[Mb-civic] Up in the Air: Where Is the Iraq War Headed Next? By Seymour M. Hersh

[Michael Butler]

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    Up in the Air: Where Is the Iraq War Headed Next?
    By Seymour M. Hersh
    The New Yorker

    05 November 2005 Issue

    In recent weeks, there has been widespread speculation that President
George W. Bush, confronted by diminishing approval ratings and dissent
within his own party, will begin pulling American troops out of Iraq next
year. The Administration's best-case scenario is that the parliamentary
election scheduled for December 15th will produce a coalition government
that will join the Administration in calling for a withdrawal to begin in
the spring. By then, the White House hopes, the new government will be
capable of handling the insurgency. In a speech on November 19th, Bush
repeated the latest Administration catchphrase: "As Iraqis stand up, we will
stand down." He added, "When our commanders on the ground tell me that Iraqi
forces can defend their freedom, our troops will come home with the honor
they have earned." One sign of the political pressure on the Administration
to prepare for a withdrawal came last week, when Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice told Fox News that the current level of American troops
would not have to be maintained "for very much longer," because the Iraqis
were getting better at fighting the insurgency.

    A high-level Pentagon war planner told me, however, that he has seen
scant indication that the President would authorize a significant pullout of
American troops if he believed that it would impede the war against the
insurgency. There are several proposals currently under review by the White
House and the Pentagon; the most ambitious calls for American combat forces
to be reduced from a hundred and fifty-five thousand troops to fewer than
eighty thousand by next fall, with all American forces officially designated
"combat" to be pulled out of the area by the summer of 2008. In terms of
implementation, the planner said, "the drawdown plans that I'm familiar with
are condition-based, event-driven, and not in a specific time frame"-that
is, they depend on the ability of a new Iraqi government to defeat the
insurgency. (A Pentagon spokesman said that the Administration had not made
any decisions and had "no plan to leave, only a plan to complete the
mission.")

    A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President's
public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by
American airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way
to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi
combat units. The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the
number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn,
the over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would
increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what.

    "We're not planning to diminish the war," Patrick Clawson, the deputy
director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me.
Clawson's views often mirror the thinking of the men and women around
Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "We just
want to change the mix of the forces doing the fighting-Iraqi infantry with
American support and greater use of airpower. The rule now is to commit
Iraqi forces into combat only in places where they are sure to win. The pace
of commitment, and withdrawal, depends on their success in the battlefield."

    He continued, "We want to draw down our forces, but the President is
prepared to tough this one out. There is a very deep feeling on his part
that the issue of Iraq was settled by the American people at the polling
places in 2004." The war against the insurgency "may end up being a nasty
and murderous civil war in Iraq, but we and our allies would still win," he
said. "As long as the Kurds and the Shiites stay on our side, we're set to
go. There's no sense that the world is caving in. We're in the middle of a
seven-year slog in Iraq, and eighty per cent of the Iraqis are receptive to
our message."

    One Pentagon adviser told me, "There are always contingency plans, but
why withdraw and take a chance? I don't think the President will go for
it"-until the insurgency is broken. "He's not going to back off. This is
bigger than domestic politics."

    Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that
the President remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring
democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even
from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information
that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding.

    Bush's closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of
his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official,
who served in Bush's first term, spoke extensively about the connection
between the President's religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq.
After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said,
he was told that Bush felt that "God put me here" to deal with the war on
terror. The President's belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the
2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message
from God that "he's the man," the former official said. Publicly, Bush
depicted his re-election as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of
it as another manifestation of divine purpose.

    The former senior official said that after the election he made a
lengthy inspection visit to Iraq and reported his findings to Bush in the
White House: "I said to the President, 'We're not winning the war.' And he
asked, 'Are we losing?' I said, 'Not yet.' " The President, he said,
"appeared displeased" with that answer.

    "I tried to tell him," the former senior official said. "And he couldn't
hear it."

    There are grave concerns within the military about the capability of the
U.S. Army to sustain two or three more years of combat in Iraq. Michael
O'Hanlon, a specialist on military issues at the Brookings Institution, told
me, "The people in the institutional Army feel they don't have the luxury of
deciding troop levels, or even participating in the debate. They're planning
on staying the course until 2009. I can't believe the Army thinks that it
will happen, because there's no sustained drive to increase the size of the
regular Army." O'Hanlon noted that "if the President decides to stay the
present course in Iraq some troops would be compelled to serve fourth and
fifth tours of combat by 2007 and 2008, which could have serious
consequences for morale and competency levels."

    Many of the military's most senior generals are deeply frustrated, but
they say nothing in public, because they don't want to jeopardize their
careers. The Administration has "so terrified the generals that they know
they won't go public," a former defense official said. A retired senior
C.I.A. officer with knowledge of Iraq told me that one of his colleagues
recently participated in a congressional tour there. The legislators were
repeatedly told, in meetings with enlisted men, junior officers, and
generals that "things were fucked up." But in a subsequent teleconference
with Rumsfeld, he said, the generals kept those criticisms to themselves.

    One person with whom the Pentagon's top commanders have shared their
private views for decades is Representative John Murtha, of Pennsylvania,
the senior Democrat on the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. The
President and his key aides were enraged when, on November 17th, Murtha gave
a speech in the House calling for a withdrawal of troops within six months.
The speech was filled with devastating information. For example, Murtha
reported that the number of attacks in Iraq has increased from a hundred and
fifty a week to more than seven hundred a week in the past year. He said
that an estimated fifty thousand American soldiers will suffer "from what I
call battle fatigue" in the war, and he said that the Americans were seen as
"the common enemy" in Iraq. He also took issue with one of the White House's
claims-that foreign fighters were playing the major role in the insurgency.
Murtha said that American soldiers "haven't captured any in this latest
activity"-the continuing battle in western Anbar province, near the border
with Syria. "So this idea that they're coming in from outside, we still
think there's only seven per cent."

    Murtha's call for a speedy American pullout only seemed to strengthen
the White House's resolve. Administration officials "are beyond angry at
him, because he is a serious threat to their policy-both on substance and
politically," the former defense official said. Speaking at the Osan Air
Force base, in South Korea, two days after Murtha's speech, Bush said, "The
terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity. .
. . If they're not stopped, the terrorists will be able to advance their
agenda to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to
intimidate Europe, and to break our will and blackmail our government into
isolation. I'm going to make you this commitment: this is not going to
happen on my watch."

    "The President is more determined than ever to stay the course," the
former defense official said. "He doesn't feel any pain. Bush is a believer
in the adage 'People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.' " He said
that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl
Rove and Vice-President Cheney. "They keep him in the gray world of
religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway," the former defense
official said. Bush's public appearances, for example, are generally
scheduled in front of friendly audiences, most often at military bases. Four
decades ago, President Lyndon Johnson, who was also confronted with an
increasingly unpopular war, was limited to similar public forums. "Johnson
knew he was a prisoner in the White House," the former official said, "but
Bush has no idea."

    Within the military, the prospect of using airpower as a substitute for
American troops on the ground has caused great unease. For one thing, Air
Force commanders, in particular, have deep-seated objections to the
possibility that Iraqis eventually will be responsible for target selection.
"Will the Iraqis call in air strikes in order to snuff rivals, or other
warlords, or to snuff members of your own sect and blame someone else?"
another senior military planner now on assignment in the Pentagon asked.
"Will some Iraqis be targeting on behalf of Al Qaeda, or the insurgency, or
the Iranians?"

    "It's a serious business," retired Air Force General Charles Horner, who
was in charge of allied bombing during the 1991 Gulf War, said. "The Air
Force has always had concerns about people ordering air strikes who are not
Air Force forward air controllers. We need people on active duty to think it
out, and they will. There has to be training to be sure that somebody is not
trying to get even with somebody else." (Asked for a comment, the Pentagon
spokesman said there were plans in place for such training. He also noted
that Iraq had no offensive airpower of its own, and thus would have to rely
on the United States for some time.)

    The American air war inside Iraq today is perhaps the most
significant-and underreported-aspect of the fight against the insurgency.
The military authorities in Baghdad and Washington do not provide the press
with a daily accounting of missions that Air Force, Navy, and Marine units
fly or of the tonnage they drop, as was routinely done during the Vietnam
War. One insight into the scope of the bombing in Iraq was supplied by the
Marine Corps during the height of the siege of Falluja in the fall of 2004.
"With a massive Marine air and ground offensive under way," a Marine press
release said, "Marine close air support continues to put high-tech steel on
target. . . . Flying missions day and night for weeks, the fixed wing
aircraft of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing are ensuring battlefield success on
the front line." Since the beginning of the war, the press release said, the
3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone had dropped more than five hundred thousand
tons of ordnance. "This number is likely to be much higher by the end of
operations," Major Mike Sexton said. In the battle for the city, more than
seven hundred Americans were killed or wounded; U.S. officials did not
release estimates of civilian dead, but press reports at the time told of
women and children killed in the bombardments.

    In recent months, the tempo of American bombing seems to have increased.
Most of the targets appear to be in the hostile, predominantly Sunni
provinces that surround Baghdad and along the Syrian border. As yet, neither
Congress nor the public has engaged in a significant discussion or debate
about the air war.

    The insurgency operates mainly in crowded urban areas, and Air Force
warplanes rely on sophisticated, laser-guided bombs to avoid civilian
casualties. These bombs home in on targets that must be "painted," or
illuminated, by laser beams directed by ground units. "The pilot doesn't
identify the target as seen in the pre-brief"-the instructions provided
before takeoff-a former high-level intelligence official told me. "The guy
with the laser is the targeteer. Not the pilot. Often you get a 'hot-read'
"-from a military unit on the ground-"and you drop your bombs with no
communication with the guys on the ground. You don't want to break radio
silence. The people on the ground are calling in targets that the pilots
can't verify." He added, "And we're going to turn this process over to the
Iraqis?"

    The second senior military planner told me that there are essentially
two types of targeting now being used in Iraq: a deliberate site-selection
process that works out of air-operations centers in the region, and
"adaptive targeting"-supportive bombing by prepositioned or loitering
warplanes that are suddenly alerted to firefights or targets of opportunity
by military units on the ground. "The bulk of what we do today is adaptive,"
the officer said, "and it's divorced from any operational air planning.
Airpower can be used as a tool of internal political coercion, and my
attitude is that I can't imagine that we will give that power to the
Iraqis."

    This military planner added that even today, with Americans doing the
targeting, "there is no sense of an air campaign, or a strategic vision. We
are just whacking targets-it's a reversion to the Stone Age. There's no
operational art. That's what happens when you give targeting to the
Army-they hit what the local commander wants to hit."

    One senior Pentagon consultant I spoke to said he was optimistic that
"American air will immediately make the Iraqi Army that much better." But he
acknowledged that he, too, had concerns about Iraqi targeting. "We have the
most expensive eyes in the sky right now," the consultant said. "But a lot
of Iraqis want to settle old scores. Who is going to have authority to call
in air strikes? There's got to be a behavior-based rule."

    General John Jumper, who retired last month after serving four years as
the Air Force chief of staff, was "in favor of certification of those Iraqis
who will be allowed to call in strikes," the Pentagon consultant told me. "I
don't know if it will be approved. The regular Army generals were resisting
it to the last breath, despite the fact that they would benefit the most
from it."

    A Pentagon consultant with close ties to the officials in the
Vice-President's office and the Pentagon who advocated the war said that the
Iraqi penchant for targeting tribal and personal enemies with artillery and
mortar fire had created "impatience and resentment" inside the military. He
believed that the Air Force's problems with Iraqi targeting might be
addressed by the formation of U.S.-Iraqi transition teams, whose American
members would be drawn largely from Special Forces troops. This consultant
said that there were plans to integrate between two hundred and three
hundred Special Forces members into Iraqi units, which was seen as a
compromise aimed at meeting the Air Force's demand to vet Iraqis who were
involved in targeting. But in practice, the consultant added, it meant that
"the Special Ops people will soon allow Iraqis to begin calling in the
targets."

    Robert Pape, a political-science professor at the University of Chicago,
who has written widely on American airpower, and who taught for three years
at the Air Force's School of Advanced Airpower Studies, in Alabama,
predicted that the air war "will get very ugly" if targeting is turned over
to the Iraqis. This would be especially true, he said, if the Iraqis
continued to operate as the U.S. Army and Marines have done-plowing through
Sunni strongholds on search-and-destroy missions. "If we encourage the
Iraqis to clear and hold their own areas, and use airpower to stop the
insurgents from penetrating the cleared areas, it could be useful," Pape
said. "The risk is that we will encourage the Iraqis to do
search-and-destroy, and they would be less judicious about using
airpower-and the violence would go up. More civilians will be killed, which
means more insurgents will be created."

    Even American bombing on behalf of an improved, well-trained Iraqi Army
would not necessarily be any more successful against the insurgency. "It's
not going to work," said Andrew Brookes, the former director of airpower
studies at the Royal Air Force's advanced staff college, who is now at the
International Institute for Strategic Studies, in London. "Can you put a lid
on the insurgency with bombing?" Brookes said. "No. You can concentrate in
one area, but the guys will spring up in another town." The inevitable
reliance on Iraqi ground troops' targeting would also create conflicts. "I
don't see your guys dancing to the tune of someone else," Brookes said. He
added that he and many other experts "don't believe that airpower is a
solution to the problems inside Iraq at all. Replacing boots on the ground
with airpower didn't work in Vietnam, did it?"

    The Air Force's worries have been subordinated, so far, to the political
needs of the White House. The Administration's immediate political goal
after the December elections is to show that the day-to-day conduct of the
war can be turned over to the newly trained and equipped Iraqi military. It
has already planned heavily scripted change-of-command ceremonies, complete
with the lowering of American flags at bases and the raising of Iraqi ones.

    Some officials in the State Department, the C.I.A., and British Prime
Minister Tony Blair's government have settled on their candidate of choice
for the December elections-Iyad Allawi, the secular Shiite who served until
this spring as Iraq's interim Prime Minister. They believe that Allawi can
gather enough votes in the election to emerge, after a round of political
bargaining, as Prime Minister. A former senior British adviser told me that
Blair was convinced that Allawi "is the best hope." The fear is that a
government dominated by religious Shiites, many of whom are close to Iran,
would give Iran greater political and military influence inside Iraq. Allawi
could counter Iran's influence; also, he would be far more supportive and
coöperative if the Bush Administration began a drawdown of American combat
forces in the coming year.

    Blair has assigned a small team of operatives to provide political help
to Allawi, the former adviser told me. He also said that there was talk late
this fall, with American concurrence, of urging Ahmad Chalabi, a secular
Shiite, to join forces in a coalition with Allawi during the post-election
negotiations to form a government. Chalabi, who is notorious for his role in
promoting flawed intelligence on weapons of mass destruction before the war,
is now a deputy Prime Minister. He and Allawi were bitter rivals while in
exile.

    A senior United Nations diplomat told me that he was puzzled by the high
American and British hopes for Allawi. "I know a lot of people want Allawi,
but I think he's been a terrific disappointment," the diplomat said. "He
doesn't seem to be building a strong alliance, and at the moment it doesn't
look like he will do very well in the election."

    The second Pentagon consultant told me, "If Allawi becomes Prime
Minister, we can say, 'There's a moderate, urban, educated leader now in
power who does not want to deprive women of their rights.' He would ask us
to leave, but he would allow us to keep Special Forces operations inside
Iraq-to keep an American presence the right way. Mission accomplished. A
coup for Bush."

    A former high-level intelligence official cautioned that it was probably
"too late" for any American withdrawal plan to work without further
bloodshed. The constitution approved by Iraqi voters in October "will be
interpreted by the Kurds and the Shiites to proceed with their plans for
autonomy," he said. "The Sunnis will continue to believe that if they can
get rid of the Americans they can still win. And there still is no credible
way to establish security for American troops."

    The fear is that a precipitous U.S. withdrawal would inevitably trigger
a Sunni-Shiite civil war. In many areas, that war has, in a sense, already
begun, and the United States military is being drawn into the sectarian
violence. An American Army officer who took part in the assault on Tal Afar,
in the north of Iraq, earlier this fall, said that an American infantry
brigade was placed in the position of providing a cordon of security around
the besieged city for Iraqi forces, most of them Shiites, who were "rounding
up any Sunnis on the basis of whatever a Shiite said to them." The officer
went on, "They were killing Sunnis on behalf of the Shiites," with the
active participation of a militia unit led by a retired American Special
Forces soldier. "People like me have gotten so downhearted," the officer
added.

    Meanwhile, as the debate over troop reductions continues, the covert war
in Iraq has expanded in recent months to Syria. A composite American Special
Forces team, known as an S.M.U., for "special-mission unit," has been
ordered, under stringent cover, to target suspected supporters of the Iraqi
insurgency across the border. (The Pentagon had no comment.) "It's a powder
keg," the Pentagon consultant said of the tactic. "But, if we hit an
insurgent network in Iraq without hitting the guys in Syria who are part of
it, the guys in Syria would get away. When you're fighting an insurgency,
you have to strike everywhere-and at once."