"Operation Bonehead' By Richard Sale

Author of Clinton’s Secret Wars

The Aspen Security Forum meets every summer and features notable foreign policy officials such as Admiral William McRaven, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), and Gen. Keith Alexander, head of the U.S. military’s cyber war efforts. During a discussion last week, participants were floored when Stephen Cambone, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s undersecretary of defense for intelligence, described the U.S. decision to invade Iraq in 2003 as, “one of the great strategic decisions of the first half of the 21st century, if … not the greatest.” He said the results of the decision resulted in “the aftershocks that you see flowing through the region, whether it be in Libya, or in Egypt, or now in Syria.” All the region’s latest developments “can be traced to it,” he said. As a piece of effrontery, this has perhaps few equals. Think about it for a minute. Imagine luring your country into a war based on false premises, on dubious and contaminated information to remove an Arab leader and destroy his nuclear weapons that were allegedly threatening the peace of the world.

To put it more clearly, in 2003, the United States decided to make war on Iraq, conquer it, remove its existing political institutions, and then, under U.S. leadership, turn the place into a popular democracy powered by a free market economy. This miracle was to occur in an Islamic culture whose roots stretched back to the days of Abraham and Ezekiel. True, the initial U.S. military victory was stunning. The invasion of Iraq lasted from March 20 until April 9, and the recently deceased military historian John Keegan described the fighting as a “lightning campaign so complete in its results as to be almost unprecedented,” making “incredible gains at possibly the lowest casualty rate of any U.S. campaign in its history.” No nuclear weapons were discovered. In most cases, defeating a nation in battle is not the best way to turn it into a dependable ally. Vice President Richard Cheney declared pompously that American troops in Iraq “will be greeted as liberators,” but the aftermath of the victory was not a liberation. It was a rousing, disheartening mess. We were occupiers, not liberators, and unfortunately, we were very incompetent occupiers. We did not move to take any of those actions that most responsible occupiers take, such as using the administrative talents of indigenous officials to restore order and public services, directing civilians to return to work, imposing curfews, or controlling the populace and the local governments.

 Instead, the U.S. victory became famous for its failure to create an effective, interim government, its inability to hire government and essential employees, or to even take steps to ensure that Iraq still had a functional judiciary. Thomas Ricks’ excellent book “Fiasco,” noted that much of the trouble was due “to a lack of understanding or interest” among senior U.S. military commanders. As one U.S. army colonel said, “No one had talked about what would happen when we got here.” The U.S. military had not left in place any Iraqi group able to govern effectively and, blinded by ideology, the Bush administration lacked the requisite rudimentary knowledge of Iraqi culture to be able to enlist its people as partners in a functioning society. Cambone, like Cheney, and other neocons like Paul Wolfowitz, Ken Adelman, Mike Ledeen, was right in the middle of this administrative paralysis and intellectual denseness. The ruling Baath Party was portrayed by Cheney and Cambone as a Middle East version of Nazis, and they were hostile to any idea that it had useful talents. Instead Cambone and company aimed to destroy it, issuing orders to terminate the employment of any Baathists.

Thousands of influential Iraqis were fired, their only crime being that they had become party members under a despotic system. They had joined the party in the same spirit that they wore clothes to work – it was the accepted thing to do. There were 45,000 Baathists in the city of Fallujah alone. The Iraqi Army was the topic of supreme importance for the U.S. forces in Iraq. Yet from the beginning the neocons saw the Baath Party as a hostile force, a menace to U.S. forces. L. Paul Bremmer III, the chief U.S. civilian official in Iraq, had been warned by a senior CIA official not to touch the army or the Baath. “You do it,” the agency official said, “by night fall you will have driven 30,000 to 50,000 Baathists underground.” Bremmer, unfortunately, was a man who could never make the distinction between a boss and a leader, and in May of 2003, he ended up throwing out tens of thousands of Iraqi’s who were Baathists, and he then reached the acme of his stupidity – he destroyed the Iraqi Army. He disbanded it. All nations have a center of gravity.

In Iraq, that center of gravity was its army. As Pat Lang once said to me, Iraq’s army “was the soul of the country,” deeply respected by the Iraqi people. And in an interview with me, former CentCom commander Gen. Anthony Zinni said that having an effective functioning Iraqi Army had always been a key element in CentCom’s planning. The 2003 conquest of Iraq was in no way designed to induce instability in the army, he said. During the 1998 bombing of Iraq, called Operation Desert Fox, he had never dropped a single bomb on the Iraqi Army, and said, “The army was the solid ground under the feet of the Iraqi people.” It was then that Cambone, Cheney and Bremmer began to work to destroy it. Bremmer was warned to leave it be, but he destroyed it anyway. By firing an army of over 385,000 people, Bremmer’s orders also shut down 285,000 jobs in the Ministry of Interior, including domestic security forces and the presidential security units, a task force of some 50,000, and they decapitated the police forces. All of these would form a group of humiliated, injured, insulted and highly politicized men and women who no longer saw the U.S. as a liberator, but an enemy.

“You just blindsided CentCom,” said Bremmer’s military aide when he heard of the Iraqi Army’s fate. Bremmer next began a program to move Iraq into a free-market economy, shutting down the profitable state-run industries that so many depended on for their livelihood. Just after that the looting of Baghdad began, with one U.S. official watching in bewilderment as an Iraqi carried a sofa on his head, moving slowly down the crowded street. Lord Acton said we had to judge a human being by the worst act they ever committed. He was very firm in stating that “Different ages cannot have different moral standards; what is wrong in one age must be wrong in another, for the moral law is timeless.” Acton’s view of the supremacy of the moral law led him to condemn the inclination to excuse the sins or failures of a period as due to the ‘spirit of the time.’ He also once observed that “Wrong is itself a thing of evil, even though it may be victorious.” But for a man to confess a terrible act, to honor some ethical law superior to himself, requires that he is endowed with a refined, discerning conscience that honors certain ideals and values that enable him to judge as he does. So how does such a conscience judge a series of acts as utterly and completely corrupt as the 2003 invasion of Iraq? Or does the question even occur to the Cambones of the world? (“The Unanswered Question.” A few words on Saddam’s WMD will come next.)

Comments

[par4]

A stunning victory! We drove tanks through small arms fire all the way to Baghdad.

[FB Ali]

"... in 2003, the United States decided to make war on Iraq..."

There is a video of a 2007 talk by Gen Wesley Clark in which he recounts how he learnt first-hand that the administration had decided to invade Iraq in 2001, shortly after 9/11 (as Richard Clarke has also asserted). Wesley Clark also says that the neocons then in control of US policy had decided to invade six other MENA countries after Iraq was sorted out.

Considering what has happened since, it appears that the neocons of the Project for the New American Century continued to control US policy even after the Bush administration.

The Wesley Clark video can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha1rEhovONU.

[Jim Ticehurst]

Richard.."Operation Bonehead" Indeed....and a very Interesting Read..

There a very Interesting and Enlightening Article over at the "Counterpunch" website by Jeffrey St. Clair about all the background on Stephen Cambone..which He titles"Rumsfelds Enforcer"..It is a Excerpt from St.Clairs 2005 Book..He titled.."Grand Theft Pentagon,Tales of Corruption and Profiteering in The War on Terror.."

It makes very clear,The Ruthless, Fanatical determination of the Cheney/Rumsfled NeoCons..and how they Operated ..and how Cambone got His then newly Created Position as Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence..That position gave Cambone access to virtually every Intelligence Agency in the Government during "W's" Administration..

I dont think it took the NeoCons much Effort to turn W's focus away from Afghanistan to Iraq..the real Objective..All they had to do was tell "W"..it gave him (via the Military) the opportunity to "Get the Man..(Hussein) who tryed to kill His Daddy"..

Then they had to Convince a Reluctant UN to go along with Invasion Plans...they Dummied up the Intel to Include WMD's... even Russia went along then..The Rest is History..

No..It does not affect the Cambones of the World..or any other Zealot who believes the End Justifys the Means..

I hve no doubt, there is one other Middle East State that was very happy with the complete destruction of Iraqs Government and Military..and attended those Interrogations at Abu Grab..

My Concern is I suspect that Russia may be the Super Power that steps in to the Rebuild Iraqs Military..and I would watch for such buildup of Russian Planes and tanks..etc..

There was jothing Honorable or Ethical about his Neo....
Con Job...or its among its Neo Nutty Professors..

[confusedponderer]

I recall that when I showed said video to a self described conservative conversation partner at the time, he dismissed it as 'biased' and a political smear because Clark was a democrat. No kidding. Our conversation was a lot like hat.

[Gorgon Stared]

the victors get to write history, they say. And in Texas, that just means the State textbook board. If they can wipe Jefferson from American history, they can surely put W on Mt Rushmore.

[MRW]

BRAVO!

[And Bremer is spelled with one "m."]

[Alba Etie]

And if you look around at the Romney camp followers -you have the same neocon true believers citing the same neocon balderdash . Would any thinking American truly vote for a Secretary of State John Bolton ? But given the state of the civil war in Syria -BHO is not much different then Romney on foreign misadventures .

[Babak Makkinejad]

All:

My understanding has been that Ambassador Bremer carried out orders received from the White House.

[Walrus]

I knew America was going to invade someplace shortly after 9/11 because the word had got out to the aerospace industry. F18 carbon fibre flaps have a relatively short lifespan. The local Boeing plant was told "increase production and build F18 flaps as fast as you can go. We will take everything you can make."

[Tyler]

The problem is that Romney is the same globalist that Obama is, i.e. invade the world/invite the world/inhoc to the world, supported by the same monied interests. He is as far from conservative principals as Obama, just with a different sort of coating.

I've talked about on my blog about how the term 'conservative' has about zero meaning nowadays except "kinda doesn't like abortion or taxing businesses".

[CK]

"who believes the End Justifys the Means.." If it doesn't, what does?
Since the Col. has quoted him recently, let me add one of my favourite quotes of his:
“Anyone who clings to the historically untrue -- and -- thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never solves anything I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler would referee. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor; and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms.”
Robert A. Heinlein.
A thing solved is a thing that has an end.

[Alba Etie]

"Meet the new Boss same as the old Boss"
There are some dead ender Ron Paul supporters here in Central Texas that swear their are now enough disaffected Romney delegates to upend his nomination . When you say monied interest would that include the Koch Brothers ? What is your blog address please ?

[mbrenner]

It has been pretty much determined that Bremer's instructions came directly from Cheney in a face-to-meeting before he flew off. We do not know if Bush gave his approval or nod.

Another word about Cambone. i knew him quite well in the late 1990s when I spent at year at INSS in the National Defense University. Cambone was interim Director. He was very much one of the New American Century crowd and Rumsfeld's right hand man on that missile defense study. But he, at the time, was intelligent, well educated, could engage in a reasoned discussion and a decent man. Now, he is..we know what he has become. This is a striking case of the personality deformation that has accompanied passionate devotion to dogma. There are many others who have become relatively more dogmatic, and unresponsive to either evidence or logic, over the past 12 years - where ever the exact starting point. The lasting consequences of this phenomenon are continuing to register - and that, I believe, is the most costly effect of America's political class having lost its bearings post-9/11.

[confusedponderer]

Such indicators are what I would look for if I was seeking strategic intelligence.

[Tyler]

Yes, the Koch Brothers are indeed the 'monied' interests of the Republicans, and those interests are ascendant right now in the party with the social conservatives and constitutionalists shunted off to one side.

Romney, from his obvious pandering or lack of what he says is quickly revealing himself as another northeast Republican liberal lite. He will continue in Obama's mold as interested only in gutting the Constitution, rally for more wars, and doing everything he can to stuff it in our ass in the name of his monied interests. The only difference between Obama and Romney is who gets the money from us getting stuffed in the ass: in Obama's case its the various racial lobbies who are getting the wealth.

I guess you can call me a Ron Paul 'dead ender' as well. I will not vote for Romney based off his views on immigration alone. The last thing we need is another GWB situation where we have yet ANOTHER Republican stabbing us in the back in order to appease Beltway know it alls who think that is the only way to appeal to some sort of nebulous hispanic vote.

I am @ sonoransurvivor.blogspot.com.