1999 war games foresaw problems in Iraq

[sabra]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1152AP_Iraq_War_Games.html

1999 war games foresaw problems in Iraq
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government conducted a series of secret war games in 1999 that anticipated an invasion of Iraq would require 400,000 troops, and even then chaos might ensue.

In its "Desert Crossing" games, 70 military, diplomatic and intelligence officials assumed the high troop levels would be needed to keep order, seal borders and take care of other security needs.

The documents came to light Saturday through a Freedom of Information Act request by the George Washington University's National Security Archive, an independent research institute and library.

"The conventional wisdom is the U.S. mistake in Iraq was not enough troops," said Thomas Blanton, the archive's director. "But the Desert Crossing war game in 1999 suggests we would have ended up with a failed state even with 400,000 troops on the ground."

[razors edge]

1. So many so called leaders

will ignore evidence that shows their ideology is flawed, a good psychoanalysis should be a prerequisite to office.

Can you imagine a world where any leader who lost a life due to his decision is held to the same standards as a manager who sends people to work in dangerous employment, like I am?

[tuvor]

2. They didn't look at anything Clinton left behind, did they?

[pinto]

3. I really believe they tossed all the info left to them by the Clinton Administration,

chose to ignore it out of sheer ideological hubris, and that the occupation of Iraq was going to fail, irregardless.

[UpInArms]

5. this article attempts to spin what the PNAC wanted from this

administration - and to throw the scent back at the Clinton admin.

More bushit.

[UpInArms]

4. ("F*** Saddam") "We're taking him out." GWB March 2002

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,235395,00.html

Posted Sunday, May. 05, 2002
Two months ago, a group of Republican and Democratic Senators went to the White House to meet with Condoleezza Rice, the President's National Security Adviser. Bush was not scheduled to attend but poked his head in anyway — and soon turned the discussion to Iraq. The President has strong feelings about Saddam Hussein (you might too if the man had tried to assassinate your father, which Saddam attempted to do when former President George Bush visited Kuwait in 1993) and did not try to hide them. He showed little interest in debating what to do about Saddam. Instead, he became notably animated, according to one person in the room, used a vulgar epithet to refer to Saddam and concluded with four words that left no one in doubt about Bush's intentions: "We're taking him out."

Dick Cheney carried the same message to Capitol Hill in late March. The Vice President dropped by a Senate Republican policy lunch soon after his 10-day tour of the Middle East — the one meant to drum up support for a U.S. military strike against Iraq. As everyone in the room well knew, his mission had been thrown off course by the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. But Cheney hadn't lost focus. Before he spoke, he said no one should repeat what he said, and Senators and staff members promptly put down their pens and pencils. Then he gave them some surprising news. The question was no longer if the U.S. would attack Iraq, he said. The only question was when.

The U.S. appears ready to do whatever it takes to get rid of the Iraqi dictator once and for all. But while there is plenty of will, there still is no clearly effective way to move against Saddam. Senior Administration officials at the highest levels of planning say there are few good options. Saddam's internal security makes a successful coup unlikely. The Iraqi opposition is weak and scattered. And this is a war that the rest of the world, with the possible exception of Britain, is not eager for America to wage. While key allies in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, would be more than happy to see Saddam go, they are too busy worrying about their own angry citizens — and quietly profiting from trade with Iraq — to help. A senior Arab official needed only one word to sum up the region's view of any possible military action: "Ridiculous." Yet Cheney gave the Senate policy lunch a very different view. He said the same European and Middle Eastern allies who publicly denounce a possible military strike had privately supported the idea.

Maybe so, but even the Administration has conceded that the Middle East crisis has shoved action against Iraq onto the back burner. When the White House announced a Middle East peace conference last week, a senior Administration official said, "This is a detour, and we have to get around it." Hard-liners, however, think delaying an attack against Saddam because of the Middle East conflict simply means giving him breathing space to perfect his weapons of mass destruction. "Time is not on our side, and Saddam is running out the clock," says Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, a conservative think tank.

<snip>

A front-page story in the New York Times on April 28 claimed that Bush had all but settled on a full-scale ground invasion of Iraq early next year with between 70,000 and 250,000 U.S. troops. But military and civilian officials insist that there is no finalized battle plan or timetable — and that Bush has not even been presented with a formal list of options. Instead, the Times story, with its vision of a large-scale troop deployment, seems to have been the latest volley in the bureaucratic war at home, leaked by uniformed officers who think some of their civilian overseers have been downplaying the size and difficulty of an attack.

...more...

(edited because I left out the paragraph that showed Dimson was determined to use between 70,000 and 250,000 troops)

[BrotherBuzz]

6. And Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper PROVED it in 2002

War games rigged?

General says Millennium Challenge 02 ‘was almost entirely scripted’

By Sean D. Naylor
Times staff writer

The most elaborate war game the U.S. military has ever held was rigged so that it appeared to validate the modern, joint-service war-fighting concepts it was supposed to be testing, according to the retired Marine lieutenant general who commanded the game’s Opposing Force.

That general, Paul Van Riper, said he worries the United States will send troops into combat using doctrine and weapons systems based on false conclusions from the recently concluded Millennium Challenge 02. He was so frustrated with the rigged exercise that he said he quit midway through the game.

He said that rather than test forces against an unpredictable enemy, the exercise “was almost entirely scripted to ensure a ‘win.’ ”

His complaints prompted an impassioned defense of the war game from Vice Adm. Marty Mayer, the deputy commander of Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va. The command, which sponsored and ran the war game, is the four-star headquarters charged with developing the military’s joint concepts and requirements.

<more>

http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1060102.php

[Skink]

7. I thought they had managed to suppress any FOIA requests.

[burrowowl]

8. Why are we not

SURPRISED!

[ovidsen]

9. Arrogance and ignorace

What a tragic combination.

Every day I have read posts such as this and think, "Is it really this bad?"

And then another post such as this comes along and I have to conclude, "Yes it is."

And yes, I have had enough. Thanks for the inspiration. Not that I really needed it, but it's great stuff to pass along.

[Heidi]

10. Kick.

:kick:

[dbt]

11. Clinton's response to the PNAC Letter?

VERY interesting that this was:

1. Classified.
2. Declassified in 2004.
3. Declassified AT ALL.

I would have shoved it right up the collective ass of PNAC, but I'm sure The Clenis had other fields to plow...

:evilgrin:
dbt
Remember New Orleans

[Pachamama]

12. My Stepfather, a retired Colonel in the Army just forwarded this news to me along w/ the editorial

in the Army Times calling for Rumsfeld's firing!

My Stepfather is a lifelong Republican....and he's disgusted with Bush and Rumsfeld....

:kick:

[Garbo 2004]

13. Link to docs released to Nat'l Security Archive re: 1999 war games

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB207/index.htm

From intro on the site:

...Zinni commented in depth publicly about Desert Crossing at UCLA in 2004 where he discussed the origins of the plan in the wake of the Desert Fox bombing campaign in 1998:

And it struck me then that we had a plan to defeat Saddam's army, but we didn't have a plan to rebuild Iraq. And so I asked the different agencies of government to come together to talk about reconstruction planning for Iraq. . . . I thought we ought to look at political reconstruction, economic reconstruction, security reconstruction, humanitarian need, services, and infrastructure development. We met in Washington, DC. We called the plan, and we gamed it out in the scenario, Desert Crossing. (Note 4)

Zinni noted the parallels to what eventually happened after the invasion as well as to the lack of interest elsewhere in the U.S. government for tackling the problems of reconstruction:

The first meeting surfaced all the problems that have exactly happened now. This was 1999. And when I took it back and looked at it, I said, we need a plan. Not all of this is a military responsibility. I went back to State Department, to the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, Department of Commerce and others and said, all right, how about you guys taking part of the plan. We need a plan in addition to the war plan for the reconstruction. Not interested. Would not look at it. (Note 5)

So the General decided to take action himself -- "because I was convinced nobody in Washington was going to plan for it, and we, the military, would get stuck with it."

Zinni claimed that his report had been forgotten only a few years later, stating: "When it looked like we were going in , I called back down to CENTCOM and said, 'You need to dust off Desert Crossing.' They said, 'What's that? Never heard of it.' So in a matter of just a few years it was gone. The corporate memory. And in addition I was told, 'We've been told not to do any of the planning. It would all be done in the Pentagon.'" (Note 6)

[TexasLawyer]

14. kick

[FernBell]

15. great, just great

[minnesota_liberal]

16. Any "intelligence" that conflicts with our grand plan is suspect,

regardless of the source. And anyone who'd bring it up as evidence that bush2 (et al) screwed up is part of the "Blame America First" group and is siding with the terrorists.

Besides, we didn't read the report, so it doesn't count.