The Unseen War

by Lambeth, Benjamin S.

  CENTCOM achieved its most immediate and pressing goal of regime takedown, but it is worth considering each of its other campaign goals with the benefit of hindsight: those which were not achieved, those which were achieved, and the most plausible explanations for the failure or success in each case. On the first count, the campaign ultimately proved unable to kill any of Iraq’s most notorious leaders by means of air attacks. An after-action assessment concluded that two factors, “or, more specifically, one factor with two facets,” principally accounted for this failure. First, “Iraqi leaders adopted extreme protective measures to evade coalition attacks. These measures included strict secrecy and continual movement.” Second, “the coalition was unable to attain actionable intelligence on the location of Iraqi leaders.”174 The air component’s determined effort to locate and destroy Hussein’s presumed stocks of theater ballistic missiles and WMD likewise failed, for the simple reason that those commodities were, by all subsequent indications, no longer in Hussein’s arsenal by the time the campaign began.

  When it came to the equally important matter of beating down Iraq’s fielded forces, however, CENTCOM’s final campaign plan more than handily met its objective. Furthermore, firsthand insights and supporting evidence gathered by coalition forces after Hussein’s regime was toppled established incontestably that the air component had done the bulk of the heavy lifting in that regard. That said, one must acknowledge that the air component’s banner performance did not by itself account for the campaign’s singular achievements in that regard. No less important was the stunning incompetence of Saddam Hussein with regard to the planning and provisions for the defense and security of his regime.

  Indeed, it was apparent even before the smoke from the campaign had cleared that Hussein’s forces had not come remotely close to being a match for those pitted against them by the coalition. To cite an especially notable testament to that fact, the commander of Army V Corps, Lieutenant General Wallace, remarked not long after the campaign ended: “It continually took the Iraqi forces a long time—somewhere on the order of 24 hours—to react to anything we did. By the time the enemy realized what we were doing, got word to his commanders, and they actually did something as a result, we had already moved on to do something quite different. For a commander, that’s a pretty good thing—fighting an enemy that can’t react to you.”175 An early assessment of the campaign acknowledged that “American military prowess is a function not only of the capabilities stemming from its enormous advantages in resources, but also its relative effectiveness against the capabilities brought to bear by its enemies. Simply put, is the U.S. military that good, or was the Iraqi military that bad? The answer to both questions seems, at this early juncture, to be ‘yes.’ While the U.S. military’s performance was striking in many respects, it may have been surpassed by the stunning ineptitude of its Iraqi adversary.”176

  Much of that ineptitude was the direct result of Hussein’s own meddling and paranoia. Extensive interviews of former Iraqi military leaders in the early aftermath of the Ba’athist regime’s collapse soon made it clear to JFCOM’s team of analysts that CENTCOM’s campaign planners had underestimated the psychological impact that precision bombing attacks would have on Iraq’s ground combat units. In a pathbreaking synopsis of their findings, JFCOM’s analysts concluded that “the largest contributing factor [accounting for] the complete defeat of Iraq’s military forces was the continued interference by Saddam.” His conviction that the real invasion threat was coming from the northwest, spearheaded by American troops moving in from Jordan, and his repositioning of forces to meet that perceived threat simply put more targets in the way of coalition aircraft.177

  JFCOM’s after-action canvass of former Ba’ath regime leaders further confirmed that Hussein’s pattern of deploying his forces around Baghdad had been motivated chiefly by his pathological fear of a coup. Accordingly, he fielded his troops in concentric rings around the city, with the least trustworthy elements kept on the outside and the more trusted Republican Guard units nearer to the city’s center. Even the Republican Guard, however, was not allowed to enter Baghdad proper. Only the most carefully screened and trusted Special Republican Guard units were permitted to position themselves that close to the regime’s center of power. Moreover, senior officers in the Special Republican Guard were forbidden to communicate and coordinate with other Iraqi forces, or even to possess maps of Baghdad. The JFCOM study observed that “in Saddam’s eyes, the only possible reason general officers would ever want to talk to each other was to plan a coup.”178

  Although coalition planners had long understood many aspects of Hussein’s approach to command and leadership, they did not fully appreciate, as one CAOC staffer later explained, “just how dysfunctional the Iraqi leader and his government were. . . . The side effects of Hussein’s coup-proofing . . . were catastrophic for Iraq. . . . Hussein had neither the information nor the disposition necessary to learn or adapt. . . . As coalition planners considered applying strategies of leadership attack to Saddam Hussein’s regime, they did not realize that the Iraqi dictator had already done much of their job for them.”179

  First and foremost, Hussein refused to allow his military units to coordinate with one another. His abiding fear of a coup was plainly reflected in the flawed plan that he imposed on his commanders for a succession of defensive rings around Baghdad, the main purpose of which was to keep the Republican Guard out of the city, irrespective of the fact that a robust urban defense could have placed major obstacles in the path of any attacking coalition force. The above-noted assessment succinctly concluded, “Saddam’s rule was a disaster for Iraq.”180

  In fact, Hussein’s dysfunctional defense plan created an all but perfect target array for CENTCOM’s air component when it came time to unleash the campaign to bring down his regime. Firsthand testimony from numerous Iraqi ground commanders bears that out. For example, the commander of the Republican Guard’s I Corps, Lieutenant General Majid Husayn Ali Ibraham Al Dulaymi, recalled his shock when he visited the Republican Guard’s Adnan Division shortly after a successive barrage of air attacks had obliterated one of its battalions that had moved into an exposed position: “The level of precision of those attacks put real fear into the soldiers of the rest of the division. The Americans were able to induce fear throughout the army by using precision air power.”181

  Although the Republican Guard’s Al Nida Division experienced no significant direct contact with allied ground forces, it likewise felt the shock effect of coalition air power. One of its leaders later remarked that CENTAF’s precision air attacks had made virtually every soldier feel as if he was in “a sniper’s sight.”182 The division commander told JFCOM’s interviewers:

  The air attacks were the most effective message. The soldiers who did see the leaflets and then saw the air attacks knew the leaflets were true. . . . Overall, [the air attacks] had a terrible effect on us. I started the war with 13,000 soldiers. By the time we had orders to pull back to Baghdad, I had less than 2,000; by the time we were in position in Baghdad, I had less than 1,000. . . . When my division pulled back across the Diyala bridge, of the more than 500 armored vehicles assigned to me before the war, I was able to get fifty or so across the bridge. Most were destroyed or abandoned on the east side of the Diyala River.

  JFCOM’s analysts concluded from their interviews with Al Nida Division troops that “precision air power and the fear it engendered made an entire division of the Republican Guard combat-ineffective. In this case, it was not so much destroyed as dissolved.”183

  Perhaps the most unimpeachable source of firsthand testimony regarding the effects of the coalition’s unrelenting air attacks was Lieutenant General Ra’ad al Hamdani, the commander of the Republican Guard’s II Corps and one of the few truly competent officers near the top whom Hussein seemed to trust implicitly. He was particularly well placed during the campaign to offer an informed view of how the allied air war looked from the receiving end because his corps wa
s responsible for defending the southern approaches to Baghdad along which V Corps and I MEF advanced in their parallel offensives. JFCOM’s study team was impressed by his rare perceptivity, candor, and honesty. Hamdani told his interviewers, for example, that when he tried to establish a defensive line west of Latifiya around March 30 after having fallen back in the face of the relentless allied advance, “American jets attacked our force as we moved down the road. We were hit by many missiles. Most of the Medina Division’s staff were killed. My corps communication staff was also killed. When we reached the area near the bridge where the special forces battalion had set up a headquarters, we immediately came under heavy fire. Based on the volume of fire, I estimated at least 60 armored vehicles [destroyed by the air attacks].”184

  With respect to the initial waves of air attacks during the campaign’s opening days, the Al Nida Division’s commander said: “The early air attacks hit only empty headquarters and barracks buildings. It did affect our communication switches which were still based in those buildings. . . . But the accuracy and lethality of those attacks left an indelible impression on those Iraqi soldiers who either observed them directly or saw the damage afterwards.”185 Another allied air attack against the Al Nida Division during the campaign’s first week struck particularly hard against its 153rd Artillery Battalion located in the 41st Brigade area. The division commander told JFCOM interviewers that the unit had hidden its artillery pieces in an orchard, its soldiers in a second hiding position, and its ammunition in still a third place that was separated from the first two. He recounted his shock when “the air attack hit all three locations at the same time and annihilated the artillery battalion.” JFCOM interviewers noted that “such experiences became commonplace as coalition air power chewed up Iraqi ground forces that attracted the attention of satellites or aerial reconnaissance.”186

  Thanks in large measure to the coalition’s air contribution, a CENTCOM ground contingent consisting of just two U.S. Army divisions and one Marine Corps division (plus smaller allied forces) was able to attack into the face of more than twenty enemy divisions and prevail handily—and at little cost. One subsequent land-centric assessment suggested that there had been “significant close combat” throughout the three weeks of major fighting, but it ultimately acknowledged the more important point that the “Iraqi paramilitaries and [Special Republican Guard] infantry [did not present] a serious threat to halt the coalition advance.”187 That assessment further conceded that “much of the close combat [that did occur] took the form of Iraqi paramilitaries charging coalition armored vehicles on the outskirts of Iraqi cities using unarmored civilian vehicles.”188 Although the allied ground contribution to the campaign entailed more than a few hair-raising skirmishes with defending Iraqi forces and was pivotal in toppling Hussein’s regime, the land component did not encounter the sort of close-combat opposition for which it was so well configured and trained. On the contrary, as Andrew Krepinevich observed, the Fedayeen Saddam in the end “proved little more than a nuisance to coalition forces.”189

  Col. Matt Neuenswander well captured the point that matters most in this regard when he remarked that the allied air contribution to CENTCOM’s counterland effort “truly validated General Moseley’s air interdiction campaign and our efforts independent of the land component.”190 Commenting on that performance even as the campaign was still in its final throes, an Australian analyst reported:

  The Iraqi defenders could not disperse their armored and mechanized elements for fear of being engaged by raiding M1A1 Abrams tanks and AH-64 Apache helicopters. . . . Yet the very concentration of force they required to protect themselves against the [coalition’s] armor and helicopter elements is what made them into lucrative targets for orbiting strike aircraft above. . . . With coalition air and information dominance, the latter provided by E-8C JSTARS, RQ-1/MQ-1 Predators, RQ-4 Global Hawks, RC-135 Rivet Joint and other assets, the Iraqi ground force became like the proverbial fish in a giant barrel, pinned in the Karbala-Baghdad–Al Kut triangle.191

  All in all, as Krepinevich later concluded, “air superiority enabled the services to provide the level of close air support strikes [that were] needed by a relatively small but fast-moving ground force.”192 As to the practical effects on Iraq’s ground forces achieved by these KI/CAS attacks from the air, the chairman of the JCS, General Myers, reported just before the Ba’athist regime was finally toppled that of the eight hundred–plus tanks that the Republican Guard had fielded at the start of the war, “all but a couple of dozen” had been destroyed by air strikes or abandoned by the campaign’s third week.193 A substantial portion of those were destroyed during the three-day shamal. Thanks largely to the sustained contribution by the fixed-wing air assets provided by the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, RAF, and RAAF, noted Krepinevich, “by the time the 3rd Infantry Division reached the outskirts of Baghdad, only about a dozen Iraqi tanks opposed it. They were quickly dispatched in what may have been the only traditional tank encounter of the war.”194

  In the end, the major combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom illustrated the fundamental reversal that has taken place in the traditional roles of land and air power in high-intensity warfare, starting with the precedent-setting experience of Operation Desert Storm in 1991, in which allied ground troops did the fixing and CENTCOM’s air component did the majority of the killing of enemy ground forces rather than the other way around, as had hitherto been the norm for joint warfare against mechanized opponents. As I wrote in this regard in 2000, harking back to the example of the first Persian Gulf War,

  One can argue that the air power assets of all the U.S. services now have the potential to carry the bulk of responsibility for beating down an enemy’s military forces of all kinds, thus enabling other friendly force elements to achieve their goals with a minimum of pain, effort, and cost. . . . More important than that, one can argue that air power . . . has fundamentally altered the way the United States might best fight any major wars over the next two decades through its ability to carry out functions traditionally performed at greater cost and risk by other force elements. . . . This, in turn, suggests that the primary role of U.S. land forces [in major combat] may now be increasingly to secure a win rather than to achieve it. . . . In this respect, there is growing ground for maintaining that a fundamental change has begun to take place in the long-familiar relationship between air and land forces when it comes to [combating] enemy armored and mechanized units.195

  The three weeks of major combat in Operation Iraqi Freedom further bore out that changed relationship between the nation’s air and land forces in high-intensity warfare. What largely accounted for the reversal in roles between those two force elements, even more in Iraqi Freedom than in Desert Storm, was that fixed-wing air power in all services had become “markedly more effective in creating the conditions for rapid success than [had been] existing ground systems.”196 This reversal did not entail the classic image of the “hammer” of friendly air power smashing enemy forces against the “anvil” of friendly ground power, to use David Johnson’s words. Instead, it was “more a case of ground power flushing the enemy, allowing air power to maul his forces, with ground power finishing the fight against the remnants and controlling the ground dimension in the aftermath of combat. . . . The operational level of warfighting against large conventional enemy forces was dominated by flexible, all-weather, precision strike air power, enabled by ISR,” whereas “the tactical level of war and the exploitation of the operational effects of air power were the primary domains of [allied] ground power.”197

  To cite the most telling factual testimony to that change, during the three weeks of major combat in Iraqi Freedom, V Corps launched only two deep-attack operations using a force of fewer than eighty AH-64 attack helicopters. The first combat foray nearly ended in disaster for the attacking force, and the second achieved only modest mission success. By the same token, Army field artillery units expended only 414 of their longest-range Army Tactical
Missile System (ATACMS) missiles, principally because of the indiscriminate wide-area destructive effects of that weapon and its consequent inability to meet CENTCOM’s stringent rules of engagement for collateral damage avoidance. In contrast, CENTCOM’s air component during the same three weeks generated 20,733 combat and combat support sorties, which included the repeated use of 735 strike fighters and 51 heavy bombers and successfully struck more than 15,592 target aim points in support of the allied counterland campaign.198

  Problems Encountered

  All in all, CENTCOM committed remarkably few major errors during its campaign to topple the Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein. To be sure, as a subsequent review of postcampaign detainee operations in Iraq led by two former secretaries of defense, James Schlesinger and Harold Brown, harshly concluded, the Bush administration’s overall strategy wrongly “presupposed that relatively benign stability and security operations would precede a handover to Iraqi authorities.” The administration also failed utterly to “plan for a major insurgency” and “to quickly and adequately adapt to the insurgency that followed after major combat operations.”1 To infer from that stern judgment, as Washington Post military reporter Thomas Ricks later did, that the initial invasion and takedown of the Ba’athist regime was based on “perhaps the worst war plan in American history,” however, was a considerable over-reach.2 Such a blanket dismissal of CENTCOM’s chosen approach for defeating Hussein’s forces was tantamount to throwing out the baby with the bathwater. A more discerning perspective was that offered by former secretary of state Colin Powell, who candidly remarked that what really went wrong with Iraqi Freedom was not the three-week major combat phase of the campaign, which was “brilliantly fought,” but rather the transition afterward to “nation-building.” In his well-informed opinion, there had been “enough troops for war but not enough for peace, for establishing order.”3