Operation Iraqi Freedom - Term Paper Example

RUNNING HEAD: Our failure to plan resulted in the failure of Operation Iraqi Freedom from 2002 to 2005 Your War on Iraq Date Abstract This paper examines the controversial case of the Iraqi invasion by the United States and its coalition allies. It studies the causes of the invasion and its aftermath. It delves further into the failure of the US State Department and other government agencies to rebuild the infrastructure between 2002 and 2005.The introduction covers the general overview of the war. The Failure section highlights the failure in planning by the US that led to failure of rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure. The counterpoint section gives some of the achievements of this campaign and downplays the notion it was all a failure. Generally, the paper investigates if indeed lack of planning could have resulted in the failure of Operation Iraqi Freedom from 2002 to 2005. Introduction The Operation Iraqi Freedom is also called the Second Gulf War or the War in Iraq. It is a military operation that is still on and began in March 2003. The military comprises mainly the US and UK troops and backed in smaller proportions by troops from Denmark, Australia, Poland and a few other countries. This operation was publicly supported by all the Arab nations. However, NATO did not publicly support this invasion and the Eastern European nations were willing to support the operation. Earlier before this operation, Iraq was believed to possess weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The WMD present a threat to the national security of Western countries. UK totally supported this assessment while France, Russia and Germany did not. The United Nations inspector of weapons however did not find any evidence of WMD. This raised the support to earlier criticisms about this war. After this invasion, the Iraq Survey Group made a conclusion that Iraq stopped its WMD projects in 1991 and did not have WMD programs at that moment but intended to resume the programs once Iraq sanctions were lifted. Controversy was aroused over failure to find the weapons. The US accused Saddam Hussein of keeping and financing Al-Qaeda. However, they did not find any evidence of a collaborative relationship. The US also claimed that Iraq supported financially the families of suicide bombers in Palestine. More accusations included abuse of human rights by the government and lack of democracy in Iraq. The Iraqi military was defeated and Saddam Hussein executed. The US led coalition tried to install a new democratic government. This caused violence against the coalition forces. Many Iraqis lost their lives and millions sought refuge. The failure Iraqi reconstruction is viewed by many as having failed. The lucrative contracts have failed to show any signs of improving the country's infrastructure. Contracts for rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure were given without competitive bidding. These contract awarding was the responsibility of the US Agency for International Development. Mistakes were committed just after the Iraqi invasion. Four years after the Iraqi military campaign about 21 billion dollars were used. However, Iraq now produces less oil and electricity than it was before the war. The plan to reconstruct the country was a poor one. Plenty of scandals erupted after the war. Reconstruction contracts were given out without any competition. Beneficiaries of these contracts include Kellogg Brown and Root and Bechtel. Both companies are closely linked to the Bush Administration. It is a great scandal that even the humble infrastructure before the war was not saved and the reconstruction's planning was very poor. Output from the money spent on rebuilding is just a fraction of what the Iraqis expected. The original plan the largest portion of the money, 5.56 billion dollars, was to improve electricity production. It would upgrade power stations, transmitting of power and distributing. That was reduced to 4.24 billion dollars. Oil projects had their 1.89 billion dollars reduced to 1.72 billion dollars and transport got 800 million dollars down from the initial 870 million dollars. The most affected projects were those of improving the sewer system and drinking water. About half of the allocated 4.33 billion dollars is unaccounted for. On the other hand, healthcare got 820 million dollars up from the initial 793 million dollars. Sabotaging the infrastructure is the main cause for not progressing. Contractors have to use huge chunks of money to protect their workers and the built infrastructure. Some more money goes into redoing the work after the sabotages. A lot of money was spent in Iraq with little to show for it. The contracts given to companies were allowing rewards with no sufficient performance mechanism. No planning for interruptions in such a volatile environment was done. There was also poor supervising of workers and subcontractors. There has been an argument that what transpired in Iraq displays a bigger picture in Washington. It undermines assertions that the campaign was aimed at creating a democracy after Saddam Hussein falls. If the United States's interest in building Iraq's stability was genuine, a better plan would have been put in place. It seems that some US companies only wanted to make big money. This has backed the cynicism in the Middle East concerning what motives the US had for this attack. Counterpoint There is a strong view that the US State Department and other agencies failed to plan, leading to the failure of Operation Iraqi Freedom between 2002 and 2005. On the contrary, there was adequate planning and rebuilding of the Iraqi infrastructure. The US Army Corps engineers have done a thorough job of planning and implementation of the Iraqi national infrastructure rebuilding. They have worked with doctors to get electricity to hospitals in Baghdad among other initiatives. A Presidential Directive in 2003 led to the creation of the Post-War Planning Office. Its responsibilities included synchronizing all efforts of various agencies in planning and executing post-hostility operation should the US go to war with Iraq. This organization called Coalition Provisional Authority. It was constituted by Lt. Gen Jay Garner and was later succeeded by Ambassador Paul Bremer. A team of military and civilian engineers was formed and deployed to Camp Doha in Kuwait where they linked with other teams with the same mission. The idea was to deploy a multi-disciplined team of engineers as well as other professionals to assess and obtain engineering solutions. This team was skilled and had motivated professionals and had sophisticated equipment to help them carry out their role. The team had their computers connected to an internal as well as an external network that gave reliable worldwide satellite communication (Morgan, 2007). The first role of the team was to write plans for Iraq's reconstruction. They first had to give an analysis of Iraq's infrastructure. This later became the Iraqi infrastructure database as well as the geospatial information system. In April 2003 a conference was hosted in Kuwait. Among those who attended included the engineers, the UN and various NGOs. This conference was a success since it spelled out the way forward towards rebuilding of Iraq. A moment after the US invasion of Iraq in early April, electricity went off. A team of engineers was formed to restore the situation. US and Iraqi engineers worked together despite various difficulties and the power was quickly restored. This group of Iraqi and US engineers continued working together for months to build the utility infrastructure that also included water supply. By May, there was more supply water supply in Iraq than it was under Saddam Hussein. There were joint Electricity-Irrigation Ministry meetings that among other things discussed the need to balance turbine releases via upstream Hydro-Electric dams against release for downstream water supply. As it can be noted, there was adequate planning of the post-war infrastructure rebuilding. By any standards, this was a big success. The entire major infrastructure that had been destroyed was restored. The process is still on-going and full normalcy state will no doubt be attained in due course (Morgan, 2007). Conclusion There is still controversy as to whether the Iraqi war was a success or otherwise. Government agencies concerned and the military are in sharp focus here. Rebuilding of the ruined Iraqi infrastructure is taking too long and the process has been marred with irregularities. The contracting of this program should be open and fair. Qualified and competent contractors should have been awarded the contracts and not necessarily US companies. It is therefore obvious that failure to plan resulted in the failure of the Operation Iraqi Freedom. Reference Gordon, R. (2006) Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq Morgan, O. (March 25, 2007).Iraq-Disorder amid ruins. The Guardian. UK. O'Connell, E (2008) Counterinsurgency in Iraq: 2003-2006. RAND. Ricks, E. and Tyson, S. (2007-01-11). "Intensified Combat on Streets Likely", Washington Post Ricks, T. E. (2006) Fiasco-The American Military Adventure in Iraq- Penguin Zinn, H. (2002): The Case Against War on Iraq. Boston Globe: Boston. Read More