Basra Withdrawal: Read It There, Read It Here

by DemFromCT

The NY Times has a story on the British pull-out, as it makes it way into American press coverage.

The British Army began withdrawing from its last base in Basra’s city center early Monday, a move that will leave Iraq’s second-largest city without foreign forces for the first time since the American-led invasion in 2003.

That's the story, but what's missing from the Times is the allied criticism found in the Brit papers. From the Times (UK):

The pullout came as two of Britain’s most influential generals during the Iraq war delivered scathing attacks on the Americans for their handling of the campaign after Saddam’s defeat. Major-General Tim Cross, who supervised reconstruction projects alongside his American counterparts in 2003, joined General Sir Mike Jackson [see Meteor Blades' post], former head of the Army, in criticising the US for ignoring British advice. General Cross, a Royal Engineer, is retired but he was a hugely respected figure in the Army and had unrivalled experience in dealing with postwar nation-building. He revealed that he gave advice to Donald Rumsfeld, the former US Defence Secretary, about the size of the force needed to tackle the challenges after Saddam’s downfall, but was ignored.

The attacks by General Jackson, the former Chief of the General Staff, in his autobiography, and General Cross, in an interview with the Sunday Mirror, have laid bare the anger felt by the British military over the way that Mr Rumsfeld dismissed all the warning signs of a potential disaster in Iraq.

Although much has been said about the failures of the American strategy in Iraq, not least by Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the former British Ambassador at the United Nations and later Tony Blair’s special envoy to Baghdad, the strong criticism from the two generals has added to the growing sense of a rift between Washington and London.

This second criticism by a top British general can be found in AP, CNN and WaPo reports from the last twenty-four hours. Reuters adds why this is all surfacing now:

The unusually outspoken comments by former top military men follow weeks of commentary, mainly in the U.S. press, suggesting British forces have failed in southern Iraq and are set to flee.

Defence analyst Charles Heyman told Reuters the criticism was surfacing "because everybody realises this is now a failed policy and they are all casting around for scapegoats".

"Why didn't someone resign at the time and say this is foolish and foolhardy?" he said.

He said the recriminations were not helpful to future military and diplomatic relations between Washington and London, which have traditionally boasted of a "special relationship".

Why, indeed? As Republicans continue to lead American policy over a cliff with the justification that as bad as the disastrous policy is, any other approach would be worse (trust us!), it is worth a reminder that it has never been the unanimous view of the generals, at least when they speak their mind. But the Bush administration is not above blaming our allies for problems of their own making (and the Brits have some suspicions he will). After all, this Administration never takes responsibility for anything they've done, and blaming others is the one thing they do well.

Comments

[darclay]

So did Rummy just ignore the Generals because of arrogance,or did the Adminstration have an underlying motive say like profits for Haliberton and Blackwater etc.?

[darclay]

So did Rummy just ignore the Generals because of arrogance,or did the Adminstration have an underlying motive say like profits for Haliberton and Blackwater etc.?

[JohnJ]

darclay: Yes!

[Sara]

I think we may discover eventually that the problem was mostly about power within the administration. Recall that the State Department did do extensive planning for post combat, but Rummy and in particular the neo-cons in DOD scotched that plan at the last minute, and among other things, took the Congressional Appropriations unto themselves for doing the post-combat reconstruction operations. In particular, George Packer's "Assassins Gate" has quite detailed material on this, mostly sourced to Jay Garner and the people he had on his small team. DOD provided Garner with only two weeks to plan his effort, and when congress decided to hold a hearing on the plan just before the invasion, they whisked him off to Kuwait so as to make him unavailable to Congress. Packer describes Garner as taking about a day to go to the Defense Department Library to review the planning George Marshall did for the occupation of Germany -- planning that took place over six years actually -- but Garner had just one day to begin to comprehend the Marshall planning documents. He also had one meeting with Bush -- but Bush would not talk plans, instead he talked Florida Cattle Ranching.

It was during this conflict between State and DOD over leadership of the post-combat phase, that Bush began to make his speeches about Freedom and Democracy, with the lead speech being given at American Heritage. My own interpretation of Bush's sudden flight to rhetoric about Democracy and all that, was really about his inability to square a conflict between the Powell faction and the Rummy faction in his own circle.

According to Packer, Garner was in Kuwait without any form of transportation -- he had no cars, no planes at his command to take his staff into Baghdad, he had few radios, virtually no computers -- essentially he had to beg them from DOD even though he was DOD. Everything he did had to be run back through Central Command to DC, and it was Cheney and the neo-cons in the Pentagon who micro managed him.

What made them replace Garner with Paul Bremer? Garner apparently had negotiated with a group of Imams and former mid level Sunni Officers a plan to establish a police organization, and they were just in the planning process on that. (same folk Bush visited today.) All hell broke loose in the Pentagon at that news -- and they immediately sent Bremer who was recommended to Cheney by Henry the Kissinger.

Frankly, I doubt if Bush has ever looked at, much less read Packer's reconstruction of the decision making done in his name -- in fact I doubt if he really comprehended the decisions. Instead he was doing PR stuff -- Mission Accomplished tricks with his codpiece, more freedom and democracy flights of fancy.

I still think Packer nailed Bush with his description of Bush's one and only meeting with Garner before he was sent off to establish a governing authority in Iraq. Garner described Bush as inattentive, did not look at the outlines (he was told to make them no more than two pages all set as powerpoints) for the stages of his plan, He described Bush as concerned everyone had enough coffee, that he kept exercising his legs while sitting, in otherwords, Bush could not follow along with about a half-hour of detail. Then as the meeting broke up, Bush started the conversation about Florida Cattle Ranching -- Garner you see was raised on a Florida Cattle Ranch -- and he never asked the first question about Iraq plans.

For myself, I think our boy has a fairly serious attention defecit disorder, and a reading comprehension issue. He reads speeches in a passable way, but I am not certain he can look at even the slightest complexity in a planning document, and comprehend. Picking up on the irrelevant, such as Cattle Ranching, is cover for these profound problems.

Who to blame? -- well we need to look at the Republican Party folk who decided this guy would be a good President back in 1997 and 1998. They wanted a power center they could manipulate with a blooming idiot in charge. They got it.

[Jodi]

Rumsfeld ,

ignored everyone's advice except President Bush and his attack dog Dick Cheney.

In corporate lingo Rumsfeld would be called a "corporate jock" or a "lap dog" or a "yes man" or many more things that need less respectable language.

Bush is responsible for the atmosphere of we don't want to know anything that wasn't "invented here" or didn't orginate here or isn't pleasant to our ears and message.

[Jodi]

Sara,

I can't say about the ADD, but actually Bush is fairly bright from what I have heard. The problem is that he only pays attention to things that interest him, or are pleasant. Of course that goes along with ADD.

I would never protest at someone saying there is some "arrested development" in the President.

[Boo Radley]

"and blaming others is the one thing they do well."

ROTFLMAO.