example, Gordon and Trainor, 

145–146; and interview, former NSC official, August 15, 2007. 45 The National Defense University report of its November 2002 workshop “Iraq: Looking 

Beyond Saddam’s Rule” highlighted the complexities of the postwar era and recommended a strong 

emphasis on postwar security. Copies of this report were provided directly to selected offices of OSD 

and Joint Staff leadership by memorandum on December 16, 2002. 46 Conrad C. Crane and W. Andrew Terrill, Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, February 

2003), v–vi. 47 Discussions with former senior NSC staff official in September and October, 2007.

48 This was confirmed by the author in a recent conversation with a former senior OSD official 

who was the lead on the project that highlighted the possibility of lawlessness in postwar Iraq, June 2007. 49 Intelligence Community Assessment: Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq, January 2003, 

as summarized in an unpublished document of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) 

and in The Washington Post, May 20, 2007, A6. The SSCI draft can be found at <http://intelligence.

senate.gov/prewar.pdf>. 50 Gordon and Trainor, 462.

51 See for example, the transcript of Secretary Rumsfeld’s July 13, 2003, appearance on ABC’s 

This Week at <www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2842>. Compare that to 

the transcript of Abizaid’s remarks at the Pentagon on July 16, soon after he assumed command, on the 

nature of the guerrilla war at <www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2845>. 52 Ricks, 407.

53 According to Bremer, his complaints to Cabinet officers or the President on poor security 

and/or the lack of troops started before he entered the theater and continued throughout his tenure. 
42 INSS OCCASIONAL PAPER 5

See Bremer, 12, 14, 71, 106, 170, 221, 228. The report of Bremer’s 2004 memorandum requesting 

more troops can be found on 357–358. 54 See, for example, Stephen Hayes, “Cheney Speaks,” Weekly Standard, July 23, 2007, 30. 55 Army Field Manual FM 3–24/Marine Corps Warfighting Publication MCWP 3–33.5, Counterinsurgency (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), para. 1–67, 23. 56 United Nations Security Council Resolution 1723 (November 28, 2006) legitimizes coalition 

forces and their support of the sovereign government of Iraq. 57 David Rothkopf, Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and 

the Architects of American Power (New York: Public Affairs, 2005), 389–441. 58 Discussion with former senior NSC official, October 20, 2007.

59 Ricks, 102–103.

60 One example of this “never again” thinking can be found in Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., “America’s 

Asymmetric Advantage,” Armed Forces Journal (September 2006), 20–27. See also my reply arguing for 

a full-spectrum force, “From the Ground Up: We Need a Balanced Total Force,” Armed Forces Journal

(October 2006), 44–47. Dunlap’s brief response to my piece appears on page 48 of the same issue. 61 Department of Defense, 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington, DC: 

Department of Defense, February 6, 2006), 1–26, 43–45, 75–91. 62 Ibid., 85.

63 See Executive Order 13434, “National Security Professional Development,” May 17, 2007, in 

the Federal Register 72, no. 98 (May 22, 2007); and the unpublished document, National Strategy for 

the Development of Security Professionals, July 2007. 64 See the ongoing study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 

Beyond Goldwater-Nichols: Defense Reform for a New Strategic Era, “Phase 1 Report” and “Phase 2 

Report” (Washington, DC: CSIS, 2005), available at <csis.org/isp/bgn/index.php?option=com_csis_

pubs&task=view&id=62> and <csis.org/component/option,com_csis_pubs/task,view/id,1849/>. 65 Conversations in September 2007 with two staffers, one military and one civilian, associated 

with CPA and Combined Joint Task Force–7 in the 2003–2004 timeframe. 66 Interviews with numerous on-scene sources; also, Bensahel, “Mission Not Accomplished,” 

466. 67 Bremer, 186–188, 245. This ambiguity in who was Bremer’s boss was seen in a very negative 

light in correspondence from a senior NSC official, September 2007. A senior DOD official told me 

in September 2007 that Bremer reported to so many people that in reality he reported to no one at all. 68 For an excellent account of this cooperation, see David Barno, “Fighting the ‘Other War:’ Counterinsurgency Strategy in Afghanistan, 2003–2005,” Military Review (September/October 2007), 32–44. 69 Franks, 422.

70 On PRTs in Afghanistan, see Michael J. McNerney, “Stabilization and Reconstruction in 

Afghanistan: Are PRTs a Model or a Muddle?” Parameters (Winter 2005/2006), 32–46; and Robert M. 

Perito, The U.S. Experience with Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan, United States Institute of Peace Special Report no. 152, October 2005, 1–16. Recent student and faculty veterans at the 

National War College nearly all agree that the 20 State Department–run PRTs in Iraq are beginning to 

make a difference. 71 Other estimates include those by former House speaker Newt Gingrich in his remarks to 

the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on transforming the State Department. At an open meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations on April 26, 2007, Gingrich recommended a 50 percent 

increase in its budget and a substantial increase in the diplomatic work force. See <www.cfr.org/

publication/13210/21st_century_state_department.html>. 72 Winston Churchill, My Early Life: A Roving Commission (New York: Scribner’s 1958 edition 

of original 1930 book), 232.
43

About the Author

Dr. Joseph J. Collins has been Professor of National Security Strategy at the National War College since 2004. Prior to this assignment, he 

served for 3 years as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations. From 1998 to 2001, Dr. Collins was a Senior Fellow at 

the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he researched 

economic sanctions, national security policy, and homeland security. In 

1998, after nearly 28 years of military service, Dr. Collins retired from the 

U.S. Army as a colonel. His many publications include books and articles 

on war in Afghanistan, Operation Desert Storm, military culture, defense 

transformation, homeland defense, and the way ahead in Iraq.

Dr. Collins holds a bachelor’s degree from Fordham University and 

two master’s degrees and a doctorate in political science from Columbia 

University. In 2004, he was awarded the Department of Defense Medal 

for Distinguished Public Service, its highest civilian award. 



The National Defense University (NDU) educates military and civilian 

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