Where we felt that we had to lead because we were the only ones that could do it, or it was in our vital national interests, we led. But we had magnificent coalitions. When I was in Somalia, we had to cut off the number of contributing countries in the phase that we led to 26. We had 44 commitments when we had to say, "Enough! The law of diminishing returns is setting in here in Somalia." In East Timor, the Australians took the lead, and we supported it. But again it was the international authority, the international legitimacy given to us by that U.N. resolution. And if you think about it, every time we were successful, not only did we get the U.N. resolution that we needed for the Gulf War, we got it again in '93 and in '98. When we needed to use force, we got the authorization in the wording we needed during the enforcement of the sanctions to use force.
Why would we believe that we would not get it this time? Why would we believe that this time for some reason, unlike before, the inspectors would not call the shots honestly? The inspectors don't make judgments, they just make reports of facts. We have Americans on inspection teams. Rolf Ekeus, Richard Butler, they always came across with an honest assessment of what was happening. Why, suddenly, were Mohamed ElBaradei and Hans Blix suspect? And what was the rush to war?
I think the fifth mistake was that we underestimated the task. And I think those of us that knew that region, former commanders in chief, I guess we can't use that term anymore -- part of transformation is to change the lexicon -- but former combatant commanders of U.S. Central Command, beginning with General Schwarzkopf, have said, You don't understand what you're getting into. You are not going to go through [former Reagan arms control director Ken] Adelman's "cakewalk"; you are not going to go through [Ahmed] Chalabi's Iraqis dancing in the streets to receive you. You are about to go into a problem that you don't know the dimensions and the depth of, and are going to cause you a great deal of pain, time, expenditure of resources and casualties down the road.
I can't understand why there was an underestimation when you look at a country that has never known democracy, that has been in the condition it's been in, that has the natural fault lines that it has and the issues it has. And to look at the task of reconstructing this country, not only reconstructing it, but the idea of creating Jeffersonian democracy almost overnight, is almost ridiculous, in concept, in the kind of time and effort that was given as an estimate as to what it would take.
The sixth mistake, and maybe the biggest one, was propping up and trusting the exiles, the infamous "Gucci guerrillas" from London. We bought in to their intelligence reports. To the credit of the CIA, they didn't buy into it, so I guess the Defense Department created its own boutique intelligence agency to vet them. And we ended up with a group that fed us bad information, that led us to believe that we would be welcomed with flowers in the streets, that led us to believe that this would be a cakewalk.
When I testified before Congress in 1998, after a grilling from Senator [John] McCain and all those wonderful senators who supported the Iraqi Liberation Act, I told them that these guys are not credible and they are going to lead us into something they we will regret. At that time, they were pushing a plan that Central Command would supply air support and special forces, and we would put it into Iraq, and they would Pied Piper their way up to Baghdad and the whole place would fall apart. This plan was created by two Senate staffers and a retired general. I happened to be the commander of Central Command. Nobody bothered to ask me about how my troops would be used. And they were a little bit upset about me being upset about this. These exiles did not have credibility inside the country or in the region. Not only did they not have credibility, it was clear that the information they were providing us many times was not correct and accurate. We believed in them. We also brought them in with us and deemed them into the governing council, and the reception by Iraqis has been, to say the least, has not been great.
The seventh problem has been the lack of planning. I testified again during that period with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, right behind the panel of planners from the State Department and the Department of Defense, and I listened to them describe a "plan." I understood and knew that General Franks and CentCom would do their part. I knew damn right well the security piece would be taken care of, and I knew we had a good plan. I didn't hear anything that told me that they had the scope of planning for the political reconstruction, the economic reconstruction, social reconstruction, the development of building of infrastructure for that country. And I think that lack of planning, that idea that you can do this by the seat of the pants, reconstruct a country, to make decisions on the fly, to beam in on the side that has to that political, economic, social, other parts, just a handful of people at the last minute to be able to do it was patently ridiculous.
In my time at CentCom, we actually looked at a plan for reconstruction, and actually developed one at CentCom because I though that we, the military, would get stuck with it. In my mind, we needed formidable teams at every provincial level. Eighteen teams. The size of the CPA was about the size we felt we needed for one province, let alone the entire country, to do those other parts.
The eighth problem was the insufficiency of military forces on the ground. There were a lot more troops in my military plan for operations in Iraq. I know when that plan was presented, the secretary of defense said it was "old and stale." It sounded pretty new and fresh to me, and looking back at it now, because there were a hell of a lot more troops. It was more the [former Army Chief of Staff Eric] Shinseki model that I think might have been a hell of a lot more effective to freeze the situation. Those extra divisions we had in there were not to defeat the Republican Guard; they were in there to freeze the security situation because we knew the chaos that would result once we uprooted an authoritarian regime like Saddam's.
The ninth problem has been the ad hoc organization we threw in there. No one can tell me the Coalition Provisional Authority had any planning for its structure. One hundred forty-four bodies scraped from embassies around the world, people that I know, for a fact, walked in and were selected and picked and put in the positions. Never quite fully manned-up until well into the operation. Never the kinds of qualifications or the breadth, and scope and depth it needed to work the problems down to the grassroots level. Changing horses in midstream, General Garner, I guess we can't say that he's fired. I found out tonight from Mark Thompson that the Defense Department claims he wasn't fired. But Jay Garner leaves, and in comes Jerry Bremer. Third quarter, you're down seven, bring in the backsup quarterback and part of his job is to create the game plan while he's out there.