A nearly 700-page study released by the Army found that “in the euphoria of early 2003,” US-based commanders prematurely believed their goals in Iraq had been reached and did not send enough troops to handle the occupation.
US President George W. Bush’s statement on May 1, 2003, that major combat operations were over reinforced that view, the study said.
The study, written by Donald Wright and Colonel Timothy Reese of the Contemporary Operations Study Team at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, said that planners who requested more troops were ignored and that commanders in Baghdad were replaced without enough of a transition and lacked enough staff.
The report said that after Saddam’s regime was removed from power, most commanders and units expected to transition to stability and support operations, similar to what was seen in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Commanders with the mindset that victory had already been achieved believed that a post-combat Iraq would require “only a limited commitment by the US military and would be relatively peaceful and short as Iraqis quickly assumed responsibility,” the study said.
“Few commanders foresaw that full spectrum operations in Iraq would entail the simultaneous employment of offense, defense, stability, and support operations by units at all echelons of command to defeat new, vicious, and effective enemies,” it said.
The report said the first Bush administration and its advisers had assumed incorrectly that the Saddam regime would collapse after the first Gulf War.
When Saddam was so quickly defeated in 2003, there was an absence of authority that led to widespread looting and violence, the report said. Soldiers initially had no plan to deal with that.
The “post-war situation in Iraq was severely out of line with the suppositions made at nearly every level before the war,” the report said.
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