Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [230]
Because I had been reviewing the various war plans regularly, I knew no one would think it out of the ordinary for me to request a briefing on our existing options on Iraq. As a precaution, however, I asked for briefings to cover several contingencies in various parts of the world.
As the CENTCOM briefers moved through their PowerPoint slides on the on-the-shelf Iraq war plan, it quickly became clear that it was only a slightly modified version of the one used during the first Gulf War. It called for roughly the same number of forces used then—nearly half a million U.S. troops to be marshaled into the region over many months. They were to invade through Iraq’s southern desert, much as they had in 1991. Because the firepower and precision of U.S. forces had increased substantially since then, the plan would represent a vastly more lethal force in 2003.† Someone in the briefing described the plan, appropriately I thought, as “Desert Storm on Steroids.”
This was not what the Commander in Chief had told me he was looking for. It was a stale, slow-building, and dated plan that Iraqi forces would expect. A decade had come and gone since the Gulf War, yet the war plan seemed to have been frozen in time. Everyone in the briefing recognized that CENTCOM and Joint Staff planners would need to do a major overhaul.
I did not hear any more about Iraq for two months. Then, on November 21, 2001, a week after coalition forces had driven the Taliban from Kabul, the President called me aside at the end of an NSC meeting. He led me into a small, unoccupied office a few feet from the Situation Room, closed the door, and sat down.
“Where do we stand on the Iraq planning?” he asked.
I told him I had been briefed on the existing plan, and that it was very much like one for the Gulf War a decade ago. As I expected, it was not what the President was seeking. “To make progress,” I said, “I need to engage others in the Pentagon and at CENTCOM to update the Iraq plan. It will need a good deal of work.”
“That’s fine,” Bush replied. I told him that CENTCOM could update it in the normal order of things, but that they would need to work with intelligence officials as well. The latest intelligence on Iraqi military capabilities, suspected WMD sites, and other targets would shape how CENTCOM refashioned the plan. That meant I would need to talk to Tenet, and senior military officials would need to have discussions with their counterparts at the Agency.
The President said he didn’t want me to communicate with people outside of DoD for the time being, and that he would personally talk to Tenet and others at the right moment.
Back at the Pentagon, I asked Myers to stop by my office. I knew his focus at the time was almost exclusively on Afghanistan. Once we were alone, I told him about our new guidance: “Dick, the President wants to know what kind of operations plan we have for Iraq.”1
Myers showed no surprise. This was a request from the Commander in Chief, and the General’s instinct was to get to work. Myers had been with me when I had been briefed on the existing Iraq plan. He agreed it needed a thorough reworking. We both knew that CENTCOM’s planners were already taxed, given their ongoing work on Afghanistan. Nonetheless, I told him we should have Franks and CENTCOM bring the plan in line with the current capabilities of our military and with the latest intelligence on Iraq.
After receiving his new assignment from Myers, Franks took a look at the current Iraq war plan and confirmed our opinion that it was seriously out-of-date. In fact, I knew of no military officials who believed that the “Desert Storm on Steroids” war plan would be appropriate for the current circumstances. Saddam’s overall military capability had eroded since Desert Storm. At the same time, American military capabilities in precision-guided weapons had improved substantially. Also in my mind was the fact that in the 1991 Gulf War, enormous quantities of equipment and other materiel sent to the Gulf were never used.*
One thing that was clear was