Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [260]
Feith and Rodman alerted me that in the interagency discussions at the deputies committee level and below, the State Department had different ideas.† Officials at State favored what they called a Transitional Civil Authority, led by the United States, that would govern post-Saddam Iraq for a multi-year period. State’s idea, as Rodman wrote, “is that (1) the Iraqi opposition is too divided to fill the vacuum on its own, and (2) the U.S. will want to control what happens with Iraqi WMD, oil, etc.”12
On July 1, 2002, I forwarded Rodman’s assessment to Cheney, Powell, Tenet, and Rice, in the hope that they might be similarly persuaded that an American occupation would be a mistake:
Organizing the Iraqi opposition to assist with regime change is needed for two reasons: to ensure legitimacy, particularly in the eyes of other regional players, and to make sure the wrong people don’t fill the vacuum created by the end of the Saddam regime. Regional leaders have argued that it is important for Iraqis to be seen participating in the liberation of their country... . An attempt to run Iraqi affairs by ourselves without a pre-cooked umbrella group of Iraqi Opposition leaders could backfire seriously... . In Iraq, there are many undesirable opposition elements—a Communist faction, Sunni fundamentalists and radical Sh’ia—all with presumably some support around the country and in some institutions. Organizing the democratic opposition groups that we favor into a real political-military force is essential to preempt these groups, avoid a political vacuum, and avoid a chaotic post-Saddam free–for-all.13
A chaotic post-Saddam free-for-all was the last thing we wanted if President Bush decided to go into Iraq. I was reasonably certain that the memo was read, but it did not lead to any resolution on a postwar strategy by the NSC.
At CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa, General Franks and his staff prepared the Iraq war plan in its four required parts: Phase I, preparations for a possible invasion; Phase II, shaping the battle space with the start of air operations; Phase III, decisive offensive and major combat operations; and Phase IV, posthostilities stabilization and reconstruction. In the summer and fall of 2002, Franks and his team had a lot on their plates. In addition to Iraq war planning, they were still engaged in counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan and maritime interdiction operations off the Horn of Africa.
Recognizing the burdens on CENTCOM, Myers expressed concern that it might not be paying sufficient attention to Phase IV.14 Franks admittedly had little enthusiasm for setting up a postcombat government or dealing with the related tangle of bureaucratic and interagency issues. As the general noted in his memoir, “I’m a war fighter, not a manager.”15 Myers advised me that he had decided to establish a new group to help CENTCOM plan for postcombat operations. He asked Franks to stand up Combined Joint Task Force 4, which would work in Franks’ Tampa operation on Phase IV.
Outside of the Pentagon, teams at the United States Agency for International Development, the NSC, and the State Department also were working on plans for the postwar period. Among these initiatives was the Future of Iraq project at State, which consisted of a series of documents addressing aspects of postwar Iraq.16 Later, the State Department effort was dubbed in the press as “the earliest and most comprehensive planning undertaken by the U.S. government for a post-Saddam Iraq.”17 Some of the participants in the project later mischaracterized that work as a State Department plan that Pentagon officials ignored. “Many senior State Department officials are still bitter about what they see as the Pentagon’s failure to take seriously their planning efforts, particularly in the ‘Future of Iraq’ project,” the Washington Post wrote some years later.18
In fact, senior DoD officials did review and consult those papers, finding some of them