3 Flawed Assumptions About Postwar Iraq

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The first miscalculation was based on another faulty assumption--that Iraqi troops would stick around to surrender. As it turned out, only a tiny fraction of Iraq's military surrendered to coalition forces. The majority simply melted away. But the plan to use the few remaining Iraqi troops for peacekeeping was scrapped, and the way it was done boomeranged on the occupying authorities. Soon after arriving in Iraq, Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), ordered Iraq's military dissolved. He argued that this was merely a symbolic act, but it infuriated Iraqi troops who had put up little resistance to the invasion--as encouraged by leaflets dropped by the U.S.-led coalition. Some of those ex-soldiers are presumably among those who continue to attack the American occupiers. Bremer agreed to keep paying roughly half the troops he had dismissed, and he is now training volunteers to staff the new Iraqi military, which should have 12,000 soldiers within a year. A new police force is being trained, but those currently working for the CPA are targets for harassment and even assassination. The Iraqi Governing Council, appointed by the U.S., has little authority, and its members are seen by many Iraqis as collaborators with the occupying power.

RESISTANCE WOULD FADE QUICKLY

The Pentagon did anticipate a certain amount of postwar resistance--a small amount that wouldn't last long. But the Pentagon didn't envision that thousands of American troops would be under almost constant attack by guerrillas or that so many of the fighters would be foreigners who regard the U.S. occupation of Iraq as the Super Bowl of jihad. The Pentagon apparently calculated that as the country settled down and its oil spigots opened and helped finance reconstruction, resistance would quickly be marginalized. Even after it became clear this summer that attacks on allied troops were intensifying, Rumsfeld described them as the exertions of a few Baathist "dead-enders." Yet a pair of Army studies published before the war cautioned that the goodwill of Iraqis would be fleeting and violent nationalism rife--that things, in short, could quickly become messy. "There were a lot of people in the Army who were aware of what the occupation might require," says Conrad Crane, an Army War College scholar who co-wrote both reports on Iraq's postwar challenges. "That message didn't seem to get to Central Command or the Defense Secretary's staff." --By Unmesh Kher. Reported by Mark Thompson and Douglas Waller/Washington and Vivienne Walt/Baghdad

With reporting by Mark Thompson and Douglas Waller/Washington and Vivienne Walt/Baghdad

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