131st in continuing blog series on the administration push to war. Two solid and amply research studies appear in the month of March, either of them sufficient documentation, if any further documentation were required, that the war and its aftermath are ill conceived.
March, 2005:

 

March 14, 2005 – The Government Accountability Office (GAO) publishes a report on Rebuilding Iraq, Preliminary Observations on Challenges in Transferring Security Responsibilities to Iraqi Military and Police:

“Since the fall of the former Iraq regime in April 2003, the multinational force has been working to develop Iraqi military and police forces capable of maintaining security. To support this effort, the United States provided about $5.8 billion in 2003-04 to develop Iraq’s security capability. In February 2005, the president requested a supplemental appropriation with an additional $5.7 billion to accelerate the development of Iraqi military and police forces.”

“U.S. government agencies do not report reliable data on the extent to which Iraqi security forces are trained and equipped. As of late February 2005, the State Department reported that about 82,000 police forces under the Iraqi Ministry of Interior and almost 60,000 military forces under the Iraqi Ministry of Defense have been trained and equipped. However, the reported number of Iraqi police is unreliable because the Ministry of Interior does not receive consistent and accurate reporting from the police forces around the country. The data does not exclude police absent from duty. Further, the departments of State and Defense no longer report on the extent to which Iraqi security forces are equipped with their required weapons, vehicles, communications equipment, and body armor.

“The insurgency in Iraq has intensified since June 2003, making it difficult to transfer security responsibilities to Iraqi forces. From that time through January 2005, insurgent attacks grew in number, complexity, and intensity. At the same time, the multinational force has faced four key challenges in increasing the capability of Iraqi forces: (1) training, equipping, and sustaining a changing force structure; (2) developing a system for measuring the readiness and capability of Iraqi forces; (3) building loyalty and leadership throughout the Iraqi chain of command; and (4) developing a police force that upholds the rule of law in a hostile environment.”
http://www.gao.gov/htext/d05431t.html

 

March 31, 2005 – The WMD Commission publishes its Final Report of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction:

“As war loomed, the U.S. Intelligence Community was charged with telling policymakers what it knew about Iraq’s nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs. The Community’s best assessments were set out in an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, a summation of the Community’s views. The title, Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, foretells the conclusion: that Iraq was still pursuing its programs for weapons of mass destruction. Specifically, the NIE assessed that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program and could assemble a device by the end of the decade; that Iraq had biological weapons and mobile facilities for producing biological warfare (BW) agent; that Iraq had both renewed production of chemical weapons, and probably had chemical weapons stockpiles of up to 500 metric tons; and that Iraq was developing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) probably intended to deliver BW agent.

These assessments were all wrong.

This became clear as U.S. forces searched without success for the WMD that the Intelligence Community had predicted. Extensive post-war investigations were carried out by the Iraq Survey Group (ISG). The ISG found no evidence that Iraq had tried to reconstitute its capability to produce nuclear weapons after 1991; no evidence of BW agent stockpiles or of mobile biological weapons production facilities; and no substantial chemical warfare (CW) stockpiles or credible indications that Baghdad had resumed production of CW after 1991. Just about the only thing that the Intelligence Community got right was its pre-war conclusion that Iraq had deployed missiles with ranges exceeding United Nations limitations.”
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/wmd_chapter1.pdf