Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [251]
We would discover more gaps in U.S. intelligence. We would find that the reality on the ground ran counter to the prewar intelligence reporting that had informed CENTCOM’s planning. It turned out that Iraqi infrastructure was not in serviceable condition; most of it was ramshackle and disintegrating. It turned out that the Iraqi army did not remain in whole units capable of being used for reconstruction after liberation; it dissolved itself. It turned out that the Iraqi police was not a trustworthy, professional force capable of securing the country after the invasion; they would have to be recruited and trained from scratch.
This intelligence failure on the existence and capabilities of the Fedayeen and foreign jihadists to wage an asymmetric war against our troops posed daunting consequences for the coalition effort. American forces that were prepared to fight more conventional forces had to adapt to an enemy that hid among civilians and fought by means of ambushes, car bombs, and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The Fedayeen and foreign jihadists fighting our troops in March and April 2003 would form the core of an insurgency that would engulf Iraq later in the year.
The coalition force’s advance toward Baghdad coincided with a shamal, a massive sandstorm that turned the skies over Iraq orange. In some places, the sand mixed with rain and became an unpleasant mud. Though the shamal slowed the U.S. drive northward, it did not stop it. Nor did it turn into the advantage for the Iraqi army that many thought it might.8 Iraqi forces around Baghdad believed the clouds of sand would give them cover. But our Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) aircraft in the sky above were able to penetrate the dust clouds with infrared cameras that could see the Iraqi forces below as they repositioned their armor. The Iraqis were stunned as American bombs, with demoralizing precision, broke through the clouds of dust and sand to destroy the Iraqi tanks.
One week after the invasion began, General James Conway, commanding general of the I MEF, and General William Wallace of the Army’s V Corps ordered a seventy-two-hour pause to resupply their troops. I understood the reason for the pause, given the logistical challenges involved with the movement of tens of thousands of troops, thousands of pieces of armor, trucks, and humvees, and supplies. The pause, however, led to news reports that U.S. forces were “bogged down,” this time in an Iraqi quagmire.9
Despite concerns about the accuracy of some of the press coverage, we decided to give news reporters unprecedented access to real-time information as the war was underway. During the planning phase, the Pentagon’s assistant secretary for public affairs, Torie Clarke, approached me with the creative concept of embedding reporters with American forces from the outset of the war. Clarke was aggressively engaged in making the Pentagon responsive to a continuously evolving media environment.
Myers and I weighed the pros and cons of Clarke’s proposal and came to the conclusion that embedding reporters was worth the risk. We believed it would give them a firsthand understanding of the courage and the professionalism of the men and women in our armed forces. Some seven hundred reporters and photographers were embedded with American forces when the war in Iraq began.10 The process created new burdens for our forces, since they had to provide the journalists with food, shelter, transport, and, importantly, be responsible for their safety. No single element of the invasion force had the whole picture. But we concluded they could do a better job presenting the reality of the conflict than they would pool reporting from coalition headquarters.
The program posed risks for the journalists. From 2003 to 2009, seven embedded reporters were killed in Iraq, and several others were wounded.11 The embedded reporters’ bravery was a proud chapter in American journalism.