How we blew it in Iraq

Most of the attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq since “the end of hostilities” have come mainly from remnants of Saddam Hussein’s military forces, which have shed their uniforms and faded into the civilian populace.

This would not have happened if the U.S. had properly prepared for the invasion of Iraq by ensuring it had sufficient military police and rear-guard forces to incarcerate Iraqi prisoners – many thousands of whom had to be released rather than held and properly interrogated.

Not only did the U.S. not have enough MPs, it also did not have enough Arabic-language interrogators in Iraq.

Now we are fighting a guerrilla war that may last months or years and claim unknown casualties, in part, because of inadequate planning and preparation for the invasion.

Is this second-guessing?

No, I supported the war from the get-go. And, as early as last fall, reported about these problems when they still could be addressed in plenty of time by U.S. military planners.

I don’t let my support for the Iraqi campaign allow me to be blinded to the war’s problems. I don’t let my view of the war’s problems blind me to the rightness of the war’s goals and objectives.

According to the latest confirming information obtained by WorldNetDaily, the Pentagon underestimated the number of military police and Arabic-speaking interrogators it would need to occupy Iraq – and, yes, these miscalculations have left U.S. troops more vulnerable to attack.

War planners originally wanted an additional detention facility to hold Iraqi prisoners, but the idea was abandoned because they didn’t have enough MPs to support it.

Because they didn’t have the manpower to support another detention facility, they simply downgraded the number of prisoners of war they anticipated.

Going into the action, U.S. military officials knew they would not be able to hold all of the Iraqi prisoners they expected to surrender. So, they turned them loose – by the hundreds, by the thousands. Oftentimes these prisoners would not even be interrogated in Arabic before being released.

“The amazing thing is that the decision was made to ignore the problem, as opposed to, say, training a bunch of reserves or infantry guys to perform guard-duty missions at POW compounds,” said one candid official.

We will never know how many lives this miscalculation cost. But even the Pentagon admits most of the recent casualties have been the result of attacks by Iraqi soldiers – some of whom undoubtedly were captured and released.

Since May 1, 30 American soldiers have been killed. Another 180 have been wounded.

An even larger concern among planners is the lack of reliable human intelligence on the ground. Some officials now think Saddam Hussein’s forces planned all along to offer only limited resistance during the invasion, then count on sustained urban warfare to drive out our occupying forces later.

And that’s where we find ourselves today.

It’s not too late to salvage this operation. But the Pentagon needs to come clean, admit to mistakes and correct them as quickly as possible.

While the U.S. is actively contemplating more military and peacekeeping missions around the world, there are critical lessons to be learned from the Iraqi operation.

But the first step in learning lessons and applying them to future conflicts is honest assessment of the flaws in previous campaigns.

There are 145,000 U.S. troops still in Iraq. We need to protect them. We need to finish the mission. We need to bring them home when the mission is completed.
All of this has been complicated by some poor planning. I take no comfort or pleasure in saying, “I told you so.”