The U.S. Army on Sunday released a nearly 700-page study that revealed "in the euphoria of early 2003," U.S.-based commanders prematurely believed their goals in Iraq had been met and did not send enough troops to take care of the occupation.
President George W. Bush's statement on May 1, 2003, that major combat operations were over reinforced that view, the study said.
It was written by Donald P. Wright and Col. Timothy R. Reese of the Contemporary Operations Study Team at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, who said planners who requested more troops were ignored and that commanders in Baghdad were replaced without enough of a transition and lacked enough staff.
Gen. William S. Wallace, commanding general of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, said in a foreword that it's no surprise that a report with these conclusions was written.
"One of the great and least understood qualities of the United States Army is its culture of introspection and self-examination," he wrote.
The report said that the civilian and military planning for a post-Saddam Iraq was inadequate, and that the Army should have pushed the Joint Chiefs of Staff for better planning and preparation.
The authors said the Army had considerable experience and training for guerrilla wars but had not been in one like Iraq since 1992 in Somalia. They said former Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Franks "that he thought too few troops were envisioned in the (invasion) plan."
The "post-war situation in Iraq was severely out of line with the suppositions made at nearly every level before the war," the report said.
Its writers said it was clear in January 2005 that the Army would remain in Iraq for some time, the writers concluded. The report covered the period from May 2003 to January 2005.
Source:Xinhua
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