Army historians fault Iraq planning

WASHINGTON, June 29 (UPI) -- U.S. Army historians chronicling the Iraq war say planning of the conflict's post-invasion phase was seriously flawed by optimistic assumptions.

The latest volume of the Army's official Iraq history, a 700-page book entitled "On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign," says the transition of U.S. forces from invasion to occupation mode was hampered by poor planning and assumptions that Iraqi institutions would continue without defeated Iraqi President Saddam Hussein at the helm to run them, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The history, it said, concentrates on the 18 months after President George Bush declared major fighting in Iraq to be finished, a period referred to as "Phase IV."

"The Army, as the service primarily responsible for ground operations, should have insisted on better Phase IV planning and preparations through its voice on the Joint Chiefs of Staff," the study noted. "The military means employed were sufficient to destroy the Saddam regime; they were not sufficient to replace it with the type of nation-state the United States wished to see in its place."

The study found fault with the lack of detailed plans for the postwar phase, which it blamed on then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.