<underfire> From the Simulation Archive

[Soenke Zehle]

Hi All,

am trying to follow discussions but find myself having little to say 
that hasn't been covered in some way already, but am a grateful lurker. 
Context: I have been interested in the protocols of crisis coverage for 
some time, a current project involves revisiting the paradoxes of an 
aesthetic realism, including the return of literary reportage as a way 
of re-engaging questions of the political (left unaddressed by 
journalism, that is), but also the (fascinating) emergence of a serious 
games movement across an incredibly diverse institutional terrain. On 
that note, maybe you'll like this piece from the archive,

Soenke Zehle

Post-Saddam Iraq: The War Game
<http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB207/index.htm>

"Desert Crossing" 1999 Assumed
400,000 Troops and Still a Mess

National Securit Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 207
Introduced by Roger Strother

Posted - November 4, 2006

For more information contact:
John Prados - 301/565-0564 or Roger Strother - 202/994-7000

"There was consensus that the United States would not intervene without
coalition support except under the most dire circumstances such as WMD
use or catastrophic humanitarian disaster."
- Desert Crossing After Action Report, 1999.

"When it looked like we were going in, I called back down to CENTCOM and
said, 'You need to dust off Desert Crossing.' They said, 'What's that?
Never heard of it.'"
- General Anthony Zinni (ret.), 2004.

Washington D.C., November 4, 2006 - In late April 1999, the United
States Central Command (CENTCOM), led by Marine General Anthony Zinni
(ret.), conducted a series of war games known as Desert Crossing in
order to assess potential outcomes of an invasion of Iraq aimed at
unseating Saddam Hussein. The  documents posted here today covered the
initial pre-war game planning phase from April-May 1999 through the
detailed after-action reporting of June and July 1999.

The Desert Crossing war games, which amounted to a feasibility study for
part of the main war plan for Iraq -- OPLAN 1003-98 -- tested "worst
case" and "most likely" scenarios of a post-war, post-Saddam, Iraq. The
After Action Report presented its recommendations for further planning
regarding regime change in Iraq and was an interagency production
assisted by the departments of defense and state, as well as the
National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency, among
others.

The results of Desert Crossing, however, drew pessimistic conclusions
regarding the immediate possible outcomes of such action. Some of these
conclusions are interestingly similar to the events which actually
occurred after Saddam was overthrown. (Note 1) The report forewarned
that regime change may cause regional instability by opening the doors
to "rival forces bidding for power" which, in turn, could cause societal
"fragmentation along religious and/or ethnic lines" and antagonize
"aggressive neighbors." Further, the report illuminated worries that
secure borders and a restoration of civil order may not be enough to
stabilize Iraq if the replacement government were perceived as weak,
subservient to outside powers, or out of touch with other regional
governments. An exit strategy, the report said, would also be
complicated by differing visions for a post-Saddam Iraq among those
involved in the conflict.

The Desert Crossing report was similarly pessimistic when discussing the
nature of a new Iraqi government. If the U.S. were to establish a
transitional government, it would likely encounter difficulty, some
groups discussed, from a "period of widespread bloodshed in which
various factions seek to eliminate their enemies." The report stressed
that the creation of a democratic government in Iraq was not feasible,
but a new pluralistic Iraqi government which included nationalist
leaders might be possible, suggesting that nationalist leaders were a
stabilizing force. Moreover, the report suggested that the U.S. role be
one in which it would assist Middle Eastern governments in creating the
transitional government for Iraq.

General Zinni, who retired in 2000 shortly after the completion of
Desert Crossing, brought the report to the attention of the public after
the war. Even before the invasion, he had made his opposition to an
imminent war widely known. In a major address at the Middle East
Institute in October 2002, he disputed the view that war was either
inevitable or desirable. On the question of establishing a new
government to replace Saddam Hussein, he said, "God help us if we think
this transition will occur easily." (Note 2)

Zinni disparaged the views of pro-war advocates who minimized the
significance of Arab opinion: "I'm not sure which planet they live on,
because it isn't the one I travel." In a Q&A after the speech, he
declared that while it was necessary to deal with Saddam Hussein
"eventually," "[t]hat could happen in many ways" short of war. "The
question becomes how to sort out your priorities .... My personal view,
and this is just personal, is that I think this isn't No. 1. It's maybe
six or seven, and the affordability line may be drawn around five." (Note 3)

Zinni commented in depth publicly about Desert Crossing at UCLA in 2004
where he discussed the origins of the plan in the wake of the Desert Fox
bombing campaign in 1998:

     And it struck me then that we had a plan to defeat Saddam's army,
but we didn't have a plan to rebuild Iraq. And so I asked the different
agencies of government to come together to talk about reconstruction
planning for Iraq. . . . I thought we ought to look at political
reconstruction, economic reconstruction, security reconstruction,
humanitarian need, services, and infrastructure development. We met in
Washington, DC. We called the plan, and we gamed it out in the scenario,
Desert Crossing. (Note 4)

Zinni noted the parallels to what eventually happened after the invasion
as well as to the lack of interest elsewhere in the U.S. government for
tackling the problems of reconstruction:

     The first meeting surfaced all the problems that have exactly
happened now. This was 1999. And when I took it back and looked at it, I
said, we need a plan. Not all of this is a military responsibility. I
went back to State Department, to the Office of Foreign Disaster
Assistance, Department of Commerce and others and said, all right, how
about you guys taking part of the plan. We need a plan in addition to
the war plan for the reconstruction. Not interested. Would not look at
it. (Note 5)

So the General decided to take action himself -- "because I was
convinced nobody in Washington was going to plan for it, and we, the
military, would get stuck with it."

Zinni claimed that his report had been forgotten only a few years later,
stating: "When it looked like we were going in [to Iraq], I called back
down to CENTCOM and said, 'You need to dust off Desert Crossing.' They
said, 'What's that? Never heard of it.' So in a matter of just a few
years it was gone. The corporate memory. And in addition I was told,
'We've been told not to do any of the planning. It would all be done in
the Pentagon.'" (Note 6)

The planning done at the Defense Department changed Zinni's original
conception in some fundamental ways. For example, Zinni proposed a
civilian occupation authority with offices in all eighteen Iraqi
provinces, whereas the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was
actually established only in Baghdad.

Even more significantly, the former CENTCOM commander noted that his
plan had called for a force of 400,000 for the invasion -- 240,000 more
than what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved. "We were
concerned about the ability to get in there right away, to flood the
towns and villages," USA Today quoted Zinni as saying in July 2003. "We
knew the initial problem would be security." (Note 7)

Army General Thomas "Tommy" Franks adjusted the concept when he assumed
command of CENTCOM upon Zinni's retirement. Yet even his initial version
of OPLAN 1003-98 envisioned a need for 385,000 troops, according to the
book, COBRA II, (Note 8) -- before Rumsfeld insisted that the number be
sharply reduced.