The History of the Iraq War

The US Army has taken an academic look at the era of the Iraq War that spun the conflict out of control and caused the chain of events which led to the demise of Donald Rumsfeld and the rise of General David Petraeus.

A new Army history of the service's performance in Iraq immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein faults military and civilian leaders for their planning for the war's aftermath, and it suggests that the Pentagon's current way of using troops is breaking the Army National Guard and Army Reserve.

The study, "On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign," is an unclassified and unhindered look at U.S. Army operations in Iraq from May 2003 to January 2005. That critical era of the war has drawn widespread criticism because of a failure to anticipate the rise of an Iraqi insurgency and because policymakers provided too few U.S. troops and no strategy to maintain order after Iraq's decades-old regime was overthrown.

Donald P. Wright and Col. Timothy R. Reese, who authored the report along with the Army's Contemporary Operations Study Team, conclude that U.S. commanders and civilian leaders were too focused on only the military victory and lacked a realistic vision of what Iraq would look like following that triumph.

The study is worth a look--simply because it is one that actually lists the correct blame. If the military can continue to do these types of studies, there's a better chance the mistakes that were made won't be repeated.

The study can be found at this link.

--WS