[Vision2020] Army Officer Accuses His Generals of Iraq Failures

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (April 27, 2007) Daily News Roundup Edition of the Army Times -

LTC Paul Yingling's opinion article "A Failure in Generalship"
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2007/05/2635198

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Army officer accuses his generals of Iraq failures

By Thomas Wagner - The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Apr 27, 2007 16:31:05 EDT

Read the opinion piece in Army Times' sister publication, Armed Forces
Journal.

BAGHDAD - An active-duty Army officer warns that the U.S. faces the prospect
of defeat in Iraq, blaming American generals for failing to prepare their
forces for an insurgency and misleading Congress about the situation here.

"For reasons that are not yet clear, America's general officer corps
underestimated the strength of the enemy, overestimated the capabilities of
Iraq's government and security forces, and failed to provide Congress with
an accurate assessment of security conditions in Iraq," Lt. Col. Paul
Yingling said in the article published Friday in the Armed Forces Journal.

The generals not only went into Iraq preparing for a high-technology
conventional war with too few soldiers but they also had no coherent plan
for postwar stabilization. The generals also failed to tell the American
public about the intensity of the insurgency their forces were facing,
Yingling wrote.

"The intellectual and moral failures common to America's general officer
corps in Vietnam and Iraq constitute a crisis in American generalship," he
said.

Yingling served as deputy commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. He
has served two tours in Iraq, another in Bosnia and a fourth in Iraq's
Operation Desert Storm in 1991.

He attended the Army's elite School for Advanced Military Studies and has
written for one of the Army's top professional journals, Military Review.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said the Iraqi government plans to take
full control of security from the American-led forces before the end of the
year. In February, coalition forces launched the Baghdad security plan,
which calls for nearly 30,000 additional American troops, as well as
thousands of Iraqi soldiers, most of whom will be deployed in violent
Baghdad.

Yingling appeared to welcome that change but suggested it is too little too
late.

"For most of the war American forces in Iraq have concentrated on large
forward operating bases, isolated from the Iraqi people and focused on
capturing or killing insurgents," he wrote. "In 2007, Iraq's grave and
deteriorating condition offers diminishing hope for an American victory and
portends an even wider and more destructive regional war."

During the past decade, U.S. forces have done little to prepare for the kind
of brutal, adaptive insurgencies they are now fighting in Iraq and
Afghanistan, Yingling said.

"Given the lack of troop strength, not even the most brilliant general could
have devised the ways necessary to stabilize post-Saddam Iraq," he wrote.

Yingling said he believes that no single civilian or military leader has
caused what he regards as the current failure in Iraq.

But Gen. Tommy R. Franks, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, Lt. Gen. Raymond T.
Odierno and other top commanders in the Iraq war have been criticized by
others as too slow to figure out the realities of the Iraq war and too
optimistic in their assessments.

Yingling said Congress must reform and better monitor the military officer
promotion system it has to choose generals. The Senate should use its
confirmation powers to hold accountable officers who fail to achieve U.S.
aims.

"We still have time to select as our generals those who possess the
intelligence to visualize future conflicts and the moral courage to advise
civilian policy makers on the preparations needed for our security," he
wrote.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil
and steady dedication of a lifetime." 

--Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.