Pentagon Iraqi War Plan: Lean and Mean

[Guest Cerebus]

It turns out that the looting in Post-War Iraq just didn't strip museums and grocery stores:

 

The Bush administration said Tuesday that it will investigate reports that equipment with possible nuclear weapons applications was looted after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

 

...

 

Among the missing equipment: "flow forming" machines for shaping metal tubes such as missile bodies or uranium centrifuge drums; milling and metal-turning machines; electron-beam welders useful for making centrifuges; and precision measuring devices.

 

....

 

But Duelfer's 1,000-page report to President Bush shows how, in case after case, by the time U.S. inspectors arrived at a site, Iraqi looters had come and gone. Duelfer concluded that Iraq had no chemical or biological weapons stockpiles and had dismantled its nuclear weapons program in 1991. But Iraq retained some manufacturing equipment with possible nuclear weapons applications. U.N. inspectors in the late 1990s and again just before the March 2003 invasion identified and tagged these machines. Denied access to Iraqi weapons sites since the war, the IAEA used commercial satellite photography to identify looted sites.

 

...

 

"A lot of it is random looting," nuclear expert David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said in an interview. "But it does concern me because you don't know what's happened" to the equipment. "The United States has really been irresponsible and arrogant in not keeping control of this."

 

One reason for this is that the simple fact is, the Pentagon wanted to fight this war on the cheap (cheap being a relative term by the way) and, thus, didn't have enough soldiers to secure the sites from looting. I can't say this is bad per se, but disbanding the Iraqi army for no good reason along with it was a monumentally stupid one.

 

As Gen Tommy Franks says:

 

NICEVILLE, Fla. (AP) - The United States should have quickly reformed the Iraqi army after most of its soldiers walked off the battlefield and got them "working for us," retired Gen. Tommy Franks said Tuesday.

 

Franks, who oversaw combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, told reporters it may have taken "a couple billion dollars," but that he would have liked to have put Iraqi troops "back on the payroll right quick."

 

"What we could have done better, should have done better, what I would have liked to have seen done better, once they were gone, is hire them back," the former Army general said before making his first Florida campaign appearance for President Bush.

 

Neither Bush nor Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld should be blamed because Congress never appropriated money for that purpose and no other country offered to pay for it, Franks said.

 

"I fault bureaucratic behavior in my own country and in the international community," he said.

 

True enough, but c'mon Congress? Does anyone think Congress wouldn't have given Bush the money he needed for emergency appropriations? This problem lies on the shoulders of Bush and Rumsfeld who made a bad decision to supplement a bad plan.

 

Man, why does Kerry have to suck so much?

[Guest whitemilesdavis]

Does anyone know the whole story of why Franks quit? He's been distinguished and hasn't blabbed. The Dems implied it was because he didn't get what he needed in Afghanistan.

 

Anybody know?

[Guest Cerebus]

If the Dems were right about that, one would think that Franks wouldn't exactly be eager to jump aboard Bush's campaign wagon wouldn't you think?

 

As far as I know, Franks figured thirty six years in the uniform was enough and wanted to write books and spend time with his family. Probably why he rejected an offer for Army Chief of Staff after he announced he was stepping down as commander of CENTCOM.

[Guest MikeSC]

I thought one of the complaints was that the Iraqi army fell so quickly that the plan was somewhat ruined due to the problem with the timing planned for the assorted army troops to join up.

-=Mike

[Rob E Dangerously 0]

Shouldn't we have had some reason to suspect a quick victory over the Iraqi army?

 

I recall hearing that they were surrendering to TV trucks in 1991.

 

(The Republican Guard was more formidible.. and didn't they sorta dissolve around April 9th?)

[Guest MikeSC]

Shouldn't we have had some reason to suspect a quick victory over the Iraqi army?

 

I recall hearing that they were surrendering to TV trucks in 1991.

 

(The Republican Guard was more formidible.. and didn't they sorta dissolve around April 9th?)

I thought --- I, again, could be wrong --- that there was an issue with some countries' who opposed the action causing the US to have to send the second part of the force on a far longer path than was originally anticipated.

-=Mike

[Guest Cerebus]

As far as I know OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom) was expected to be relatively fast, but it was finished FAR ahead of schedule and with far fewer casualties, in fact while most people were fearing the Republican Guard they ended up having a very very poor showing (it was the relatively unknown Fayahdeen that surprised everyone).