Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=02-25-04

TYPE=Dateline

NUMBER=7-38389

TITLE=Post War Planning for Iraq

BYLINE=Judith Latham

TELEPHONE=619-3464

DATELINE=Washington

EDITOR=Carol Castiel

CONTENT=VO 7:18, MO 9:

DISK: DATELINE THEME [PLAYED IN STUDIO, FADED UNDER DATELINE HOST VOICE OR PROGRAMMING MATERIAL]

HOST: Critics often argue the U-S administration carefully planned the military campaign against Saddam Hussein, but failed to plan for what to do after the war. However, in the current issue of the Atlantic Monthly magazine, veteran reporter James Fallows demonstrates the fallacy of that view. Today's Dateline examines some of the controversy over post-war planning for Iraq. Here's Judith Latham.

JL: James Fallows of the Atlantic Monthly says that, contrary to popular opinion, many U-S government agencies - including the Army, the State Department, and C-I-A - planned extensively for post-war Iraq. Almost as soon as the administration considered fighting a war against Saddam Hussein, he says, government planners began focusing on the post-war period.

TAPE: CUT #1: FALLOWS [FM LATHAM]

"I think the main surprise would be how carefully, how extensively, and with what degree of accuracy and foresight various branches of the U-S government did try to prepare for the consequences they would assume after a military victory in Iraq. One of the earliest efforts happened at the State Department. It eventually led to something called 'The Future of Iraq Project,' which produced some 13 volumes of studies. And their recommendations have stood up well in retrospect."

JL: According to Mr. Fallows, several themes come through consistently in the government's pre-war planning for post-war Iraq.

TAPE: CUT #2: FALLOWS [FM LATHAM]

"The first theme was that the U-S military needed to be ready immediately to be responsible for public order - to protect from looting, to avoid revenge killings, to provide the security atmosphere that would make everything else possible. A second strong theme was the important role of working with the Iraqi army. The other theme was the importance of preparing as quickly as possible for some kind of Iraqi sovereignty, since occupation forces inevitably wear out their welcome soon."

JL: Robert Lieber, professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University, says the real problem with post-war planning at the Defense Department in retrospect was that it focused on the wrong areas.

TAPE: CUT #3: LIEBER [FM LATHAM]

"The emphasis in planning for Iraq after the ouster of Saddam and his murderous Ba'athist regime was in two areas. First, planning for a massive flood of refugees with problems of food, shelter, and so forth based on the experience in northern Iraq in 1991 when Saddam's attacks drove hundreds of thousands of Kurds into the mountains. Second, based on what Saddam had done at the time of his invasion of Kuwait and the American-led Operation Desert Storm, Saddam had set the oil fields on fire. In actuality, neither thing happened."

JL: Much of the criticism of the post-war period has focused on the coalition's failure to stop the orgy of looting that beset the country. But, General Jay Garner, who preceded Ambassador Paul Bremer as post-war Iraq's first administrator, says that criticism is unfair.

TAPE: CUT #4: GARNER [FM LATHAM]

"I don't know how you control looting and fight a combat operation at the same time because, to control looting, you have to be very visible. If you've got fighting going on at the same time, and you stand up, you're dead. So those two things are incompatible."

JL: However, the former Secretary of the Army, General Thomas White, who was directly involved in the post-war planning and sometimes disagreed with his superiors, says it became "immediately apparent" after the war that looting was going to be a major problem. And, he adds, it probably set the recovery process back about two years.

TAPE: CUT #5: WHITE [FM LATHAM]

"I don't think any orders were issued to any of the coalition forces to get involved. And what that resulted in after the first 30 days was that the infrastructure that survived the war in reasonable shape was basically destroyed before our very eyes. And that now has become a tremendous challenge to the reconstruction and rebuilding effort. I think they had a view, as they frequently stated publicly, that this would be a war of liberation and people would be so glad to get rid of Saddam Hussein that they would behave themselves in the aftermath."

JL: According to the Atlantic Monthly's James Fallows, numerous interviews revealed what he calls a "surprisingly intense" struggle within the Defense Department.

TAPE: CUT #6: FALLOWS [FM LATHAM]

". Largely between the uniformed services, including the Army, and the civilian leadership at the top - the Secretary and Undersecretary level - about how fully and extensively the U-S should prepare. Perhaps surprisingly, it was the uniformed services that were arguing most extensively for preparation. General [Eric] Shinseki, General [Anthony] Zinni, and the Army Secretary, General [Thomas] White, said that the hard part of this operation would indeed be the occupation, not the military conquest of the army. It was after the regime fell that you would need to guard the borders, have police services, all the things that would require more manpower than the actual war. Those arguments were largely dismissed. And in retrospect it seems clear the Army was right."

JL: Both the administration's supporters and its critics agree that disbanding the Iraqi army was a serious - and irreversible - mistake, according to retired general Thomas White.

TAPE: CUT #7: WHITE [FM LATHAM]

"The conventional army could have been put to great use in assisting us in securing the country. All we did when we disbanded it was to put a whole bunch of people out of work that took their weapons home with them and immediately began causing us difficulty. I think that was the worst decision that was made."

JL: General Jay Garmer says, of course, there were major problems in post-war Iraq, but he thinks the transition authority has done an outstanding job.

TAPE: CUT #8: GARNER [FM LATHAM]

"You don't go into a country of 25 million people that has been a totalitarian country for 35 years and remake it over night. Those are massive problems, and they're still going on today. I think the team that is over there today has done an absolutely incredible job with an almost impossible task. Sure, it's pretty chaotic."

JL: Georgetown University professor Robert Lieber says many of the criticisms of post-war planning for Iraq are biased and involve what he calls "selective memory."

TAPE: CUT #9: LIEBER [FM LATHAM]

"Keep in mind that the debate about Iraq in the year prior to the war involved all kinds of predictions and fears. Many of the regional experts have been consistently wrong about the Middle East for the last quarter-century. They warned that Middle Eastern governments throughout the entire region would collapse as the street rose up in anger at the American presence. They warned that coalition casualties would be enormous. Some of the critiques were accurate, but many of them were completely wrong."

JL: General Jay Garner says that he and his transition team did take State, C-I-A, and military analysis into account in their post-war planning. And when they realized within two or three days that they would be facing different problems from those they had originally anticipated, they changed their focus.

TAPE: CUT #10: GARNER [FM LATHAM]

"I think there is one thing that all of us have forgotten. And that is that our success there is going to put a phenomenal amount of pressure on the rest of the Middle East. Freedom in Iraq is going to cause others to change."

JL: James Fallows of Atlantic Monthly says in the end the crux of the debate among post-war planners revolved around whether - and when - the United States and its coalition partners should conduct a military campaign against Saddam Hussein.

TAPE: CUT #12: FALLOWS [FM LATHAM]

"There seems to be a view by the people at the heart of the planning exercise that those with area expertise from the State Department, from the Central Intelligence Agency, and even from the military were in some way blind to the big picture. And to the extent those area experts argued for caution or argued about the possibility of a difficult situation following a war, their advice was either consciously or subconsciously resisted because it came down to an argument that a war had to be delayed."

TAPE: CUT #12: MUSIC - TCHAIKOVSKY'S PIANO TRIO

JL: The controversy over post-war planning for Iraq is likely to remain a controversial and even partisan issue in the coming months, particularly during this election year. For Dateline, I'm Judith Latham.