Region | Iraq
US planned 2006 Iraq exit
The US military was so confident of success in Iraq that it predicted a withdrawal would occur by last December, with just a token force remaining, according to a secret Pentagon battle plan.
- By Tom Clifford, Assistant Editor, International
- Published: 00:00 February 17, 2007
- Image Credit: AP
- An Iraqi army soldier mans a machinegun atop an armoured vehicle at a checkpoint in central Baghdad.
Dubai: They thought it would be all over by Christmas, 2006.
In August 2002, the US military was so confident of success in Iraq that it predicted a withdrawal would occur by last December, with just a token force remaining.
The optimism was reflected in a secret Pentagon battle plan that forecast an easy victory, according to declassified documents secured by the Washington-based National Security Archive.
Instead of withdrawal there has been a troop surge with almost 150,000 US military personnel in Iraq and more than 600,000 Iraqis are estimated to have been killed. "This was buck passing," the archive's executive director Tom Blanton told Gulf News last night.
"The military said let the State Department handle the post-invasion, meanwhile [Donald] Rumsfeld was making sure the State Department had nothing to do with it. None of the top leaders wanted to ask 'what happens next'.''
Predictions
US military commander Tommy Franks, who resolutely refused to conduct any count of Iraqi deaths, believed that by December 2006 only 5,000 American would still be in the country.
The predictions were included in Central Command's PowerPoint briefing slides, which were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and are posted on the web by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org). The slides were code-named Polo Step and were used in briefings to President George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, the then secretary of defence.
A slide titled "Phase IV - Notional Ground Force Composition" showed US force levels declining steadily from 270,000 to just 5,000 within 45 months (December 2006) of the invasion phase, as Iraq proceeded from "stabilisation" to "recovery" to "transition".
There was never any mention in the slides that an insurgency would take place or even that occupying forces would face acts of violence. It was presumed that reconstruction would take place in an atmosphere of goodwill.
"Delusional," Blanton said. "It was not naivety. It was blinkered. Questions were not asked.''
Polo Step came into being in November 2001 when Bush told Rumsfeld he wanted an updated examination of what a war in Iraq would entail.
Bush demanded that this be done in extreme secrecy to maintain the deniability factor. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have consistently stated that no decision had been taken in 2001 to invade Iraq.
Rumsfeld ordered Franks to prepare a commander's estimate, which led to Polo Step.
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