All this and much more on booktv on cspan2 this weekend. The full schedule is available at booktv. Org. Next on booktv, peter mansoor, joe David Petraeus executive officer from 20072008 talked about the short and longterm impact of the surge in iraq. 20,000 additional troops were sent to the country in 2007 to stabilize it. This is about an hour and a half. Welcome to the new America Foundation. Its with great pleasure that i get to welcome peter mansoor, the author of a stunning new book, content which will be one of the key books about the iraq war. The deep research and, of course, colonel mansoor was there for so much of the key defense as he describes in the book combo the real history but also an element of memoir. Gentlemen star is also professor at ohio state. He was executive officer to general petraeus. He has a ph. D, we are pleased to have you here. And after colonel mansoor cases presentation were going to have produce some responses to it gentlemen stewart says. Lieutenant colonel raeburn is leading operational study of the iraq war for the u. S. Army. Is also studying for his ph. D at texas a m university, is ph. D the british express in iraq which i think was worse than the American Express in iraq. And we are really pleased to have both of you here so welcome to both the. Colonel mansoor will give his presentation at the podium now. Thank you. Thank you, peter, for that kind introduction, and thank you all for coming today. I really appreciate the new America Foundation sponsoring this talk. I was not going to write this book. I retired from the military in 2008 and although i knew that it was a star to be told, i was going to let it take some time to digest and develop. And i was thinking of 10 to 20 us down the road i would write the history of the iraq war. But a couple years later in the summer of 20 and i was at a conference with a whos who of counterinsurgency in the United States, and were talking about what to do in iraq. And, of course, the iraq war im sore, in afghanistan. Of course, what did in afghanistan in 20 an issue of major concern in the United States. And inevitably the discussion turned what happened in iraq, what happened during the surge and why sectarian violence was reduced so much in that period. And in listening to what the various experts have to say, it was good to me not one of them had a holistic understanding of the iraq war, especially since the question that i decided to put aside the research i was conducting on the liberation in the philippines in 194445, the subject of my next book. Much nicer at a people who are thoroughly dead and, therefore, cant disagree with what you have to say about them. I decided to write this book, so this is three years in the making now, and i understood where the forces were for it since we have developed collective and archives of documents documents while the sugars are going with an eye towards history eventually. Those documents which a center command and then to the National Defense university and then im indebted to the folks there in both those places 40 classified so many of documents i used to write this history. It would not impossible without their assistance. So what went wrong in iraq, subject of the first very long chapter in the book. Bush Administration Made some assumption going into the iraq war that it would be a war of liberation, the iraqi people by and large would support the taking down Saddam Hussein, a brutal and hated dictator. And that since they would cooperate with the American Forces, the government infrastructure largely remain intact. And, therefore, the United States didnt need to plan for a long occupation or an extended rehabilitation of the country. Secretary defense Donald Rumsfeld also looked on iraq as a laboratory to test his theories and to validate really the revolution of military affairs, the idea that hightech forces with precision guided and reconnaissance aspects could collapse and in the state relatively quickly, beginning at the center of gravity and then wind up with a warm fairly rapidly, and with fewer casualties, and that this was sort of the wave of the future, the u. S. Military was going to take advantage of. Unfortunately, the enemy didnt cooperate. Lieutenant general scott wallace, commander as his marching up towards baghdad, his supply lines are being attacked by guerrillas. He makes a comment to the press that this is not the enemy we war gamed against. For his candidacy was nearly relieved of command. This is sort of part and parcel without the secretary of defense and his administration dealt with things that went against the preconceived notions to the simplest of their heads in the sand and said its not happening. The window was evidence that an insurgency was developing, it wasnt an insurgency, it was nearly dead in the. The last remnants of the Saddam Hussein administration but once we got one of them once we got rid of them, editing would be okay. President bush said dont tell me theres an insurgency in iraq. I am not there yet. This is in the midst of the first insurgent robin on offensive, others were committing to combating. In addition to these assumptions, proved incorrect, there were to really key decisions made in the first 10 days of the head of the coalition for a story. He gets to baghdad in may 2003 and the first decision he makes is to be pacified Iraqi Society. Some debaathification is going to take place. U. S. Law pop up to a thousand of the top officials and probably wouldve been okay. But instead they decided to be baffled by all the way down to the Division Level of the baath party and thereby got rid of not just the top leaders of the Iraqi Government, Saddam Hussein from his family and the immediate advisers but tens of thousands of iraqis who joined the baath party because as a way to get a decent job. So who were these people . Doctors, lawyers, engineers, university professors, civil servants. All the same people that our war plan assumed would remain in place in the postwar period. And with one stroke of the pen he got rid of them. Not only that, but since many of these people were not denied their jobs, pensions, participation in the political life of the country, what they viewed as the decertification, they started, instead of agreeing that Saddam Hussein was bad and it would help us with the new iraq, i think initially i got that feeling that something were willing to give us the benefit of the doubt. Instead we alienated them. And with one stroke of the pen, we created the political this basis for the insurgency. The second decision was a National Institution that offer a years against iran, many shia in the iraqi army and it wasnt an instrument of regime control the way that the Republican Guard were. We had to eliminate those regime control but not the iraqi army. The iraqi army was an institution that couldve been rehabilitated under the leadership and help stabilize postwar iraq. And instead brimmer expanded to in his memoirs he said i was just acknowledging the obvious because the soldiers had taken off uniform and gone home. Its a pretty disingenuous statement. He said what he also says is theyve taken their weapons with them. And had but one to stream back and call back to the color colln we could have had one of . Because when it was pointed out to brimmer with no service thousand armed young men without jobs on the streets, he decided we would offer them back they and that they could come and collect their back pay and the second and that would give them something with which to start your new life. They all showed up. It wouldve been very easy to have a recruiting table right there saying he wanted continued your job and help guard your country, prevent looting and so forth . We wouldve got a significant portion and we wouldnt have had start to recreate the Iraqi Security forces. What this did not only put hundreds of thousands of armed young men on the street but tens of thousands of officers, most of them were sunni, and they were denied their jobs, their pensions, political future and most important in Iraqi Society they were denied other honor. Many decided that they are not invincible military talents with them into the insurgency. With a second stroke of the pen, paul bremer graded the military. We cant stop these two disastrous decisions by empowering i highly second group of iraqi politicians, the iraqi governing council. 24 of them, and they proceeded to divide up the Iraqi Government among themselves and they had to create said each member of counci council could a ministry to control and then they proceeded to fire everyone who wasnt a member of the particular political party. What little confidence that remained in the Iraqi Government was done away with by this decision. So these were, this was the political basis for the downturn in iraq. I think that we created that. We greeted first by ill considereconsidere d innovation but then by our decision in the immediate postwar period. I love gary larson. This is the american generals in iraq. Planning out of their campaigns on the calendar, as you noticed them every day it still says something it says something about the American Army in the beginning of the war. It was the ostensibly focused, very tactfully and Operational Excellence the it didnt know a lot about counterinsurgency. So the idea that they would go out and kill and capture insurgent terrorist operatives and it would be rated after raid after raid, and not a lot of thought into the other aspects of counterinsurgency but we eventually became very good at but not in 2003. So we were there now and things were spiraling downward, although not rapidly. What were we going to do . That was a good question but i dont think we had a good answer to it. We lacked a strategy to guide the way forward and down that the troop level i know a Brigade Commander we lacked an operational concept that rose of operations of each unit in iraq in a uniform and coherent manner. And we lacked enough resources, particularly group troop strength on the ground but even with these headwinds there was some good things that were done. Unit by unit there was a lot of learning that went on and i think the army history of the first stage of iraq were covered it pretty well. But it was hit or miss but it depended upon the unit commander. There was a lot of learning when a unit came into iraq, and by the time they left, they were framed up, pretty good but then new units came in and you have the learning process all over again. Even so, there were some successes but we failed to capitalize on the we killed uday and try to get we defeated the first ramadan offenses. Right after that we captured Saddam Hussein. These events took the wind out of the sails of the very early baathist led insurgency. And my contention was that hadnt reached out to sunnis at this point with the reform of the debaathification degree in some of the political outreach, the couldve brought them back in support of a way forward. That period from january to march 2004 was peaceful. Of the downturn and security in iraq, but we didnt take advantage of it. Instead, we created a transitional administrative law, crafted without a lot of sunni input and, therefore, they resisted it. This period ended with the april 2004 uprising in fallujah and across southcentral iraq. Uprisings that were in the case of the southcentral iraq was put down by the First Armored division, the unit of which i was Brigade Commander. And we dont the army a very significant blow. In fallujah, the marines were on the waiting giving a blow to the insurgents when they were told to stop because the press, the arab press was from against what was happening and there was a lot of misinformation about civilian casualties and so forth. And when they were ordered to stop, then the situation in fallujah spiraled downward and the insurgents ended up seizing the city and holding it until the second row of fallujah in november 2004, which killed 2000 insurgents and about half to a third of the city in the process. We didnt take advantage of these opportunities that we had to their in the spring of 2004, for military success on the battlefield. Instead we withdrew from the city and we withdrew our forces from their bases come inside baghdad and other seats and put them on the river. I know in baghdad we went through four major operative bases on the proliferate of the city. This was a major mistake and it was predicated on the generals believe. Is fully that we were a virus that infected Iraqi Society and the longer that we were positioned among the iraqis in the cities, the more antibodies in the form of insurgency we would agree. That we were the problem and it wasnt the iraqis. The problem is when we withdrew from the city, no matter how many mounted patrols we lost from those Forward Operating bases we could not control the neighborhoods from the periphery. And the result is that the people with the power her positioned locally rose up and begin to control the urban terrain of iraq and i was increasingly the insurgency and the shia militias that retaining in strength and power. A real study in contrasts, again, showing a different units have different approaches to counter insurgency. I described one approach and that was the debaathification of fallujah in 2004. Another approach was h. R. Mcmasters approach and 2005. Based faced with a similar problem, he didnt attack at the esa rounded, isolated it and then slowly bit by bit he cleared it and then to hold the position his forces and iraqi police and army inside the city and smaller combat outpost make sure the insurgents could not rise up again and control the city. And by doing this he substantially altered the dynamic of the battle. It was a great example of counterinsurgency warfare but it was just one unit among many. Nevertheless, it was pretty clear that attacking iraqi cities to save him was not the answer, in fallujah, the second battle of fallujah was the end to that. This period of the war spiraling downward not adequate support ended in february 2006 with the destruction of the shrine, the fourth holiest shrine in shia islam. Up to this point the shia had been fairly responsive to calls to not make the situation worse. The ayatollah understood they outnumber the of the mrs. And, therefore, they could outvote everyone else and they would eventually gain power in iraq. But after this incident, with this major shrine now destroyed, he said if the government, the iraqi seek a divorce is cant thats all he needed to rise up in baghdad and elsewhere. Invaded sunni mosque, kidnapped, tortured and killed sunnis and drove them out of their homes. This campaign that began after the favorite 2006 gained force and strength throughout the year. In the western part of iraq, alqaeda was getting controlled of Anbar Province which according to the Intelligence Report of a marine colonel is that we are no longer in control of anbar. Alqaedas. But even then theres a glimmer of hope in the city of ramadi. Will talk about that later. Nevertheless by december 2006 more than dirty 500 iraqis were being killed every month due to ethnic sectarian violence but the problem is, it failed to adjust this approach. And on the rapid transition of security responsibility, Iraqi Security forces, or says that were fundamentally unready to accept those responsibilities in most cases, and in some cases especially in terms of the Iraqi National police were complicit in the sector in violence that was ongoing. Part of the problem is they simply didnt understand what was going on on the ground. I know this because i got hold of general caseys documents as well as general petraeus but if you look at the Campaign Plane review in april of 2006, this is now two months after the shrine bombing, it has a list of wildcards, things that could go wrong. And on that list of wildcards is sunni terrorist destroyed a major shia shrine, thereby sparking sectarian violence throughout iraq. Its like that happened two months ago and you are now, youre still putting it in your plan not as a fact on the ground for something that could happen. Its just the unwillingness to recognize the reality of what was happening. This shows what was happening. The civilian deaths, the purple is iraqi data plus coalition that it. The blue is just pollution data. The iraqis in more places than we are so they can more bodies. That you can see this trend upward throughout 2006 of the number of civilians dying. And by december it reached critical proportions. This would be equivalent to more than 35,000 u. S. Citizens are dying every month. Pretty significant number. And heres where we are as the surge is announced. We dont understand that this is going to happen. All vacancy is that this is happening. If thats a stock chart, you are a buyer. What did i just do . Okay, there we go. And this shows in geographical terms what was happening. The darker orange areas are areas where insurgents and terrorists have more sway. And you can see that the tigris river valley, the Euphrates River valley, and, of course, portions of baghdad are significant concentrations of insurgent terrorist forces. And it was a fairly significant challenge. By late summer of 2006 it was clear that the training was headed for defeat. We put it, i was on the council of colonels that worked with the joint chiefs, and we put it this way. We are not winning so we are losing and time is not on our side. Paralleled strategic reviews were undertaken by the National Student council, the joint chiefs, the state department. But to his credit, president bush is the one who m