Misconception 4

Did Administration officials believe that the war in Iraq would be easy?

IN FACT:  The most powerful analysis of the downsides of going to war in Iraq came not from the State Department or the CIA: it came from Donald Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld resolved to give the President a comprehensive list of possible calamities in the event of military action against Iraq. . . . Weighing risks had naturally been part of the policy-making and planning processes on Iraq all along, but Rumsfeld thought it would be valuable to review all together the major problems we could anticipate, to get them in writing and air them with the President and the National Security Council—well before irrevocable decisions were made. . . . 

Highlighting roughly twenty items, [the draft memo] made for grim reading. . . . To relieve some of the tension inherent in the task [of expanding on this list], I began referring to the memo as the “Parade of Horribles.” By the time we finished with our revisions, it had grown by another ten items or so.

The ultimate version of the Parade of Horribles memo was dated October 15, 2002. Its key political warnings can be summarized as follows:

  • The United States might fail to win support from the United Nations and from important other countries, which could make it harder to get international cooperation on Iraq and other issues in the future. We might fail here by not properly answering the question: If the United States preempts in one country, will it do so in other countries, too?
  • The war could trigger problems throughout the region: It could widen into an Arab-Israeli war; Syria and Iran could help our enemies in Iraq; Turkey could intervene on its own; friendly governments in the region could become destabilized.
  • The United States could become so absorbed in its Iraq effort that we pay inadequate attention to other serious problems—including other proliferation and terrorism problems. Other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere might try to exploit our preoccupation to do things harmful to us and our friends.
  • The war could cause more harm and entail greater costs than expected, including possibly a disruption in oil supplies to world markets.
  • Post-Saddam stabilization and reconstruction efforts by the United States could take not two to four years, but eight to ten years, absorbing U.S. leadership, military, and financial resources.
  • Terrorist networks could improve their recruiting and fund-raising as a result of our being depicted as anti-Muslim.
  • Iraq could experience ethnic strife among Kurds, Sunnis, and Shia. . . .

In addition, the memo included these three notable items:

  • “US could fail to find WMD on the ground in Iraq and be unpersuasive to the world.”
  • “World reaction against preemption or ‘anticipatory self-defense’ could inhibit US ability to engage [in cooperation with other countries] in the future.”
  • “US could fail to manage post-Saddam Hussein Iraq successfully, with the result that it could fracture into two or three pieces, to the detriment of the Middle East . . . .”

This was a serious and disturbing memo. The concerns it listed included military, diplomatic, and economic matters. The list was more wide-ranging and hard-hitting than any warning I saw from State or the CIA—even though their leaders are widely viewed as the Administration’s voices of caution on the war.  (pp. 332-3)

Related documents:
Possible Contingencies