U.S. plan low-balled Iraq costs, strategist says
Victory the focus, not nation building
By BARRIE McKENNA
Thursday, April 15, 2004 - Page A11
WASHINGTON -- A top U.S. military strategist says the Bush administration's war in Iraq was crafted to be quick and cheap, crippling longer-term efforts to build a stable and democratic country.
The administration "either misunderstood or, worse, wished away" the hard slogging required to build a country, exposing serious flaws in the way the United States is waging its war against terrorism, according to a hard-hitting paper by Lieutenant-Colonel Antulio Echevarria of the U.S. Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute.
"The desire
to win the war quickly and on the cheap," says Col. Echevarria, a prominent military thinker and director of the institute, based in Carlisle, Pa.
President George W. Bush insisted this week that the core U.S. objective in Iraq is to forge "an independent, free and secure Iraq."
Yet the Pentagon's Iraq "shock-and-awe" blueprint was focused not on nation building but on "achieving rapid military victories" with a nimble and small ground force "equipped only to win battles, not wars," Col. Echevarria says in his paper.
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