Obsessed with minimizing the size of the invading force, Rumsfeld dismissed advice from experts inside and outside government who argued for a larger contingent than the 140,000 or so troops sent into Iraq. His efforts "played havoc" with the military's preparations, according to the authors, and sowed the seeds for the anarchy that followed the fall of the Hussein regime. The plan that Central Command wrote under Rumsfeld's close supervision was also based on hopelessly optimistic Central Intelligence Agency predictions that Iraqi units would capitulate -- ie. not merely surrender but also change sides. "Rarely has a military plan depended on such a bold assumption," the authors write.
But although planning for the Iraq invasion began within weeks of al-Qaeda's Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US, a combination of hubris, arrogance, naivete and sheer incompetence meant that little attention was paid to what the military terms "Phase IV," or post-conflict operations. Rumsfeld insisted on the Defense Department being in charge of Phase IV. But Franks, whose responsibility it was to ensure that the US military was prepared for the occupation, "seemed content to leave the lion's share of the Phase IV planning to others in the government," the authors write. As late as Feb. 20, 2003, barely a month before the invasion, "there was no plan" for Phase IV, recalled a colonel on the staff of Jay Garner, a retired Army lieutenant general, whom Rumsfeld charged with overseeing the early phase of the occupation.
Cobra II provides fascinating insights into what went wrong in the first critical weeks after the fall of Baghdad. What stands out in particular is the frustration of the military leaders on the ground with decisions taken by their political bosses. Garner's replacement, Ambassador Paul Bremer, not only made the error of abolishing the Iraqi army, but compounded it by preventing the US military from holding local elections for fear that "the wrong guy" might win.
The consensus of the military leaders quoted in Cobra II is that these decisions, combined with the lack of enough troops to restore order, caused the US to miss a window of opportunity and lose the initiative in the weeks following the invasion. In a reference to the insurgency that erupted in the power vacuum created by these mistakes, Gordon and Trainor conclude that "none of this was inevitable."
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