Posted on 02/26/2004 8:25:37 AM PST by FilmCutter
THE INVASION OF IRAQ
PBS Airdate: Thursday, February 26, at 9 P.M. (check local listings)
As the first anniversary of the war in Iraq approaches, FRONTLINE® presents a special two-hour documentary investigation recounting the key strategies, battles, and turning points of the war from both sides of the battlefield.
In “The Invasion of Iraq,” airing Thursday, February 26, at 9 P.M. on PBS (check local listings), FRONTLINE takes viewers behind the scenes of the allied invasion and advance on Baghdad. Through first-hand accounts from key commanders, frontline soldiers, and civilians on both sides of the conflict, the documentary offers a rare battlefield perspective of the war as seen through the eyes of those who lived it.
“To date, most attempts to understand the war have focused on pre-war intelligence and the political process that led to war,” producer Richard Sanders says. “‘The Invasion of Iraq’ takes a different route, chronicling the experiences of the troops on the front line. It also shows how the false assessment of Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction was just the first in a series of intelligence failures that shaped the course of the war and the unstable occupation America is now mired in.”
In an exclusive, wide-ranging interview, Republican Guard General Raad Al-Hamdani—who turned himself in to the U.S. military but is now free to speak—offers accounts of key Iraqi strategy meetings that paint a portrait of Saddam as a confused leader who misjudged America’s military strategy. For example, as the main elements of U.S. forces approached Baghdad, Al-Hamdani says he was shocked to receive a new message from Saddam Hussein.
“The new message was, all that happened in the last two weeks was a strategic deception,” Al-Hamdani recalls being told. “The main enemy will come from north of Baghdad. Therefore, we should minimize the troops south of Baghdad.” But in reality, there were only a handful of U.S. troops north of Baghdad and a week later the capital fell—conquered by troops from the south.
U.S. commanders, meanwhile, reveal that much of the intelligence they received prior to the war regarding how the Iraqi people would react once the invasion began was shockingly inaccurate.
“We thought once we had crossed the Euphrates River, that might be the trigger for Shia resistance or Shia opposition to the regime to take overt forms,” says Allied Ground Command Lt. General David McKiernon. “Well, it didn’t happen.”
U.S. soldiers also recall learning the hard way that intelligence reports about the level of enemy resistance were often incorrect. “It was useless,” says Lieutenant Jason King of the 5th Army’s 11th Aviation Regiment. “It really was useless. There was definitely something wrong with the intelligence flow.”
“The Invasion of Iraq” offers eyewitness accounts of some of the fiercest, bloodiest fighting to occur during the allied assault. The 11th Aviation Regiment’s Captain Andrew Tapscott, for example, says his fears of accidentally firing upon innocent civilians lost out to the instinct for self-preservation when his unit came under a blistering attack.
“Fire was coming from the houses, the waterways, trees, shrubs, vehicles,” he says. “It became fairly evident that in order to survive you were going to have to return fire. I was on the radio when I got hit—I was pretty sure I was done for.”
When the Iraqi people failed to rise up and rally to the allied cause, insiders say, some U.S. military leaders began to doubt whether there were sufficient troops to continue the attack on Baghdad.
“I wasn’t real comfortable with the troop levels,” admits Lt. General William Wallace, commander of the V Corps. “I wanted to make damn sure that when we did it we were gonna be decisive and successful.”
General McKiernon, however, disagreed. “I said that we’re going to have to accept some risk, and I want you to continue your attack rapidly to the north. Fast is better than slower. Fast is more lethal than slower. Fast is more final.”
Ultimately, the film reveals, Iraqi resistance crumbled under the allied onslaught, as many Iraqi soldiers simply put down their guns, abandoned their tanks, and went home.
“I don’t have the exact figures, but I don’t think more than 15 percent of the [Iraqi] armed forces actually fought,” General Al-Hamdani tells FRONTLINE.
Iraqi Lt. Colonel Mahmood Sharhan Mohamed agrees. “There was a tank commander in our brigade [who] told the president he wanted to change the name of his unit to the Al Samood—the unit which struggles,” Mohamed says. “In the end, he didn’t fire a single shot at the Americans and all his tanks were captured.”
The swift and sudden end of major hostilities didn’t make the allies’ job much easier, however. Once again, officials say, U.S. planning for what would happen after the war didn’t match up to the actual situation in which American soldiers and military commanders found themselves.
“We expected there to be some degree of infrastructure left in [Baghdad] in terms of intellectual infrastructure, in terms of running the government,” Lt. General Wallace says. “What in fact happened is that when you decapitated the regime, everything below it fell apart.”
General McKiernan agrees. “You had no Iraq institutions to co-op,” he says. “No Iraqi army, no Iraqi police, the prisoners let out of prison. No local or national governmental organization. Ministries didn’t exist. “A vacuum was created,” McKiernan says. “And into this vacuum flowed first chaos and then a violent insurgency.”
The program also dissects a bitter backstage bureaucratic battle between Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the leadership of the Army—its chief of staff General Eric Shinseki and the Secretary of the Army Thomas White. Before the invasion, White and Shinseki had argued it would take about 400,000 ground troops to control the potential chaos after the Iraqi regime fell.
“We were very concerned that there wouldn’t be sufficient boots on the ground after the operation to provide for security,” says White. But Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, moved forcefully to dismiss the Army’s concerns, calling their projections “wildly off the mark.” They believed the post-war situation would not require more than the 200,000 troops they had committed to the invasion.
“Our view was that they were going to be terribly wrong,” says White. “And their response, publicly and privately, was basically that Shinseki and I didn’t know what we were talking about.”
But after the fall of Baghdad, the failure of U.S. troops to control the massive looting and prevent the violent insurgency against the U.S. occupation seemed to bear out the Army’s pre-war assessment that they would not have enough troops.
“Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz and Secretary Rumsfeld…Neither man is a man that I would say was burdened by a great deal of self doubt,” concludes White. “It is hard to believe that rational people looking at that situation before the combat operation could have thought it was going to come out in any other way than it in fact did.”
“The Invasion of Iraq” is a Mentorn production for WGBH/FRONTLINE and Channel 4. The producers are Richard Sanders and Jeff Goldberg. The executive producer for Mentorn is Eamonn Matthews. The executive producer for special projects for FRONTLINE is Michael Sullivan.
FRONTLINE is produced by WGBH Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers. Additional support is provided by U.S. News & World Report. FRONTLINE is closed-captioned for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers.FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. The executive producer for FRONTLINE is David Fanning.
FRONTLINE XXII/February 2004
I hope you all get a chance to watch tonight at 9pm on PBS (check local listings)
I like the sound of that.
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Eyewitness accounts tell a different story - only the media tells of "massive looting" - in actuality, according to observers other than media, there was less looting than in Los Angeles during their famous riots!
PBS is run by Liberal Socialist Pondscum (LSP), and it is necessary to put anything seen or heard on any PBS station through a very stringent LSP filter......
Bttt
I didn't expect it and I didn't get it. Its an absolute BARF piece, consumed more with the lives of Iraqis too stupid to get out of the way of an American advance than the American's themselves.
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