It’s been 20 years since the U.S. carried out its first airstrikes in Iraq, for what was Operation Iraqi Freedom. U.S. forces invaded Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction, and also to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
9&10′s Bill Froehlich reached out to local military experts who were a part of it.
The nighttime missile strikes would be known as shock and awe, and the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
A former Army Special Forces officer, Green Beret, and Pentagon official Steve Bucci was working in the Pentagon in 2003. Then Colonel Bucci, he was the Military Assistant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Bucci had previously led a deployment to the Persian Gulf in 1998.
“One of the things I did was to always organize and read all of his intelligence that he received every morning.” Bucci says he personally read intelligence briefings that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the U.S. wasn’t alone in that belief. While reports were mixed, most supported that theory.
“The predominant amount of it I would say up to like 85-plus percent, all said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Not nukes, but that he had chemical weapons and could have likely had biological weapons. And that he would either use it or would pass it to somebody else who would use it, like al Qaeda or somebody like that,” Bucci says.
And that began Operation Iraqi Freedom to also remove Saddam Hussein from power.
Bucci says, “the troops made their attack wearing their chemical equipment, because we were concerned that at any moment Saddam was going to start using that stuff against our troops as they moved across the line into Iraq.”
One of those in charge of moving troops was General Mike Lehnert. In all he served more than 35 years in the Marine Corps, and says he led thousands of marines across Iraq starting March 20. But it wasn’t the United States first time clashing with Iraq, that goes back to 1990. Lehnert says, “I would say in the modern era, that, yes, Desert Storm was the first time that the U.S. interests and those of Saddam Hussein’s didn’t match up with one another.”
The U.S. deployed 697,000 troops during Desert Storm. By contrast, there were more than 67,000 boots on the ground during Iraqi Freedom. Lehnert was responsible for 5,000 of them.
“There was a concern that Saddam Hussein would start shooting at us as soon as we got in the country. He did. But his units weren’t very good. Our counter battery radar was excellent,” Lehnert says.
As it turned out, intelligence about WMD’s was flawed. Lehnert says, “Iraqi Freedom was, by any standard, a war of choice. We made the decision to go in because we believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.”
Bucci adds, “we never found any of those things. And a lot of people said, ‘Oh, you guys just lied.’ And I have to tell you, nobody was telling any outright lies, at least not in the Department of Defense. This is what the intelligence said. That’s what we acted on. We turned out to be incorrect, but it was not done to fool the American people in any way, shape or form.”
That’s not to say the U.S. didn’t find any weapons: biological, chemical, or otherwise. But not what was expected.
Lehnert says, “we found extraordinary number of mines, lots of artillery rounds from all different countries, some that were on our side, some of them were on other people’s side. It was quite a collection.”
And Bucci adds, “And to be honest with you, we found a lot of evidence that he thought he had that new stuff. That some of the scientists there were lying to Saddam Hussein and his sons.”
And Lehnert says, “Frankly, I think that Saddam Hussein had done an upside-down side analysis. He had decided that it would be okay to let people think he might have weapons of mass destruction. But I don’t think he trusted his own people well enough to have them, nor did he have the ability to deliver those weapons of mass destruction.”
A big challenge came 17 days later, when the U.S. captured Baghdad and tried to win hearts and minds and rebuild a nation.
“As it turns out, at the very least, we were not as skillful at rebuilding a country after you knocked this government out. As we were knocking the government off the seat, we turned out that that seemed to be a harder lift for us than we realized,” Bucci says. “We really did not have the teams put together to go in and rebuild that country, that it turned out we needed that.”
Lehnert says, “I suspect a number of listeners would come to the conclusion that Iraq was not the right place to be. But you know what? They still think the service members for their service.
“We have the most effective fighting force in the world. We need to pair that with really good intelligence that keeps us from going to war for the wrong reasons,” Lehnert says.
Bucci believes that “we went in there with, I think the right intent. We were doing it to protect America and America’s interests around the world. We did it on intelligence that turned out to be flawed. And we went there hoping to free the Iraqi people from a pretty, you know, horrendous regime.” He adds, “but it turned out that what came afterwards was just much more fragile and difficult to organize than we thought it would be.”
Correction: The U.S. deployed 697,000 troops during Operation Desert Storm, not 1,300 as initially reported. We regret the error. Under Maj. General Lehnert, the US deployed his reserve engineer battalion of 1300 Marines during desert storm. “It was 1990. I had just returned from Panama. I was down there during (Operation) Just Cause during the fighting there and then was sent to take over a reserve engineer battalion in Portland, Oregon… We had 2600 Marines, and by the time the Desert Storm was over with, we deployed about 1300 of them, about 1300 Marines.”
More of our conversation with Maj. Gen. Mike Lehnert, US Marine Corps (Ret.):
ML: I would say in the modern era, Bill, that, yes, Desert Storm was the first time that the U.S. interests and those of Saddam Hussein’s didn’t match up with one another. After 9/11 and we made the decision to go into Afghanistan to root out Al Qaida.
Iraqi freedom was, by any standard, a war of choice. We made the decision to go in because we believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
In point of fact, it was a classic case of what I would consider target fixation in the White House. And the leadership was convinced that he had it. Despite getting much different intelligence from the CIA and even State Department is just two examples. You know, after getting a report that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy yellowcake from the country of Niger, Marine General Fulford went in, took a look around, asked some questions, came back with the conclusion that that was not the case.
Then Ambassador Wilson, Joe Wilson went in and he had been the ambassador to Niger, and he came back and reported that Saddam Hussein was not importing yellowcake. Despite that, the administration decided that they would use Colin Powell, General Colin Powell, to make the case, to sell the idea to the American people of the need to go to war.
Q: Tell us about your experience starting in March 2003.
ML: Kuwait by that time provided us ample opportunity to set up and get ready. I was leading about 5,000 Marines and sailors in what was a newly formed organization called the Marine Logistics Command, because we were putting an entire Marine expeditionary force into the field and it was determined that we were going to need a lot more supplies and logistic support in order to get to Baghdad in time.
It was about 640 miles from the Kuwait border to Baghdad. And so I was brought from the East Coast where I had a command there and assigned to the first Marine Expeditionary Force. And I brought those 5,000 Marines and sailors from the East Coast. We offloaded maritime prepositioning ships. We had seven of them that came in and offloaded all of them in less than four days.
We built a ten mile by ten mile supply encampment to put everything that we needed both the military equipment, tanks, artillery, motorized vehicles and obviously a lot of ordnance. And the reason it was ten by ten miles is because we needed to keep the ordnance separated from itself.
There was a concern that Saddam Hussein would start shooting at us as soon as we got in the country. He did. But his units weren’t very good. Our counter battery radar was excellent. Usually they’d get off one shot and then they’d have to run, because if they didn’t, they’d be dead. And even if they got off that one shot and started moving, we had a pretty high chance of being able to take out their missiles. So we weren’t really that worried about them.
Q: The question to follow is, was it worth it?
ML: Well, you know, I’ve been expecting you to ask that question, Bill. You know, I think I’ll answer it with a question for the viewers. I wonder how many of them know when the last Civil War widow died and stopped receiving a pension. And the answer, of course, is it was about 2008. Now, obviously, the way that happens is that a very old civil war veteran married a very young gal, but it worked out to about 144 years after the Civil War was over. With that the US government continued to pay for that war.
The decision to go to war should never be taken lightly. So I really can’t answer really honestly whether it was worth it until you have the benefit of history to tell you. Yeah, it was a good idea. But I think that perhaps the more important question is, is that when the U.S. makes the decision to go to war, they should never enter into it lightly.
I always felt that as I was leading my Marines and sailors, that I was responsible not just for them, but their families. And so I always did my best to make sure we brought everybody back. And that means that generals need to make smart decisions. They need to be thinking very carefully about managing the risk. You need to win, but you need to win smart.
We have the most effective fighting force in the world. We need to pare that with really good intelligence that keeps us from going to war for the wrong reasons. We need to reinforce our diplomatic capabilities so that we have terrific diplomats all over the world. And then finally, we need to have thoughtful elected leaders who don’t just take the easy way.
I think your listeners would have to recognize that it’s Congress responsibility to declare a war. And yet, when was the last time we actually declared war? And the answer is World War Two. So I think if we are going to go to war, Congress needs to do its job. The military will do its job, and they’re going to do a fine job. But it is really extraordinarily important that we make the decision when we go that we have the complete and full support of the American people.
Earlier on, Bill, you thanked me for my service and I appreciate that. I think I’m old enough to remember the Vietnam era. Vietnam veterans weren’t being thanked for their service. I think the American people have gotten smarter and more thoughtful. They may not agree with the war. I suspect a number of listeners would come to the conclusion that Iraq was not the right place to be. But you know what? They still think the service members for their service. And I think that shows that as a nation, we have matured and we can make the distinction between the military and the State Department and the intelligence folks that execute us foreign policy and our elected leaders who make it.
If we use as a criterion that we should go to war every time we’ve got someone who is a bad leader and an evil man. And don’t misunderstand me. He was both he was a terrible leader to his people. He was a terrible man. But if we use that criterion, I think we could start making a list of a lot of other countries that that fill that bill. And I’d hate to send our young service members to war every time we don’t like somebody.
The night before. It would have been last night, 20 years ago, before we went to Iraq. I had my staff in and I asked them, I said, ‘How many of you think we’re going to find weapons of mass destruction?’ And not a single hand went up. And I looked at them and I said, ‘Well, that’s good, because I wouldn’t want you all to be disappointed.’
Now, the reason I came to a different conclusion, perhaps, and then some of our elected leaders, was that, frankly, I think that Saddam Hussein had done an upside down side analysis. He had decided that it would be okay to let people think he might have weapons of mass destruction, but I don’t think he trusted his own people well enough to have them, nor did he have the ability to deliver those weapons of mass destruction.
Q: But that’s not to say we didn’t find anything at all?
ML: We found extraordinary number of mines, lots of artillery rounds from all different countries, some that were on our side, some of them were on other people’s side. It was quite a collection. Saddam Hussein had shown a propensity to gas his own people. And yet we didn’t find a great deal of it, of the poison gas. We did find some it. Found a lot of mines. And, you know, for those service members that served in Iraq afterwards, they know how effective those mines were on them because that was traumatic brain injury.
And, of course, loss of limbs was the biggest reason or the biggest source of injuries to our service members.
We had what I call catastrophic victory. We said we were going to get to Baghdad in 20 days. And usually when the military says they’re going to do something like that, it takes a lot longer. But in this case, we got there in 17 days. What that meant was that the other organs of our government were not ready to begin the nation building and fill the vacuum that was necessary to ensure that we had stability in that country.
And we saw, of course, what happened in the subsequent years after that... the difficulty in establishing the kind of government, I think perhaps that the administration at that time hoped that we would be able to put into place. My sense is, although I don’t I have not seen it articulated, is that they wanted a counterbalance to Iran, a government that liked us and respected us and looked like us and would be a counterbalance to Iran. Obviously, we didn’t get that.
Q: What would you want Americans to know, 20 years later? ML: You know, I think first that I would want the American people, particularly those who served or those that have kids to serve, to know that their service members performed magnificently. They really did. And in and I think they went in there with the right intentions. I think that our lack of cultural understanding of the nuances and the complexity of Iraq at that time, while not the fault of the military by any means, needs to be something we appreciate Any time we make the decision to go to war. But in terms of the individual contributions and service of our service members, their performance and their experience was extraordinary and it was commendable.
More of our conversation with Former Army Special Forces and Pentagon Official Dr. Steven Bucci:
Q: Tell me about your work at the Pentagon and your affiliation with (Defense Secretary) Donald Rumsfeld?
SB: One of the things I did was to always organize and read all of his intelligence that he received every morning, everything he got. I read the same day except for one package that was called the Presidential Daily Brief that came directly from a high level CIA briefer. And I always got the stuff that was in that the next day. And so I was able to understand the decisions that were made based on the intelligence.
Q: Tell us about the intelligence that that was there - or wasn’t there - to lead up to this event.
SB: Yeah, I have to tell you, the predominance of the intelligence, which and when I say that, I don’t mean just American intelligence. Of all the different sorts that there is, but that all of the American intelligence, both human signals intelligence, satellite intelligence, all that kind of stuff, plus British intelligence, French and German intelligence, Russian and Chinese intelligence (they didn’t really know we had that at the time, but we did), the predominant amount of it - I would say up to like 85 plus percent all said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Not nukes, but that he had chemical weapons and could have likely had biological weapons. And that he would either use it or would pass it to somebody else who would use it, like al-Qaeda or somebody like that.
Now, some of our allies had that same (intelligence) and their conclusion was we should wait. And the French, the Brits and some of the others agreed with us that we had waited long enough. Up to this point, it was time to go and ensure that he could never use this stuff against us or anybody else.
So that was how the decision was made. As it turned out, it was incorrect. We never found any of those things. And a lot of people said, ‘Oh, you guys just lied.’ And I have to tell you, nobody was telling any outright lies, at least not in the Department of Defense. This is what the intelligence said. That’s what we acted on. We turned out to be incorrect, but it was not done to fool the American people in any way, shape or form.
The troops made their attack wearing their chemical equipment, because we were concerned that at any moment Saddam was going to start using that stuff against our troops as they moved across the line into Iraq proper and headed north.
Q: What have we learned? Was this a good decision? Are we better off for having gone in?
SB: Well, one thing we learned or confirmed is that it’s always a lot easier to figure out what the truth is after the fact. And in this case, we realized that that stuff wasn’t there. Maybe we didn’t need to go in, but Saddam had been attacking our people prior to that anyway, you know, violating the U.N. cease fire agreements. So he was a threat and we could have gone in and ‘spanked’ them any time we wanted to without the chemical weapons - or we really thought that was the thing that put us over the edge.
As it turns out, at the very least, we were not as skillful at rebuilding a country after you knocked this government out. As we were knocking the government off the seat, we turned out that that seemed to be a harder lift for us than we realized. In some cases. Some of the people chosen to lead that effort were probably not the right ones to do it. I am talking there about some of the generals and civilians that led the effort on the ground, but it’s we realized it’s a tough lift to rebuild a country from scratch.
We really did not have the teams put together to go in and rebuild that country, that it turned out we needed that. And I’m talking there the whole of government teams, people from the State Department, from the Department of Justice, from the Department of Commerce - are people that you don’t normally think of when you’re talking about an invasion and you realize you do need we if you look back to World War Two, we had entire major units in the military that were completely loaded with former civilians who came in and rebuilt Germany, Japan. We didn’t have those kind of units set up and ready to go to the degree that they did at the end of World War Two, which they had been planning or three plus years in that war to go into place. We didn’t have those. And the ad hoc forces we did put together for the after the invasion part of the war. They just weren’t there in the at the skill levels. They needed to be.
Q: Let me go back. So it wasn’t to say that Saddam Hussein had nothing.
SB: Well, he did have the stuff we did find was the stuff we knew about from the first war. It was stuff that the U.N. had taken control over, had locked down and did not dispose of. It was there, but it wasn’t that we were thinking he had new stuff that he had built and was prepared to use. Most of the stuff we found and eventually destroyed were older weapons systems, stuff that was not the kind of thing that we were initially looking for. So, yes, he did have some weapons of mass destruction, but not what if those things weren’t our justification for going in? We thought he had other stuff. Then it turns out he didn’t.
And to be honest with you, we found a lot of evidence that he thought he had that new stuff. That some of the scientists there were lying to Saddam Hussein and his two sons, because if they had said, ‘oh, boss, we failed again, we couldn’t make this stuff.’ Things might not go too well for them under that regime. So it seems like some of that which we were basing some of our decisions on, announcements he had made about what he had, and he may have been as fooled as we were by what was there and what wasn’t.
Now, I will say we did find a lot of stuff hidden, a lot of conventional munitions, aircraft, tanks that were literally buried in the ground in big underground storage sites. But we did not find a lot of new generation chemical weapons, which is what we thought we were going to run into.
Q: What have we learned? What - and maybe equally important - what do you want Americans to know about our efforts 20 years ago as we look back on it now?
SB: Well, I will just say this, Bill, We went in there with, I think the right intent. We were doing it to protect America and America’s interests around the world. We did it on intelligence that turned out to be flawed. And we went there hoping to free the Iraqi people from a pretty, you know, horrendous regime.
But it turned out that what came afterwards was just much more fragile and difficult to organize than we thought it would be. So hopefully we’ll be a little more circumspect before we try something like that again. But that the people that very, you know, blithely say this was all just a big scam on the American people. I got to tell you, that was not what I saw happening and not what I believe is the truth.
I would just say, you know, we need to never hold this against the troops that went in and fought in this part of the conflict there. They’re doing what they were supposed to do. They did it as well as they could and as professionally as they could.
The fact that we took over an entire country in less than three weeks tells you that that they did their job pretty well. The some of the upper level decisions that were made turned out to not be as well done as the tactical operations. But I think the American people can still be proud of what our troops tried to do in their name and hopefully will continue with that sort of attitude and keep supporting those troops who do the hard work when these kind of things have to occur.
