WASHINGTON, April 16: The Bush administration invaded Iraq with a flawed strategy that sought victory "on the cheap" and is now paying the price in the form of a growing resistance
and doubts about its goal of building a democracy, a top US Army analyst says in a recent report.
Lt Col Antulio Echevarria, director of national security affairs at the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute, said Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other administration officials rejected as "old think" early calls for more troops from senior commanders.
Instead, the administration hoped to address any military and financial shortfalls in Iraq through anticipated support from Nato and the United Nations. "It low-balled the total number of US troops and other personnel that might have to be put in harm's way to get the job done, and how long they might have to remain," Mr Echevarria said in the report titled, "Toward an American Way of War."
"However, the hoped-for support from the UN and NATO failed to materialize, and the coalition force that invaded Iraq proved insufficient to provide the stabilization necessary for political and economic reconstruction to begin."
Now, Mr Echevarria writes, "successful accomplishment of the administration's goal of building a democratic government in Iraq is, thus, still in question, with religious extremists, terrorists, criminals, Saddam loyalists and other anti-US factions contributing to an apparently growing insurgency."
IRAQI RESISTANCE: But his report, originally released last month, has drawn increasing attention since the resistance spread from the Sunni to the Shia community and sent the number of US deaths surging to 93 for the current month.
The Strategic Studies Institute said the report, posted on the War College Web site www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/index.html, contained the opinions of the author and not necessarily those of the Army, the Defence Department or the federal government.
A Pentagon spokesman said he could not provide a meaningful response to the report because he had not seen it, while a senior administration official pointed out that President George Bush has made it clear he would approve more troops for Iraq if asked to do so.
On the eve of the invasion, Mr Rumsfeld heaped scorn on then-army chief Gen Eric Shinseki, who warned Congress that several hundred thousand US troops might be needed to stabilize Iraq after the occupation.
Some analysts have suggested that maintaining peace in Iraq, a country with a population of 25 million, would require as many as 500,000 soldiers. Mr Echevarria said the administration's Iraq strategy was flawed because its goal of regime change required a labour- and time-intensive effort. But the administration instead wanted "to win the war quickly and on the cheap".
"While this emerging way of war looked to employ new concepts, such as shock and awe and effects-based operations, designed to win battles quickly, it had no new concept for accomplishing the time-intensive and labour-intensive tasks of regime change more quickly and with less labour," his report concluded. -Reuters
