Two tiny little corrections in the NY Times shouldn’t be very exciting, one would think — except that they involve quotations that the Times trumpeted last week and which were then echoed in analysis and criticism of the US war effort all week long.
First off, the Times quoted Dick Cheney as saying before the war that the Iraqi government was a “house of cards,” with the implication being that, since Iraq was still fighting (a whole two weeks later), the Administration had been woefully unprepared.
Except now the Times notes that, well, no, Cheney never said that. Other (unnamed) officials did, but not Cheney.
The Times had also quoted Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, commander of V Corps, as admitting, “The enemy we’re fighting is different from the one we war-gamed against.” See how unprepared and poorly led this whole thing was? Shocking!
Except that now the Times admits that the general actually said the enemy was “a bit” different. Not different. A bit different. Not so shocking.
The Times, presumably, regrets its errors.
(via InstaPundit)
Well now, let’s not forget that there have been a lot of “victories” “trumpeted” in the media that turned out not to be the case, too. Like the infamous “giant chemical weapons factory.” Or the infamous aluminum tubes. There’s lots of “Dewey Defeats Truman” stuff to go around.
And as for Wallace, I think despite the misquoting, the general concept remains. A senior military official comparing war games to the real thing has more than a little Onion about it.
I think the question asked of him, explicitly or implicitly, was how pre-war preparations and strategy planning had matched the real thing. Contrasting and comparing to the war games exercises that were run is a perfectly legitimate observation. I’d hope that there were war games run about how this campaign might go ahead of time. That’s the sort of thing the military is supposed to be doing when it’s not actually fighting.
Yes, there was a major wargame last summer. General Van Riper ran the Red, or Iraqi opposition.
When he sank the Blue Fleet in the Persian Gulf, they refloated it, saying he didn’t play fair.
He used mosques as a way of communicating orders. All sorts of low-tech approaches to war.
TPTB decided to push him aside, as he made hay of their carefully constructed models. This is why so many people were getting irked, Dave. Rummy’s concepts are dangerous for the type of war we’re fighting.
Sure, we may win this stage easily, but the long-term war for Iraq will be what we lose.
Oh, go here — http://www.gamersnook.com/blog/archives/001058.html#001058 — for the actual quotes by a number of the Chickenhawks.
While the Van Riper complaints on the Millennium Challenge exercise make for good sound bites, it’s not clear that they are necessarily valid.
As an example, if I’ve scheduled an hour with my staff to role-play some conflict resolution strategies, it’s not terribly helpful (even if it’s plausible) if five minutes in one of the people declares she’s gone postal and killed everyone with a gun she bought from home. I’d probably “reset” the players at that point, too.
And, as part of the limited time of the exercise, I might also declare by fiat that certain events have happened which, if we were role-playing everything, would take more time than we have, and which don’t necessarily test the concepts being discussed.
Given that the US Navy in the Gulf has not been successfully attacked by Iraqi suicide boats, I’m not sure how this pertains all that much, anyway.
As to the comments you cite by various people pre-war:
Perle: “Saddam is much weaker than we think he is. He’s weaker militarily. We know he’s got about a third of what he had in 1991. But it’s a house of cards. He rules by fear because he knows there is no underlying support. Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder. “
Saddam does seem to have been much weaker militarily than many thought. US forces drove to Baghdad within days of the invasion, without the huge aerial bombardment that preceded GW1. The “elite” Republican Guard divisions have been chewed up. Much of the regular Iraqi army has also fallen apart, been destroyed quickly, or surrendered.
Perle was wrong in thinking that the formal military organization would collapse immediately, but it’s collapsed a lot faster than a lot of anti-war folks thought it would.
Adelman: “I believe demolishing Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) It was a cakewalk last time; (2) they’ve become much weaker; (3) we’ve become much stronger; and (4) now we’re playing for keeps.”
“Cakewalk” is a bad term, and Adelman misunderstands the difference between wiping out the Iraqi military while they were in Kuwait with facing them while in Iraq. But aside from the “C” word, his sound bite analysis is not far off the mark.
Cheney: “The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but that they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that. My guess is even significant elements of the Republican Guard are likely as well to want to avoid conflict with the U.S. forces and are likely to step aside.”
Iraqis in the north certainly see us as liberators, from what I’ve seen. I’ve seen plenty of sound bites of Iraqis in the south greeting the US as liberators. If not every town has welcomed them with flowers and parades (though that’s happened, too), it’s entirely plausible (and supported by some comments so far) that it’s due to (a) the US not backing the rebellions post-GW1, and so folks not being sure if they’ll back out this time, too, and (b) Baathist “death squads” lurking in the wings, killing folks after the cameras and troops pass by if they waved to vigorously.
Rumsfeld: “The course of this war is clear. The outcome is clear. The regime of Saddam Hussein is gone. It’s over. It will not be there in a relatively reasonably predictable period of time. And the people in Iraq need to know that: that it will not be long before they will be liberated.”
Aside from it being 90% political rhetoric, I don’t see much wrong with that.
Wolfowitz: “Over and over, we hear reports of Iraqis here in the United States who manage to communicate with their friends and families in Iraq, and what they are hearing is amazing. Their friends and relatives want to know what is taking the Americans so long. When are you coming? In a meeting last week at the White House, one of these Iraqi-Americans said, ‘A war with Saddam Hussein would be a war for Iraq, not against Iraq.’ The Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about. Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator. They know that America will not come as a conqueror. Our plan — as President Bush has said — is to ‘remain as long as necessary and not a day more.'”
See above. Same story.
Myers: “What you’d like to do is have it be a short, short conflict. The best way to do that is have such a shock on the system, the Iraqi regime would have to assume early on the end is inevitable.”
That sound like what they wanted to have happen. That doesn’t mean that (a) they assumed it would be that way, or that (b) that doesn’t describe more or less what’s happened so far.
Hitchens: “This will be no war — there will be a fairly brief and ruthless military intervention. The president will give an order. [The attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling … It will be greeted by the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on.”
I’m not sure that the oversimplifying comments of a Vanity Fair writer are a particular indictment of the Pentagon or the Administration.
I’m not convinced that the Administration significantly underestimated the effort needed for an Iraq War, or oversold its ease to the American public.