Expectation of Valor: Planning for the Iraq War

Published in the United States of America and Great Britain in 2024 by

CASEMATE PUBLISHERS

1950 Lawrence Road, Havertown, PA 19083

and

47 Church Street, Barnsley, S70 2AS, UK

Copyright 2024 © Colonel Kevin C. M. Benson, US Army (Ret.)

Hardback Edition: ISBN 978-1-63624-426-6

Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-63624-427-3

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher in writing.

Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Typeset in India by Lapiz Digital Services, Chennai.

For a complete list of Casemate titles, please contact:

CASEMATE PUBLISHERS (US)

Telephone (610) 853-9131

Fax (610) 853-9146

Email: [email protected]

www.casematepublishers.com

CASEMATE PUBLISHERS (UK)

Telephone (0)1226 734350

Email: [email protected]

www.casemateuk.com

The views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the US government. The public release clearance of this publication by the Department of Defense does not imply Department of Defense endorsement or factual accuracy of the material.

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

US Military Ranks

Glossary

Introduction: Cold War, Hot Wars, Peace Dividends, Wars on The Periphery

1Planning for War

2Planning the Invasion Until D-Day

3Build-up to D-Day

4Planning While Fighting, March 2003

5April in Iraq

6Off-ramps and Phase IV

7Building the Coalition, May 2003

8A Bad Feeling

9My Last Month in Theater, June 2003

10 Final Thoughts

Bibliography

On D-Day, June 6, 1944, General Patton wrote a letter to his son:

"TAKE CALCULATED RISKS. That is quite different from being rash.

My personal belief is that if you have a 50% chance take it because the superior fighting qualities of American soldiers led by me will surely give you the extra 1% necessary."

This is the expectation of valor.

Foreword

History involves the study of the Great Captains and decisive battles to glean lessons about the art of war, strategic decisions, and seminal inflections in international relations. The recent wars of the United States—Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Iraq (Desert Shield/Desert Storm), the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq (Iraqi Freedom), even the proxy wars in Ukraine and Gaza—are fresh in the memory of the nation but are not fully evaluated for historic purposes.

It is rare to get the perspective of one whose position on the field of battle was the formulation of the plans that were implemented or not implemented; the discussions that happened before the war started and throughout the course of the war, as well as the considerations for termination of a given conflict.

In retrospect, the outcome of such formulations may seem to be the result of clear choices and unambiguous circumstances such that everything falls into alignment, from the grand strategic level to the tactical action level. But this is a sanitary evaluation of what is instead an extraordinarily unsanitary matter, a matter driven by human personality and ego dynamics and shrouded in fog, friction, uncertainty, and chance; fraught with miscalculations, missed opportunities, grossly incorrect self-awareness relative to the actual circumstances, and untimely decision-making.

In my experience after graduating with a Master of Military Art and Science degree from the US Army School of Advanced Military Studies, I was privileged to serve the United States as a plans officer within the staffs of many prominent military commanders, and as a commander of very large, complex, multi-nation military commands during periods of war and in contested deterrence in several regions of the world. Serving in the arena in policy and military advisory roles at the highest levels of governments undertaking international relations, I learned firsthand that theory and practice are routinely discordant.

Colonel Kevin C. M. Benson, a colleague from my class at the School of Advanced Military Studies and the author of Expectation of Valor: Planning for the Iraq War, has captured the inner workings of a high command at war, with all the warts, blemishes, and scars that the real experience of such a thing delivers, and theory cannot. COL Benson’s work is a must read for any serious study of civil–military relations and national security decision making. The book serves to dispel the worn myth that the military had not planned beyond the initial attack to eliminate the Ba’ath Party regime of strongman Saddam Hussein.

Indeed, there was planning. There was planning for the deployment and receiving of forces from multiple countries with unique caveats and limitations, connected to each country’s sense of national honor and appetite for risk which could not be known in advance. There was planning for the conduct of combat operations to achieve strategic goals, but the goals were inadequately described, leaving plans in the wrong place. There was planning for what comes after major combat operations to establish conditions of stability in a country that was not ready for self-determination and a non-occupational touch, leaving the plans out of alignment with the realities that emerged and widely off the mark in terms of policies required to consolidate the gains made by military action. The reality of the limits of military action to create lasting gains is evident and on display.

Victory does not come from the plan, not even from planning which is necessary but not sufficient. Victory comes from clear vision, perseverance, unity of effort, and continuous applications of instruments available to a nation to generate its power. The opening acts of Operation Iraqi Freedom was characterized by blurred vision, hastiness, discordance between decisions and actions and haphazard application of the nation’s instruments.

Considering stark evidence provided by Colonel Benson from his position on the field, there can be no lasting gains without clear policy aims and the correlated commitments of the many powers, beyond military power, of the United States and others who join with the United States. In the Iraq War, such clear aims did not emerge. Such correlation could not be manifested.

This work is well-fitted to the intersecting lattice of military history, political history, international relations, and civil military affairs. Colonel Benson’s perspective is certainly not the only perspective of what happened in the period leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the ultimate reduction of forces and handover to civilian leadership concurrent with an accelerated descent into a deadly period of counterinsurgency.

Yet, his perspective must be included to see the nuances of the finished tapestry, which is not yet complete. How did things go so brilliantly, according to expectations, only to fall so short of requirements and end up being sourly dissatisfying in their costly outcome. This book may open the reader’s eyes in a way that facilitates deeper learning about what it takes to win militarily and strategically. Without seriously considering these insights, the foreign adventures of the United States and like-minded countries will likely find the future to be as dissatisfying as the relatively recent past from 1950 to the present.

General Vincent K. Brooks, US Army (Ret.)

General Brooks served over 42 years, from his entry into the United States Military Academy in 1976 until his retirement from active duty on the first day of 2019. He served as a general officer from 2002 to 2019 in key positions in the Pentagon with the Joint Staff and the Department of the Army. He was field commander conducting operations in the Balkans, in Iraq, throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, throughout the Indo-Pacific region, and in Korea and Japan. He was also a plans and policy officer in several commands. Serving as the operations spokesperson for US CENTCOM at the start of the invasion into Iraq in 2003, he was a witness to the story told in this book.

Acknowledgements

This book is dedicated to the superb team of men and women I had the honor of leading during the planning for and early execution of Operation Iraqi Freedom/COBRA II. I mention them by name in this book: officers such as Tom Reilly, Evan Huelfer, Frank Jones, Mike Hendricks, Willie Davis, Joe Whitlock, Winston Gaines, Glenn Patten, Bill Innocenti, Wayne Grieme, Bryan Sparling, Chris Field, and Nick Elliot. The people of our operational plans group worked through the challenges of putting together a plan that worked, at the outset at least. Their song must be sung.

I worked with the dream team of general officers: General Dave McKiernan (Ret.), General J. D. Thurman (Ret.), Lieutenant General Chris Christianson (Ret.), Lieutenant General Fuzzy Webster (Ret.), Lieutenant General Robert R. Rusty Blackman, USMC (ret.), Major General James Spider Marks (Ret.), Major General Hank Stratman (Ret.), and UK Major General Albert Whitley (Ret.). Our corps and MEF commanders—General Scott Wallace (Ret.) and General James Conway, USMC (Ret.)—commanded their units from the front, and with distinction.

The wonderful editors at Casemate Publishers, Ruth Sheppard, Tracey Mills, Elke Morice-Atkinson and Lizzy Hammond helped me produce a book of quality. I must add any factual errors, typos, or other errors are solely my fault. As I explain in the introduction, this book is based on my daily reports and personal journal.

I must also add this book could not have been completed without the support of my wife, Kate, my daughter, Sharon, and my mother-in-law, Marion Stevens. These three ladies kept me humble.

US Military Ranks

US Army

US Navy

For clarity, I used US Army rank throughout the book when referring to USAF and USMC general officers.

Glossary

Plans Referenced

Operations Plan 1003

The first plan that was the basis for Central Command planning on a war with Iraq, written in 1998.

Operations Plan 1003V

A revised plan based on Plan 1003 that reflected an invasion of Iraq in accordance with the 2002 presidential directives. This plan was the basis for all CENTCOM component-level plans.

Operations Plan Cobra II

The Third Army/CFLCC plan for the land force’s role in the invasion of Iraq. The first COBRA plan was executed in July 1944 when Patton’s Third Army was introduced into combat in Europe. We chose the name Cobra as a link to the history of Third Army.

Operations Plan Eclipse II

The plan developed by Allied and Third Army planners for the occupation of Iraq. The first Eclipse plan was executed in 1945 for the occupation of Germany. Again, we chose the name Eclipse as a link to the history of Third Army.

Phases

US Army and US Joint Forces doctrine makes use of phases to describe the flow of the execution of a plan. There are four phases to a plan: I–IV. Phase I focuses on the alerting, mobilization, and deployment of units to the theater of war. Phase II focuses on the initial air operations and the roles of other components (land, sea, special operations) in support of air operations. Phase III focuses on the conduct of land operations designed to accomplish the main objectives given to the senior theater commander. Phase IV broadly encompasses the completion of the operation, from restoring order in the theater, reestablishing civil authority, and the return of forces to home station.

Introduction

Cold War, Hot Wars, Peace Dividends, Wars on The Periphery

So, there I was. All war stories start with that phrase, or some variation of it. My purpose in writing this book is to tell my war story, and to take on the common narrative told about the Iraq War, which is the Army did not plan how to conclude the war. Though some American general officers have stated this case, it is simply untrue. I know it is not true because in 2002 and 2003 I was assigned to Third Army and responsible for directing the development of the plans for the invasion of Iraq.

Before I start to tell my story, I offer the following framework for it to aid the reader’s analysis. In my education as an Army officer I learned war is an instrument of policy. Military strategy is derived from policy because the political objective of the war determines the amount of force available for use during the war. This was not the approach used to develop strategy during the Iraq War. I believe that prior to the beginning of the war, policy making staffs and policy makers—civilian as well as military—conflated strategy and policy. The result was we ended up with neither, and this materially affected the planning for the campaign and supporting major operations. Bear this in mind as I tell my story of the development of the plans for the invasion of Iraq and for what was to happen once we arrived in Baghdad. My story starts at the beginning of my planning efforts at Third Army, though I will highlight a few notable events in my career leading up to arriving at Third Army in July 2002.

I went to war for the first time as a staff colonel. In my first experiences of war, I was guided by my education, institutional and personal, as well as the experience I had gained during my professional career up to that point.

The Cold War was in full swing when I graduated from the US Military Academy in June 1977. During my senior year, the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, General Alexander Haig, addressed my class. General Haig asked the assembly of my classmates who was going to Germany on their first assignments. About one third of my class raised hands. Haig told us that when our war came it would not be in the central region of Europe. Our war, he stated, would be on the periphery.

I often reflected on this prophetic comment over the course of my career. I was commissioned in 1977 as an Armor officer and went to Fort Knox for the Armor Officer Basic Course. Over the years I had a normal pattern of assignments in the United States and Germany. I was fortunate to attend the Marine Corps Amphibious Warfare School after company command, and when I returned from Germany in 1989, I attended the US Army Command and General Staff College course, as well as attending the School of Advanced Military Studies, SAMS. After SAMS I served as a planner for the XVIII Airborne Corps. Following my planner assignment, I was sent to be the executive officer of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment.

I served as the regimental executive officer for two years, and worked for Colonel Walter Skip Sharp. I also served as the chief of staff for US Forces-Haiti before arriving at the Third Army staff for my second tour as a planner, which spanned 1996–98. There, in Atlanta and Kuwait, I worked for two outstanding leaders: Lieutenant General Steve Arnold and Lieutenant General Tommy Franks. When LTGs Arnold and Franks wanted things to get done to a high standard, they called on the planners: the SAMS graduates on the staff. I learned a great deal from LTG Arnold. He was a gentleman and a superb Soldier. Arnold was the G3 operations officer of Third Army during the First Gulf War, and commanded the 10th Mountain Division in Florida during the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, as well as in operations in Somalia. Early in my tour of duty, Saddam Hussein rattled his sabers and Arnold sent the Third Army advanced command post and staff to Kuwait for 100 days. I accompanied the staff as the G3 Plans section leader. During this period, our commander on the scene was Major General Robert Ivany. MG Ivany was a sound tactician and, having served as President Reagan’s aide-de-camp, was well versed in the nuances of policy and strategy. LTG Tommy Franks assumed command of Third Army upon LTG Arnold’s retirement. Working for Franks was exciting.

I was in charge of LTG Franks’s introduction to Third Army and the regional war plans, specifically the main war plan, 1003-96. This was the major on the shelf plan to counter an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. I accompanied LTG Franks to Kuwait and took him to my favorite observation point on the anti-tank berm that defined the Kuwait–Iraq border at the time.¹ Before this trip I had only imagined breaching those berms to go north to Baghdad.

So, we were standing on top of the berm in the summer of 1997. It was hot as a firecracker and I was explaining the flow of the operation and the assumptions we were making to Franks, and he put his hand on his shoulder and said, Kevin, when this happens again, we’re never giving up Kuwait. I want you to start thinking about how we would start from here to go north. Franks had exciting ideas, along with the gift of provoking intense loyalty. You simply did not want to let the old man down.

Now perhaps I was lucky, because he was also one of those senior leaders who only gave a staff officer one chance to earn his spurs, and you never really knew when the test would come. If you passed his test, you were on his team. I did not know what the test was or when it would be, but I met his unstated standard and he treated me exceptionally well. We had a really tremendous relationship. I did not abuse it, but I never wanted to let LTG Franks down.

There was a dark side to LTG Franks as well. If you did not pass the test, you were marginalized; he did not have time for you. You were not moving at his speed. At the time I was a lieutenant colonel, and I saw how some colonels on his staff were ignored. These officers were not fired but just dismissed from important decisions. To Franks, these men were simply placeholders.

After battalion command the Army sent me to MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) from 2001–02. The superb MIT security studies program really prepared me for my next assignment as the Director of War Plans, J5, for Third Army. Oddly enough though, when I arrived at MIT I did not have a follow-on assignment. I actually had to look for my own assignment, and this did not make much sense to me. The Army had invested a great deal of money in sending me to live in the Boston area for a year, as well as attending the amazing security studies program at MIT, and I had to look for my own assignment? But again, here I was extremely lucky. LTG PT Mikolashek, then commanding Third Army, called me in August 2001 and asked if I would come back to Third Army as the chief of plans. I said Yes because I knew the headquarters and what they did, and because of the region it was in, and with it being the Army component of Central Command, it was always an exciting place to be. Then 9/11 happened.

I called LTG Mikolashek on the afternoon of 12 September 2001, and asked him if he wanted me to report immediately. His response was very interesting. We were not on a secure telephone line, but Mikolashek said No, stay in school. You know what’s coming next. I knew immediately what he was talking about—Iraq—and it really struck me. So I said, Okay, Sir. I spent the rest of that year really digging into strategy, policy development, and reading all I could on the so-called Neocon movement and what all that meant.

I was very much interested in Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Dr. Stephen Cambone, and Mr. Douglas Feith. I read about where they were coming from politically, where were they coming from a policy point of view, their world views, etc. Even in September and October of 2001 there were news reports saying the administration was thinking about invading Iraq as a means to strike back at Al Qaeda. There was turmoil on the MIT campus and among the faculty as these people came to grips with the attack on the US and the nation going to war. It was a very interesting time to be at MIT. It was quite useful to talk to the faculty, especially as I considered where I would be heading after graduation.

I asked to be read on (meaning allowed to read the highly classified initial planning documents related to Iraq) to the planning effort before I reported in to Third Army. LTG Mikolashek agreed to this request and funded a trip for me. In late April and early May of 2002, I went to MacDill Air Force Base and CENTCOM headquarters, and then to Washington, D.C. and the Pentagon. While I was in Tampa, I met Colonels Mike Fitzgerald and Dave Halverson. Dave Halverson and I had first met in the summer of 1996 when we spent 100 days in Kuwait during my first tour at Third Army. I did not yet know COL Fitzgerald, but I formed an immediate and positive impression of him. When Franks wrote his memoirs, Dave and Mike were the only staff colonels he mentioned by name. They were truly heroes in this effort. I also asked about Phase IV planning, basically what were we going to do after we got to Baghdad and removed Saddam, while I was in Tampa.² I was told that as of April 2002, the planning for mission analysis had just started. I was puzzled by this and asked some questions as to why the effort was only just beginning. I received tired looks from COLs Fitzgerald and Halverson. They were so involved with getting the combat operations portion of the plan approved by the secretary of defense that there had been no time to even put together a plans team for the total campaign plan. The day in May 2002 I left Central Command, LTC John Agoglia convened the first Central Command-level plans team meeting on the fourth phase of the campaign plan.³

My education in the developmental process of this campaign continued when I went to Washington, D.C. and the Pentagon. I used the network of SAMS graduates to get access to the planning effort as well as a personal connection to the Deputy J5, who at the time was Major General Walter Skip Sharp, my former regimental commander. My SAMS classmate, Colonel Bob Drumm, met me inside the Pentagon and brought me up to speed on the building’s efforts, as experienced Pentagon staffers called it. Bob Drumm took me to his office where he worked for a deputy assistant secretary of defense for policy, and I saw former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich and another man entering the Deputy Secretary of Defense Office. I asked COL Drumm who the fellow with Gingrich was. Bob told me it was Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress.

Bob Drumm had a really hard time inside the Pentagon. He had not, as he called it, drunk the Kool-Aid. Drumm was convinced the decision to go to war had already been taken, and he was worried about the kind of forces we would be allowed to have to start the war. He was concerned Chalabi was telling everyone American forces would be met with open arms and Saddam’s regime was a house of cards. Drumm had not seen any intelligence to indicate that this was true. The trip to Tampa and the Pentagon was sobering.

War is a human endeavor. The first lesson any planner learns is that, just as the Coalition forces enter a war planning on being victorious, so too does the enemy enter a war with the thought of victory, and they will do just about anything to gain that victory. Did we planners in the land forces expect the sort of opposition that arose in the aftermath of the handover of Iraq operations in 2011? The answer is no. In 2003 we felt there would be a continued resistance to our forces, but we also assumed that the Iraqi Army would be recalled, the Iraqi police would return to duty, and Coalition forces could begin a withdrawal from the country over some time schedule linked to the ability of the Iraqi Army and security forces. Our planning group figured that there would be remnants of former regime loyalists who would be left with no option but to fight. We did consider an insurgency, but it was rated as less likely.

We also expected that fanatics (Al Qaeda, Ansar al Islam, Wahabi sects, etc.) would also try to come into Iraq to kill Americans. We could not have foreseen, in my mind, the depth of the resistance we ended up facing. We expected to be able to recall the Iraqi Army. Once the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and Ambassador Bremer took the decision to disband the Iraqi Army as it stood and establish a completely new Iraqi Army, that particular assumption became invalid.

The great Chief of the Imperial German General Staff Helmut von Moltke, known as Moltke the Elder, stated that no plan could look with certainty beyond initial contact with the enemy’s main body. This dictum remains true today. A great deal of planning took place before, during, and after the conclusion of Phase III of the CENTCOM Campaign Plan 1003V and the CFLCC supporting major operations Plan Cobra II. I have already mentioned that war, as planners know, is an extension of policy by other means. The enemy gets a vote and policy will change as a result of that interaction with the enemy. And so, war is and will remain a human endeavor. It is a contest of wills, and the side with the stronger will, as well as the best weapons for the task, will ultimately prevail.

During Phase III, in the face of continuous questions from the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the White House on various facets of the campaign, the serious work of thinking through potential decision points, transitions, branches, and sequels continued. The key result of the continuous questioning was that the senior leadership of the land forces and CENTCOM, despite their best efforts, were drawn into the current fight and the effort to keep Washington informed. It is a planner’s job to think about the How and What If of unfolding plans, but planners are not empowered to take decisions. That privilege is reserved for commanders. Based on that experience, and my own personal reflections on what I did and didn’t do well, I feel I, too, can offer reflection on Iraq, and cautions on the next war.

Our Army exists to defend the Republic by waging war in its name. Of course, the Army will do many other things for our Republic—from firefighting to disaster relief—but its primary purpose is preparing for war and, when directed, fighting and winning war. We started out in Iraq with a doctrine that guided action, and it was incredibly successful. The conduct of the war began to change and, recognizing the change, the Army and Marine Corps adjusted its doctrine while fighting, trained units in new methods, and delivered them to the war. This is an astounding accomplishment. The Armed Forces of the United States also concluded the Iraq War in a manner that must be considered victorious: these forces were never defeated in battle and accomplished objectives that led to attaining the policy objective of handing the security challenge over to the Iraqis and departing in accordance with a nation-to-nation agreement in December 2011. This is something that had never been done before in that region of the world: an Army leaving in accordance with conditions of an inter-governmental agreement, and not remaining indefinitely as an occupying power.

The main contributor in all the decision making was, again in my view, a seeming inability to be able to communicate with policy makers what a force could, and more importantly could not, do. Could we have gotten to Baghdad with one brigade? I suppose we could have, but the real question was, what would we do once we got there? This was the issue I could not get into the fore; the policy objectives were straight forward enough, but I could not get a hearing on possible ways to attain the necessary military conditions linked to attaining policy success. For reasons I am still not clear on, we could not get around an initial expectation (from policy makers: Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz, Cambone, etc.) that Iraq in 2003 would be a replay of Kuwait in 1991, and Jeffersonian–Jacksonian democracy would simply break out, as if there was a little American inside every Iraqi yearning to breathe free. But at this point in time, these reflections belonged to the future. When the efforts that would result in the development of major operations plan Cobra II began, I had served as a planner at the corps, joint task force, and field army levels. During these assignments I participated in the planning and execution of stability and support operations in Somalia and Florida, major operations planning for Bosnia, the defense of Kuwait, the invasion of Iraq, and other planning efforts. I worked with Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and special operations planners. I briefed ambassadors, US Senators, foreign chiefs of defense staff, and US regional commanders in chief. I also commanded a tank battalion.

My professional education introduced me to military theory, international relations theory, critical thinking, and familiarized me with alternative perspectives on deterrence. I was now about to enter a new level of planning, as I was going to be the planner for a field army; and it would be more than a field army à la World War II. I would be an operational-level planner writing directions for two corps formations whose objective was the defeat of an opposing army and associated irregular troops, all of which would lead to the replacement of a regime. I felt I was ready for the challenge. I was a SAMS guy, so I would figure it out.

Some context for the reader: my account covers the period of time from roughly June 2002 to July 2003. At the beginning of this timeframe, my plans team and I had been working at Fort McPherson in Atlanta, Georgia. We then went into the theater of war, initially based in Kuwait City, Kuwait, and then in Baghdad, Iraq. While we were in these locations, many of us travelled to destinations like the United States, Great Britain, and Poland, to name a few. We attended conferences related to the planning and execution of the Iraq War.

We made use of the technology of the time. We communicated using secure telephones and secure email. We also made use of secure video teleconferences, especially when interacting with officials in the Pentagon. By secure, I mean the signals used to transmit messages and live video were encoded to prevent enemies and adversaries from easily reading our mail, so to speak.

Our entire headquarters staff deployed from Fort McPherson to Kuwait. Thus, the plans team, the people working directly for me, and the planners from other staff sections, were committed to the process. Once deployed we worked 7 days a week, 16–18 hours a day. When the war commenced in March 2003, we wore our chemical protective suits almost constantly. We took this precaution because we really believed the Iraqis would use chemical weapons.

I based this account on the daily reports I rendered