QandO

August 11, 2004

Troop Levels
Posted by Jon Henke

There's been some recent--and somewhat contradictory--discussion about anticipated Iraq-war troop levels among some liberal bloggers. Kevin Drum writes...

Here is General Tommy Franks describing to Donald Rumsfeld his testimony before Congress about a month before the war:

Then I turned to reveal the next chart: PHASE IV: POST-HOSTILITY OPERATIONS. "As stability operations proceed, force levels would continue to grow--perhaps to as many as two hundred and fifty thousand troops, or until we are sure we've met our endstate objectives."

So the Army Chief of Staff, Eric Shinseki, thought we'd need "several hundred thousand troops," and the CENTCOM commander on the ground estimated 250,000 troops.

But we went in with about 150,000. And as Spencer points out, Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz have insisted ever since that this number was exactly what the military commanders advised — no more, no less. I know we're not allowed to say that anybody in the Bush administration lies, but Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz sure seem to have a creative way with numbers, don't they?

From the New York Times, May 3, 2003.

The Bush administration is planning to withdraw most United States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months and wants to shrink the American military presence to less than two divisions by the fall, senior allied officials said today.
[...]
If the administration plan is carried out, the effect would be to reduce the number of American troops in Iraq from over 130,000 soldiers and marines at present to 30,000 troops or fewer by the fall.

Except, that's not quite right.

First things first: mistakes, as they say, were made. The plan did not survive contact with the enemy. First, to deal with the story Atrios cited, but (surprise!) did not cite in context. Here is the part he left out...

American military officials cautioned that the timetable for rapid troop reductions depends on several conditions and that the withdrawal schedule would probably slow down if the conditions are not met.

"I would expect that even countries like France will have a strong interest in assisting Iraq in reconstruction."

But this puts matters in a very different light. Read what Franks said again. He didn't say--like Shinseki--that we'd go in with "several hundred thousand". He didn't even say we'd go in with 250,000, as Kevin seems to think he said. He said we'd go in, then grow the troop levels to "perhaps" as many as 250,000, OR until we were certain that we'd met our objectives.

Like the administration, he was operating on the assumption that we would have more international support, and that the problems in Iraq could be solved with "more troops". It appears that both of those assumptions were wrong. Frankly, I'm not at all certain that "more troops" would be terribly useful in dealing with sporadic insurgents, but we'll leave that be.

Kevin asserts that the administration "insisted ever since that this number was exactly what the military commanders advised — no more, no less", but ignores the fact that the cited statements were pre-war estimates, not demands. If Wolfowitz, et al, were wrong in their pre-war estimates of post-war international support, it's not unreasonable to believe that the pre-war estimates of post-war troop levels might be less than perfect, and revised on the fly.

Also, if his Iraq war plans were ignored, you'd think that's the sort of thing General Franks would have mentioned, what with his writing a book about the experience and all.

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