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| Iraq |
| Timing, weaknesses in Iraqi offensive surprised Bush administration |
| 2008-04-03 |
| The Bush administration was caught off-guard by the first Iraqi-led military offensive since the fall of Saddam Hussein , a weeklong thrust in southern Iraq whose paltry results have silenced talk at the Pentagon of further U.S. troop withdrawals any time soon. President Bush last week declared the offensive, which ended Sunday, "a defining moment" in Iraq's history. That may prove to be true, but in recent days senior U.S. officials have backed away from the operation, which ended with Shiite militias still in place in Basra, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki possibly weakened and a de facto cease-fire brokered by an Iranian general. "There is no empirical evidence that the Iraqi forces can stand up" on their own, a senior U.S. military official in Washington said, reflecting the frustration of some at the Pentagon. Having Iraqi forces take a leadership role in combating militias and Islamic extremists was crucial to U.S. hopes of withdrawing more American forces in Iraq and reducing the severe strains the Iraq war has put on the Army and Marine Corps . The Questions remain about how much Bush and his top aides knew in advance about the offensive and whether they encouraged Maliki to confront radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr. A senior U.S. lawmaker and four military officials said Tuesday that the Americans were aware in general terms of the coming offensive, but were surprised by the timing and by the Iraqis' almost immediate need for U.S. air support and other help. One senior U.S. military commander in Iraq said the Iraqi government originally told the United States about a longer-term plan to rid Basra of rogue elements. But Maliki changed the timing, and the nature of the Iraqi operation changed, he said. "The planning was not done under our auspices at all," the American commander said. The plan changed because "the prime minister got impatient." There's no evidence, however, that the U.S. tried to dissuade Maliki from executing either plan. "My instinct is that we knew but did not anticipate" that American forces would be called on to help, said Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Biden stressed that he's still seeking information from the Bush administration on the matter. Biden, who'll hold hearings on Iraq over the next 10 days, spoke shortly before lawmakers were to be briefed on an updated, classified National Intelligence Estimate on security, political and economic trends in Iraq. Another senior American military official in Baghdad said Maliki notified Army Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq , and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker less than two days before launching the operation. "By then it was a done deal," this official said. The apparent misjudgment of the Iraqi security forces' capabilities and the strength of Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, as well as the revived political controversy over the war, come at an inopportune moment for the White House. Petraeus and Crocker are due to testify to Congress next week about the strategy in Iraq now that the 30,000 troops Bush ordered there in a "surge" are being withdrawn. In the larger sense, "this is a reminder that nothing has changed," said a senior State Department official. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #6 Warren P. Strobel and Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy Newspapers |
| Posted by: RD 2008-04-03 12:57 |
| #5 I'm beginning to this our (also my) denotation of the Mahdi army as tatertots is becoming outdated. Maybe the ones who did most of the fighting were, in effect, mercenaries paid by Iraqi agents of the Iranian Republican Guard (who are thus doing a type of outsourcing). |
| Posted by: mhw 2008-04-03 10:03 |
| #4 This is the best the MSM can do to make a Tet. In the end they'll be as effective as reporting the Patriots won the Super Bowl by the close of the third quarter. Nice try. However, there are enough independent viewers who can see the whole game to report otherwise. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-04-03 09:58 |
| #3 i agree with much in the above comments, though Id say that the Tatertots were that well trained in urban defense, and that the IA has so few quality units that they have to hoard them as precious even in a showdown with perhaps their principle (nominal) enemy, is precisely the point, though it can be spun in either direction. As for who in the Pentagon is speaking for withdrawl against Petraeus, I dont think its a secret that lots of folks in the Dept of the Army, both civie and brass, dont think the incremental benefits of keeping 140,000 troops in Iraq through Jan '09 (as opposed to taking out one or two brigades in or right after mid '08) are worth the continued strain on the Army (mainly on non-coms and mid ranking officers) |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2008-04-03 09:11 |
| #2 There are a huge number of "devils in the details" with this story. To start with, the Iraqis have no air power at all, much less the ability to deliver less destructive explosives in a populated area--so how are they expected to magically sweep away bad guys without destroying a large part of town? Yet without these, they would have to use and risk many more infantry as well, suffering much higher casualties--against people trained by the Iranians to set up ambushes and other traps. On top of that, who the hell in the Pentagon is speaking out of turn, calling for troop reductions against the wishes of the field commanders? It is good to shut them up under any circumstances--along with the anti-war politicians hoping to make hay by demanding faster withdrawls. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-04-03 08:42 |
| #1 Reminds me a bit of First Fallujah - bad guys were getting bloodied so a truce was reached & losing side declared winners. Substitute Mehdi's for AQ and Iraqi Force for US force. In both it was quickly obvious that crushing the bad guys would cause more collateral damage than was politically acceptable at the time. Time will tell if Second Fallujah is repeated. |
| Posted by: Menhadden Snogum6713 2008-04-03 08:05 |