Chain of Command: The Road From 911 to Abu Ghraib by Hersh, Seymour M. [Harper Perennial, 2005] (Paperback) [Paperback] by Hersh

Author:Hersh [Hersh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Journalism, Politics, War, United States, History, Non-Fiction, Political Science
Amazon: B00MCA7YWS
Goodreads: 123674109
Publisher: Harper Perennial,2005
Published: 2003-12-31T17:01:40+00:00

More than five hundred thousand American soldiers took part in the first Gulf War, and, in early 2002, military planners at CENTCOM, in Tampa, were insisting that at least six combat divisions— roughly a hundred and fifty thousand troops—would be needed for another invasion. In an article published in the March/April 2002 issue of Foreign Affairs, Kenneth Pollack, the director of Persian Gulf affairs for the N.S.C. during the Clinton Administration, provided the following assessment:

Some light infantry will be required in case Saddam’s loyalists fight in Iraq’s cities. Air-mobile forces will be needed to seize Iraq’s oil fields at the start of hostilities and to occupy the sites from which Saddam could launch missiles against Israel or Saudi Arabia. And troops will have to be available for occupation duties once the fighting is over. All told, the force should total roughly two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand people; for the invasion, between four and six divisions plus supporting units, and for the air campaign seven hundred to a thousand aircraft and anywhere from one to five carrier battle groups… . Building up such a force in the Persian Gulf would take three to five months, but the campaign itself would take probably about a month, including the opening air operations.

The hawks in and around the Administration, including Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, were arguing, however, that any show of force would immediately trigger a revolt against Saddam within Iraq, and that it would quickly expand. When I spoke to Perle in early 2002, he dismissed the widely publicized concerns expressed by Iraq’s regional neighbors, who expect prolonged civil war and chaos if the Iraqi Army stood and fought. “Arabs are like most people,” Perle told me. “They like winners, and will go with the winners all the time.” And General Downing, who ran a Special Forces command during the Gulf War, criticized the Pentagon for its elaborate planning and heavy-force requirements, telling his I.N.C. colleagues that if five thousand troops could do the job, the Pentagon would insist on at least five times as many.

A key player in the discussion of troop needs was Army General Tommy Franks, who, as the head of CENTCOM, would be in charge of a war in Iraq—and had been directing the increasingly difficult operation in Afghanistan. In early 2002, senior Administration officials told me that Franks was still following in the path of his predecessor, General Zinni, and insisting, despite pressure from civilians in the Pentagon, on an intense and careful American buildup in the region before Iraq could be attacked. “Franks is hanging tough,” one of Armitage’s associates told me in February 2002. Marine Corps planners were depicted as less sanguine than their counterparts in the other Armed Services about the ability of a smaller American force to topple the regime. “The Army and Air Force are ready to go,” Armitage’s associate continued. “So it’s ‘Let’s go work on the Marines.’ The Marines are digging in and are not going to go”—that is, not going to lower estimates of the forces needed.

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