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Post-Saddam
Iraq: The War Game "Desert Crossing"
1999
Assumed 400,000 Troops and Still a Mess
National
Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 207 Introduced by Roger Strother
Posted - November 4, 2006
"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. 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."
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."
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.
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.
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.'"
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."
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, -- before
Rumsfeld insisted that the number be sharply reduced.
Desert
Crossing Pre-Wargame Intelligence Conference, April 29, 1999
Desert
Crossing After Action Report, June 28, 1999
Desert
Crossing After Action Report Briefing, July 22, 1999
Desert
Crossing Miscellaneous E-mails, May-August 1999
Joint
Intelligence Center Central, "Suggested new name for CONPLAN DESERT
RESOLVE," November 14, 1999
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv
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