An element, a memoir. Colonel mansoor is a professor at ohio state. He was executive officer to general petraeus. He has a ph. D and holds the Raymond Mason chair and military history at ohio state. Happy to have you. After colonel mansoor to this presentation we will have joel rayburn, a long front of the American Foundation who was sort of produced some responses to what colonel mansoor says. Is writing an opera study of the iraq war for the u. S. Army. Hes also studying for his ph. D at texas a m university. We are really pleased that both of you here so welcome to both of you. Colonel mansoor will give his presentation at the podium now. Thank you. Thank you, peter, for that kind introduction, and thank you all for coming today. I really appreciate the new America Foundation sponsoring this talk. I was not going to write this book. I retired from military in 2008, and although i knew that the restored to be told, i was going to let it take some time to digest and develop. And i was thinking maybe 10, 20 years down the road i would write a history of the iraq war are but a couple years later in the summer of 2010 i was at a conference with a whos who of counterinsurgency experts in the United States. We were talking about what to do in iraq are of course the iraq war im sorry, in afghanistan. What to do in afghanistan in 2010 was an issue of major concern in the United States, and invariably the discussion default into what it happened in iraq and what happened during the surge and why the sectarian violence was reduced so much in that period. And and listening to what the various experts have to say, it was good to me that not one of them had a holistic understanding of the iraq war, and especially the surge your right then and i decided to put aside the research i was conducted on the liberation of the philippines in 194445, the subject of my next book. Much nicer ready for the people who are thoroughly dead and, therefore, cant disagree with what you have to say about them. And i decided to write this book. This is three years in the making, and i understood where the forces were for it since we have developed, collected an archive of documents of general petraeus while the surge was ongoing with an eye toward history eventually. Those documents which essential command and into the National Defense university and i am indebted to the folks there, both those places for declassified summary of documents that are used to write this history. Empanada been possible without their assistance. It would not have been possible without their assistance. What went wrong in iraq . The Bush Administration made some assumptions going into the iraq war that it would be a war of liberation, that the iraqi people would support the taking down Saddam Hussein, a very brutal and hated it to be. And that since they would cooperate with the american forces, government and infrastructure would largely remain intact and, therefore, the United States didnt need to plan for a long occupation or an extended rehabilitation of the country. Secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld also looked on iraq as a laboratory to test his theories and to validate really the revolution in military affairs, the idea that hightech forces with precision guided missions and intelligence aspects could collapse an enemy state relatively quickly, beginning at the center of gravity and then wind up the war fairly rapidly with fewer casualties. And that this was the sort of wave of the future, the u. S. Will take affairs, was going to take advantage of. Unfortunately, the enemy didnt cooperate. Lieutenant general scott wallace, commander, as he is marching up country towards baghdad, supply bunch of being attacked by guerrillas. He makes a comment to the press that this is not the enemy we war gamed against, and force candidates he was nearly relieved of command. This is sort of part and parcel without the secretary of defense and the administration dealt with things that went against the perceived notions. Recently stuck their head in sand and said, its not happening. So when there was evidence that an insurgency was developing, well, it wasnt an insurgency. It was nearly dead end, the last remnants of the Saddam Hussein administration. Once we got rid of them then everything would be okay. As late as november 2003 president bush any meeting of the National Student council said, dont tell me that theres an insurgency in iraq. Im not there yet. This is in the midst of the first ramadan offensive. In addition to these assumptions that were made, proved incorrect, there were two really key decisions made in the first 10 days of the head of Coalition Provisional authority. Tickets to baghdad in may 23 and the first decision he makes is to be baffled by Iraqi Society. Some debaathification is going to have to take place. If you lop off Survivor Army of 2000 of the top assets, it probably would have been okay. But instead, bremer decided to debaathify all the way down to the Division Level of the baath party and thereby got rid of not just the top leaders of the Iraqi Government and their immediate advisers, but tens of thousands of iraqis who were joined the baath party because is the only way to get a decent job. So who were these people . Doctors, lawyers, engineers, university professors, civil servants, all the same people that our own war plans assumed would remain in place to make sure iraq continued to function in the postwar period. And with one stroke of the pen he got rid of them. Not only that but many of these people were sunnis and they were now denied a job, pension, participation in the political life of the country, what they viewed as the d. Unification they started, instead of agreeing that Saddam Hussein was bad and they couldnt get rid of him and they would help us with the new iraq, i think initially i got that since being on the ground, some people were doing to give us the benefit of the doubt. Instead, we alienated them. With one stroke of the pen, we created the political basis of uncertainty. The second decision was to disband the iraqi army to a National Institution that for eight years against iran, many shia in the iraqi army. It was an instrument of regime control the way the Republican Guard were, but we had to eliminate those but not the iraqi army. The iraqi army was an institution that couldve been rehabilitated under new leadership and used to help stabilize postwar iraq. And instead, bremer disbanded it. In his memoirs he said, i was just acknowledging the obvious that the soldiers had taken off the uniforms and gone over its a pretty disingenuous statement because what he doesnt say is they take up their weapons from within. And that hadnt wanted to bring them back and call them back to the callers can we couldve. How do i know . Because when it was pointed out to brimmer that we now have several hundred thousand armed young men without jobs on the streets, he decided that we would offer them back pay and they could come and click the back they and the second, and that would give them something with which they could start their new lives. They all showed up. It wouldve been very easy to have a recruiting table right there saying we want to continue your job, help guard your country, prevent looting and so forth, we wouldnt have gotten all of them but we would have gotten a significant portion and we would not have had to recreate the Iraqi Security forces. What this did not only put hundreds of thousands of armed young men on the street, but tens of thousands of officers, most of them were sunni, and they were denied jobs, pensions, illegal future, and most important in iraq the society Iraqi Society, they were deprived of their honor. With a second stroke of the pen, bremer created a military bases. We capped off these two disasters by empowering a highly sectarian group of iraqi politicians, the iraqi governing council. 24 of them, and they proceeded to divide up the Iraqi Government among themselves. They had to create new ministries of each member could have a ministry to control. And then they proceeded to fire everyone in there who wasnt a member of their particular political party. What little confidence that remained in the Iraqi Government was done away with by this decision. So these were, this was the political basis for the downturn in iraq. I think that its my contention we created the mess. We created it first by ill considered invasion. But then by our decision in the immediate postwar period. I love gary larson. This is american generals in iraq. I guess that would be tommy franks, planning out their campaign on the calendar, as you noticed that every day this is still something needed. It really says something about the American Army in the beginning of the war. Its very often silly focused, very tactically and operationally excellent. And they did know a lot about counterinsurgency. So the idea that you go out and kill and capture insurgent terrorist operatives and it would be rates after raids after raids, and not a lot of thought putting into the other aspects of counterinsurgency that we eventually became very good at but not in 2003. We were there now and things were spiraling downward, although not rapidly. What were we going to do . That was a good question. I dont think we have a good answer to it. We lacked a strategy to guide the way forward, and down at the troop level and outlined Brigade Commander lacked the concept that drove operations in a uniform and coherent manner. And we lacked enough resources, certainly lacked troops on the ground. Even with these headwinds, there were some good things that were done. Unit by unit there was a lot of learning going on. I think the army history of the first stage of the iraq war covered this pretty well. That it was a hit or miss but it depended on the unit commander. There was a lot of learning when the unit came into iraq, and by the time they left they were trained up and they were pretty good, but then new units came in and you had that learning process all over again. Even so, there were some successes but we failed to capitalize on them. We failed to schmidt we did to be the first ramadan offenses in october 2003. After the we captured Saddam Hussein. This took the wind out of the sails of the very early baathist led insurgency. My contention that had we reached out to sunnis at this point with the reform of debaathification decree and some of the political outreach, that we could have brought them back as a way forward. They period from january to march 2004 was peaceful. There was a down turn in peaceful in iraq but we didnt take advantage of it. Instead we create a transitional Administrative Law that was crafted built without a lot of sunni input and, therefore, they resisted it. This period ended with the april 2004 uprising across southcentral iraq. Uprisings that were in the case of the southcentral iraq, was put down by the First Armored division, a unit of which i was Brigade Commander. And we dealt the army a significant blow. In fallujah the marines were on the way in giving a blow to the insurgents when they were told to stop because the press, era press conference from it against what was happening and there was a lot of misinformation about civilian casualties and so forth. And when they were ordered to stop, then the situation in fallujah spiraled downward. Certain insurgents ended up seizing the city seizing the city and holding it until the second battle of fallujah in november 2004, which killed 2000 surgeons and about half of the city and the process. We didnt take advantage of the opportunities that we had there in the spring 2004. For military successes on the battlefield. Instead we withdrew from the city. We withdrew our forces from the basis inside baghdad and other cities and put them on the periphery. I know in baghdad we went to four major Forward Operating bases on the first degree of the city. This was a major mistake. It was predicated on the u. S. Central command believe. Is belief that we were a virus that infected Iraqi Society and the longer that we were positioned among the iraqis in their cities, the more antibodies in the form of insurgency we would create. That we were the problem, not the iraqis. The problem is when we withdrew from the city, no matter how many mounted patrols we launched in the Ford Operating bases we could not control in neighborhoods from the periphery. And the result is that the people with the power was positioned locally rose up and begin to control the urban terrain of iraq, that was increasingly the insurgency and the shia militia that were gaining in strength and power. A real study in contrast, again showing a different units a different approaches to counter insurgency, i described one approach and that was the invasion of fallujah in 2004. Another approach was h. R. Mcmasters approach to the third Army Calvary Regiment in 2005. Face with a similar problem, insurgents controlled the center of the city. He didnt attack it or instead he surrounded it, isolated it and then slowly it but it declared it and then to hold it he positioned his forces and iraqi police and army inside the city and smaller compound combat outpost make sure the insurgents could not rise up again and control the terrain. And by doing this is a tinge of the dynamics of the battle. It was a great example of counterinsurgency warfare, but it was just one unit among many. Nevertheless, it was pretty clear that attacking iraqi cities to say them was not the answer, and fallujah, the second battle, was the end of that. This period of the war spiraling downward, but not at a crisis point and ended in february 2006 with the destruction of the shrine, probably the fourth holiest shrine in shia islam. Up to this point the shia have been fairly responsive to calls to not make the situation worse. The ayatollah understood they were outnumbered and, therefore, they could outvote everyone else and they would eventually gain power in iraq. But after this incident with this major shrine now destroyed, he said if the government, the iraqi secret forces cant defend our religion, who will . That was all that he needed to rise up and begin an baghdad and elsewhere. They torched mosques and made neighborhoods, kidnapped, tortured and killed sunnis and drove them out of their homes. And his campaign that began after february 2006 gained force and strength throughout the year. In the western part of iraq, alqaeda was gain control of Anbar Province, this according to the Intelligence Report of a marine colonel who said were no longer in control of Anbar Province. Alqaedas. But there is a glimmer of hope in the city of ramallah become and will talk about that later. Nevertheless, by december 2006 more than 3500 iraqis were being killed every month due to sectarian violence. The problem is that Multinational Force iraq failed to adjust to this approach, with focus on killing and capturing insurgent terrorist operatives. And on the rapid transition security responsibility, secret forces, forces funding under to accept those responsibilities. In some cases, especially in terms of Iraqi National police, were complicit in the sectarian violence that was ongoing. Part of the problem and Multinational Force iraq is a silly didnt understand what was going on on the ground. I know this because i got a hold of general cases documents as well as general petraeus. If you look at the Campaign Plan review in april 2006, this is now two months after the shrine bombing, it has a list of wild card, things that could go wrong. And on that list of wild card is sunni terrorists destroyed a major shia shrine, thereby sparking sectarian violence throughout iraq. Its like this happened two months ago and are still putting it in your plan, not as effect on the ground is something that could happen. Its an unwillingness to recognize the reality of what was happening. This shows what was happening. Civilian deaths. The purple is iraqi data plus coalition data. The bluetooth bullish and data. The iraqis are in more places than we are so they count more bodies. You can see this trend upward throughout 2006 with the number of civilians dying. By december it had reached critical proportions, equivalent to more than 35,000 u. S. Citizens dying every month due to sectarian violence. Pretty significant number. And heres where we are as a search is announced. We dont understand that this is going to happen. Happen. All because he is that this is happened come and if thats a stock chart, you are a buyer. What did i just do . Okay, there we go. This shows in geographical terms what was happening. The darker orange areas are areas where insurgents and terrorists have more sway. And you can see that the tigris river valley, the Euphrates River valley, and, of course, both portions of baghdad are significant concentrations of insurgent terrorist forces. It was a fairly significant challenge. By late summer 2006 its clear that the United States is headed for defeat. We put it, i was on the council of girls that worked with the joint chiefs and we put it to them this way. We are not winning, so we are losing and time is not on our side. Parallel strategic reviews were undertaken by the National Security council, th