While Scott McClellan's book sits on the bestseller list, Douglas Feith's War and Decision has received half the attention of McClellan although it appears to be twice the book. The link above is to the book's homepage which contains a bevy of information, including Misconception and The Facts about the Iraq War. Feith's book is informative, well-written, and in general a convincing account of the planning and early stages of the Iraq war.
Feith, who was Undersecretary of Defense for Policy from 2001-2005, begins his book with a discussion of 9-11 and the war in Afghanistan. While this is important subject matter, I suspect most people are more concerned with the Iraq war so I will concentrate on that.
Why Iraq? This is the title of Feith's sixth chapter. First, Congress and the Clinton administration had already passed the Iraqi Liberation Act into law in 1998, making regime change in Iraq part of national policy (btw, in this section Feith incorrectly identifies Tom Daschle as being from North Dakota. People often confuse the two states and I like to clear things up by telling people that South Dakota is the Dakota just south of North Dakota). Second, the Hussein regime was brutalizing its people with mass murder, torture and general reign of terror. Third, the regime had attempted to assassinate George H.W. Bush, surely an act of war. Feith also delves into the connections between the Iraqi regime and international terrorism. Next, the sanction regime was porous and was hurting the wrong people, namely the Iraqi citizenry. Also, Iraq was in serial breech of the agreements that had ended Gulf War I (including firing at US planes enforcing no fly zones).
What about the WMDs? Feith reports that the CIA told both the Clinton and Bush administrations that Iraq had large stockpiles of WMDs. Iraq most certainly had the programs in place to reconstitute WMDs at a moment's notice. Even after hostilities ended, the Iraq Survey Group "confirmed Saddam's intention and capability to produce biological and chemical weapons. But the large stockpiles were not found" (emphasis in the original).
Feith documents the fact that the Bush administration made a holistic case for war rather than basing its decision on stockpiles of WMD. He also documents the various official investigation that failed to find any evidence that the intelligence was rigged or that administration officials pressured intelligence analysts to change their reports. Feith goes into more detail than I can reproduce in this review. Let's just say it's convincing. Read the book for details.
Feith has little good to say about the State Department and the CIA. He depicts Colin Powell and George Tenet as political operators who did not do the kind of strategic thinking that was promoted by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. If the Pentagon was more influential, Feith argues, it was from the fact that Rumsfeld had his team think out problems, argue out various alternatives, and then write tightly argued memos. Powell and Tenet preferred to operate on the level of tactics and rarely made complex arguments. Indeed, Feith argues that Powell especially seemed to want it both ways on Iraq. He didn't want to commit himself to a full-throated defense of the war, but he never objected to the war decision. This way if things went well he could say he never opposed, but if things went badly he could say that he wasn't a big supporter. Powell and Tenet also undermined the administration by remaining silent in official meetings but then airing objections to administration policy to media sources.
Feith also has criticism for Condoleezza Rice. Rice's assumption was that "interagency disagreements are a symptom of a dysfunction rather than useful debate." Her reports to the president were often aimed at presenting the appearance of consensus rather than giving the president the stark alternatives and letting him decide.
If anyone was shading intelligence, Feith argues, it was the CIA, which made a practice of giving more credence to intelligence that confirmed analysts' preconceived notions and dismissing contradictory evidence as "unconfirmed." They also failed to tell administration officials exactly how poor their sourcing was coming out of Iraq.
Obviously Feith objects to the "Bush lied, people died" notion. First, Bush made comprehensive argument for the Iraq war, not focusing on stockpiles of WMDs. Second, Bush, Congress and various other governments, based on what they were told, believed Iraq to be in possession of stockpiles. Here Bush, Congress and other governments were wrong, but they really did believe what they were saying. Finally, as noted above, after the war inspection groups did find vast WMD capabilities and strong evidence of WMD programs. Saddam could have reconstituted significant amounts of WMDs in a matter of weeks. But, Feith laments, after reports that large stockpiles were not found, the administration inexplicably refused to defend its case for war and started to play up the "promotion of democracy" angle. This, Feith argues, made it look like Bush was changing his argument to fit the news. And that is not totally inaccurate, but it appears to have been unnecessary.
Let me discuss the post-war planning, as this post is already getting long. In Feith's account, Bush was wary about starting post-war planning too soon as such planning would undermine the administration's diplomatic ventures. It would make it look like Bush thought war was inevitable, which Bush did not believe until late 2002. But again interagency squabbling hurt the effort. The State Department was notoriously hostile to the "externals," Iraqis living outside of Iraq who might help form a government. Although eventually the interim Iraq government was based on externals, State fought them tooth and nail, making planning difficult. Second, Gen. Tommy Franks appeared uninterested in post-war planning, especially the training of a new Iraqi police force. Next, although Bush wanted a quick transition of power, Paul Bremer differed and thought the Iraqis were not competent or hard working enough to take control. He insisted that a constitution be finalized, rather just negotiated, before the US gave up power. Bremer ended up guiding a 14 month occupation that was intended to be only weeks. Bremer somewhat undermined his argument as the very people he claimed were incompetent were the very people he eventually selected to head an interim government. It just took him months to do what could have been done in weeks, helping spur resentment by the Iraqi people.
I have not done justice to the amount of detail and documentation Feith produces to augment his argument. This documentation is why I find the argument largely convincing. A note of caution, though. I am wary of a memoir (of sorts) like this where almost everything bad was someone else's fault and the author could seem to do no wrong. To be fair, Feith on various occasions admits that there is no way of knowing if his or Rumsfeld's ideas would have worked better. And Feith does say that despite his obvious admiration for Rumsfeld, the Secretary's brusque manner often undermined his efforts. But Feith engages in precious little self-criticism, and readers should be skeptical of that.
As an aside, Feith believes the Abu Ghraib scandal was the turning point in the war, as in Iraq and around the world it cost the United States all its good will. Rumsfeld recognized the embarrassment and twice offered to resign over it.
Finally (whew), what were the overall deficiencies of the administration and Bush in particular. Bush can be blamed for not running a tight ship, not insisting on getting all points of view (on this matter he gave too much authority to Rice), tolerating disloyalty (especially from Powell), and not carrying through on decisions about post-war planning. Bush also failed to defend the administration when it came under political attack, ceding too much ground to his opponents and allowing misrepresentations to take on the status of conventional wisdom. In a particularly harsh section, Feith excoriates the president for switching his argument on Iraq from defending the nation to building democracy. In short, while Bush was once touted as the "MBA president," the guy who understood and could manage personalities, Bush was actually a weak manager who did not assert control over his administration.
This post is now almost as long as the book it reviews. So let me conclude by highly recommending Douglas Feith's War and Decision.
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