The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
Hard
Lessons records
Ambassador Bremer saying:
“… the
President’s instructions to me … when I had lunch with him alone on
May 6th,
were that
we’re going to take our time to get it right … The President had
effectively,
though
perhaps not formally, changed his position on the question of a
short or long
Occupation,
having before the war been in favour of a short occupation. By the
time
I came
in, that was gone.”215
The
thinking behind the shift away from a short Occupation was recorded
by Secretary
Rumsfeld,
in a “pre-decisional” memo of 8 May 2003,
which RAND described as laying
out a
rationale for “an extended and deeply engaged American
Occupation”.216
The RAND
report records that both the participants in the NSC process and
the US
military
were taken by surprise by the decision. In the views of the RAND
analysts,
this change
in US approach to the post-invasion governance of Iraq had
serious
consequences:
“First, it
left the CPA bereft of plans, the preparations done by ORHA having
been
premised on
an entirely different and a much more abbreviated vision of
America’s
responsibility
for the country’s post-war governance. Second, and arguably
more
important,
it left Iraqis with the impression that the United States had
initially intended
to hand
over sovereignty quickly and then had gone back on its word, sowing
the
seeds of
distrust between Iraqis and Americans.”
Hard
Lessons reports:
“Ordinarily,
a political-military plan would have clearly articulated a detailed
strategy
for
engaging with the leaders of Iraqi factions in postwar Iraq. But
because Defense
officials
intended to transfer control rapidly to an interim Iraqi authority,
ORHA
was told it
would not need such a plan. ‘The expectations derived from policy
set
in
Washington were that the establishment and devolution of authority
to an Iraqi
entity would
proceed quickly’, an ORHA planner wrote, obviating the need
for
a governance
strategy.”217
The RAND
analysts found that:
“The
growing chaos on the ground in Iraq seems to have caused the
administration to
retreat
from this plan and choose what had earlier been the lead option,
the creation
of an
American occupational authority led by a senior political
figure.”218
215
Bowen SW
Jr. Hard
Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience. U.S.
Government Printing
Office, 2009.
216
Bensahel N,
Oliker O, Crane K, Brennan RR Jr, Gregg HS, Sullivan T &
Rathmell A. After
Saddam:
Prewar
Planning and the Occupation of Iraq. RAND
Corporation, 2008.
217
Bowen SW
Jr. Hard
Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience. U.S.
Government Printing
Office, 2009.
218
Bensahel N,
Oliker O, Crane K, Brennan RR Jr, Gregg HS, Sullivan T &
Rathmell A. After
Saddam:
Prewar
Planning and the Occupation of Iraq. RAND
Corporation, 2008.
190