IRAQ WAR A “MAJOR DEBACLE”

A highly critical report written by Joseph Collins, a former senior Pentagon official, and published by the National Institute for Strategic studies, a Department of Defense research center, casts doubt on Bush’s prevision of a U.S. victory in Iraq calling the war a “major debacle” and its outcome “in doubt.”

 

According to the study, the strategy of the Bush administration has been undermined, time and again, by the former Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who bypassed the Joint Chief of Staff in most of the decisions he made and inveigled military commanders into reshaping their units into compact forces with higher mobility and engaging into lightening fast operations. Such concepts were the total opposite of what would have been needed to achieve success in Iraq. The report also lays the blame at the feet of Bush’s imperious senior national security advisors at the time Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley who advised in favor of using military power and pressure when diplomacy was the better option.

 

The report, however, failed to discuss Paul Bremer’s strategic blunders as the viceroy of Iraq following the fall of the Ba’athist regime. Paul Bremer was in such a disconnect with Iraqi homebred leadership and unaware of the extent of disarray brewing just outside the heavily guarded gates of the People’s Palace, that he signed and obdurately enacted laws that have proven to be disastrous to the overall U.S. strategy in Iraq.

 

The report concludes that instead of enhancing the U.S. national security, the Bush administration’s strategy has turned Iraq into “an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East.” In addition to dramatically straining the U.S. armed forces, this strategy has exacted on the U.S. a serious political cost and damaged its standing in the world.