Geez. Via memeorandum this morning, there's another fine example of MSM butchery of a complicated topic into a preset narrative that is more to the reporters liking. Today the example is a McClatchy article about a study on the prewar planning and what happened in Iraq after the major combat mission of deposing Saddam had been accomplished. To its credit, McClatchy provides a link to the actual report. Unfortunately for them that only exposes the hack nature of their reporting through the use of selective quotes. It also shows them doing a disservice to the author of the study, Dr. Joseph J. Collins, who has put together what I think is actually a very good study of not only what went right and what went wrong, but how things went wrong and what we should do to fix those problems.
You wouldn't expect that from the opening line of the study, which the reporters grabbed onto like a shark on a seal pup: "Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle." I will certainly agree with Dr. Collins that Iraq is a major war, but I disagree that it's a major debacle. "Debacle" is a loaded and subjective word and applying it broadly to our efforts in Iraq is inappropriate I think. There have indeed been specific debacles in Iraq, for example I think it's fair to say that Abu Ghraib was a major debacle, but saying that the current status of the mission in Iraq is that of a debacle overall is wrong I think(or even the status in November of 2007 when it appears that this study was done, it was first published now in April 2008). That's an area where people of good faith but differing perspectives can disagree though, and Dr. Collins is entitled to his opinion on that. I also take issue with how some of the other statements in the opening paragraphs are framed, but that is not a big problem when it comes to the meat of the study, which is really a "lessons learned" approach to the prewar planning for Iraq.
For those not familiar with the term "lessons learned", it is one of the more valuable methods the US military has adopted to learn from mistakes and disseminate those lessons, and to do so without wasting hard-learned experience. People have to be held accountable for mistakes, but mistakes are also natural in a complex and difficult environment. It's part of the learning process. Organizations that don't have a framework for understanding reasonable individual and organizational mistakes end up punishing and losing people who take reasonable risks, and they fail to expose and correct institutional weaknesses that may be the actual underlying cause of a mistake in the first place.* Those organizations end up risk-averse, dysfunctional, and ultimately destroyed by competitors. Or in the case of the military, killed by the enemy. Unless of course, the organization is a government bureaucracy. And that gets us back to Dr. Collins' study.
If you read the full study as I have, and I highly recommend that you do, it really is a "lessons learned" study on not only individuals such as Rumsfeld or President Bush, but also on bureaucracies such as the intelligence community and the State and Defense departments. Dr. Collins draws attention to serious flaws in how those individuals and bureaucracies interacted in the run-up to the war and afterward and he makes some excellent points.
The study goes into the context of the war and planning for it, the decision making process, and potential changes to "decision making, organizational, and operational systems". I don't want to do a reverse cherry-picking here because that wouldn't be fair to Dr. Collins either. But here are just a couple of things that illustrate the cherry-picking by the reporters and are notably absent from the story:
Saddam’s relationship with terrorists was always a concern. Years later, analysts would argue about whether Saddam had an operational relationship with al Qaeda, but in truth, his relationships with many terrorist groups were active and never in doubt. He was among the most active supporters of Palestinian terrorism. The Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a leftist, anti-Iranian terrorist/military force, was resident in Iraq, conducted operations against Iran, and cooperated with Saddam’s paramilitary and armed forces. Also, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who became al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, was resident for a time in a remote, Kurdish-controlled section of northern Iraq with his group, Ansar al-Islam, before the U.S. invasion. He had visited Baghdad and received medical treatment there.
...
In the run-up to the war, the radical Zarqawi was cooperating with both the
Ba’athist regime and al Qaeda. After establishing his reputation as the
most energetic Salafist terrorist leader in Iraq, he merged his group with
al Qaeda and became its post-Saddam emir.
or this:
I find nothing in credible sources to support the notion that the WMD threat was concocted by U.S. Government officials and then sold to a gullible public, nor do I believe that any one Iraqi source tricked us into our beliefs. No special offices within OSD or cabals of neoconservatives created the dominant perception of the danger of Iraqi WMD.
I throw those in just to prove the point that the McClatchy article is selective about what the study says. What is even more glaring is how it completely ignores the critique of the various bureaucracies and their failure to coordinate in the pre-war and post-major combat timeframes, and the proposals to fix those problems. That is what this study is truly about and it has some excellent information and perspective on what is a complicated and difficult process. I may not agree with all of the conclusions, but it looks to me to be a good starting point for understanding the individual mistakes and organizational flaws that impacted the planning before the war and the efforts to manage the aftermath.(Note: edited for clarity since first posted)
If I get some more time I'll try to highlight some key points, but for now I'll just point out again that the McClatchy article is a gross mis-characterization of the study and if you have the time it is well worth reading the study itself.
More: Small Wars Journal has some context from the author of the study and he takes exception with the article as it appeared in the Miami Herald:
The Miami Herald story ("Pentagon Study: War is a 'Debacle' ") distorts the nature of and intent of my personal research project. It was not an NDU study, nor was it a Pentagon study. Indeed, the implication of the Herald story was that this study was mostly about current events. Such is not the case. It was mainly about the period 2002-04. The story also hypes a number of paragraphs, many of which are quoted out of context. The study does not "lay much of the blame" on Secretary Rumsfeld for problems in the conduct of the war, nor does it say that he "bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff." It does not single out "Condoleeza Rice and Stephen Hadley" for criticism.
There's more at the link.
* As an aside on this, the inability to do lessons learned was a big factor in what happened at Abu Ghraib in my opinion. Back in May 2004 in one of my posts on the Taguba report, I noted how it appeared that the 320th MP Battalion, the one responsible for the area where detainee abuse occurred, had failed to properly investigate and learn from prior incidents, unlike other battalions within the 800th MP Brigade:
If you look at the Part Two Findings under section 34, a number of incidents (21) are noted. It's no coincidence that the ones involving the 320th MP Battalion mostly have "No information on findings, contributing factors, or corrective action has been provided to this investigation team." at the end. The few incidents that were investigated were investigated by a different Brigade. Note how the other incidents were investigated and the findings produced. This shows to some degree that in battalions other than the 320th, incidents were investigated and the effort made to learn and improve.
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