Who's winning in Iraq? - Article

Sorry bout another article thread, but I keep running across these interesting articles. I personally had suspicions about who's really taking who over there, but this article claims to clear that up. Apparently, this is an official report from the Army official historian. (guess that's "official..." my bad, weak joke). Anyway, here is the article...


Army report: U.S. lost control in Iraq three months after invasion

WORLD TRIBUNE | March 7, 2005

WASHINGTON – The U.S. military lost its dominance in Iraq shortly after its invasion in 2003, a study concluded.

A report by the U.S. Army official historian said the military was hampered by the failure to occupy and stabilize Iraq in 2003. As a result, the military lost its dominance by July 2003 and has yet to regain that position.

"In the two to three months of ambiguous transition, U.S. forces slowly lost the momentum and the initiative gained over an off-balanced enemy," the report said. "The United States, its Army and its coalition of the willing have been playing catch-up ever since."

The report was authored by Maj. Isaiah Wilson, the official historian of the U.S. Army for the Iraq war. Wilson also served as a war planner for the army's 101st Airborne Division until March 2004, Middle East Newsline reported. His report, not yet endorsed as official army history, has been presented to several academic conferences.

In November 2003, the military drafted a formal plan for stability and post-combat operations, Wilson said. Termed Phase-4, the plan was meant to follow such stages as preparation for combat, initial operations and combat. "There was no Phase IV plan," the report said. "While there may have been plans at the national level, and even within various agencies within the war zone, none of these plans operationalized the problem beyond regime collapse. There was no adequate operational plan for stability operations and support operations."

Other military commanders, including former Central Command chief Gen. Tommy Franks, have disputed Wilson's conclusions. They said the military entered Iraq with a stabilization plan.

The report disclosed the lack of planning by the U.S. military for the occupation of Iraq. Over the last year, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his aides have been blamed for lack of post-war planning based on their assessment that the military campaign in Iraq would be brief and quickly lead to a democratic and stable post-Saddam Hussein government.

In contrast, Wilson said army planners failed to understand or accept the prospect that Iraqis would resist the U.S. forces after the fall of the Saddam regime. He deemed the military performance in Iraq mediocre and said the army could lose the war.

"U.S. war planners, practitioners and the civilian leadership conceived of the war far too narrowly," the report said. "This overly simplistic conception of the war led to a cascading undercutting of the war effort: too few troops, too little coordination with civilian and governmental/non-governmental agencies and too little allotted time to achieve success."

Now, I realize that this isn't official army history, but it appears that people are endorsing this. I find it funny that people readily accept good news from Iraq, but question any bad news and label it as propaganda. Maybe that's a defense mech, I dunno. What I do know is that mainstream media is somewhat unreliable on this issue. By that, I mean I haven't seen this on the news yet.

Anyway, what do YOU think about this?