US failed to plan for post-war Iraq-report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An independent assessment of the
tumult in Iraq led by two top former presidential advisers
found the Bush administration had been unprepared for post-war
Iraq and had underestimated the number of troops needed in a
miscalculation that helped fuel the insurgency.

The report by a Council on Foreign Relations task force,
released on Wednesday, concluded that the failure to prepare
properly for the period after the war had given “early impetus
for the insurgency” now gripping the country.

The task force was headed by two former national security
advisers, Democrat Samuel “Sandy” Berger and Republican Brent
Scowcroft, and presented a bipartisan critique of the Bush
approach.

Scowcroft, national security adviser under President Gerald
Ford and George H.W. Bush, had warned publicly of the risks of
military action in Iraq in the run-up to the 2003 invasion.

“The critical miscalculation of Iraq war-planning was that
the stabilization and reconstruction mission would require no
more forces than the invasion itself,” the panel reported.

“Pre-war inattention to post-war requirements — or simply
misjudgments about them — left the United States ill-equipped
to address public security, governance and economic demands in
the immediate aftermath of the conflict, seriously undermining
key U.S. foreign policy goals and giving early impetus to the
insurgency,” it said.

It was released as turmoil continued to ravage Iraq despite
the presence of about 135,000 American troops, fueling
continuing doubts about the country’s future.

The report said President Bush still had not made the
changes in policy and government structure needed to respond to
future post-conflict situations and said this should be a top
foreign policy priority.

REBUILDING FAILED STATES

It noted that during the 1990s, action to stabilize and
rebuild states marked by conflict was often derided as “foreign
policy as social work.”

After the Sept 11, 2001 attacks, however, Bush and others
redefined the problem and acknowledged that weak states, like
Afghanistan, could become havens for extremists and accepted
that dealing with them was equally a humanitarian and national
security priority, it said.

But this acceptance “has yet to be matched by a
comprehensive policy or institutional capacity within the U.S.
government to engage successfully in stabilization and
reconstruction missions,” it said.

The administration made some welcome initial moves, like
establishing a multi-agency office for post-conflict
stabilization in the State Department, the report said.

Still, U.S. government responsibility for stabilization and
reconstruction operations is “diffuse and authority is
uncertain,” the report said.

Changes were urgently needed not just because of the
continued challenge of Iraq, it said.

“Failing states or those that are emerging from conflict
will remain a significant feature of the international
landscape for the foreseeable future, as will the corresponding
demand for the United States and others to address this
problem,” it concluded.

The task force on Iraq and post-conflict capabilities
included Republican and Democratic senators as well as former
senior U.S. foreign policy officials.