Recruitment Efforts in Iraq

DATE August 17, 2006 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Michael Gordon, foreign correspondent of The New York
Times, on his new book and article all about the ongoing struggle
in Iraq, our exit strategy, and the redefinition of victory
DAVE DAVIES, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily
News, sitting in for Terry Gross.

While much of the world's attention since mid-July has focused on Lebanon,
violence in Iraq has continued to increase. Iraqi civilian deaths have
averaged over 3,000 a month, and the pace of the killing is still rising. My
guest Michael Gordon is chief military correspondent for The New York Times.
He recently returned from Iraq, where he's written about plans to try and stem
the violence in Baghdad. Gordon has a story in this Sunday's New York Times
magazine on efforts to recruit and train Iraqi security forces in a province
that's a hotbed of insurgent attacks.

Michael Gordon and retired Marine general Bernard Trainor co-authored the book
"Cobra II: the Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq."

Well, Michael Gordon, welcome to FRESH AIR. In this week's Sunday Times
magazine, you talk about the efforts of the United States forces to recruit
and train Iraqi soldiers in the province of Anbar. Tell us where Anbar
province is and its significance in the insurgency.

Mr. MICHAEL GORDON: Well, the al-Anbar province is essentially western Iraq,
and it's really the most dangerous region in the country on a per capita basis
and the most dangerous area outside of Baghdad. So we're talking about a vast
region probably the size of Louisiana that includes places Americans have
heard of, unfortunately. Places like Fallujah, Ramadi, Haditha. These are
all headline towns because of the fighting and the difficulties there. And
it's a largely Sunni region, so it means it's a place which has become a bit
of a sanctuary and a base for the insurgency.

DAVIES: You write, of course, that if there is a viable exit strategy for the
United States in Iraq, it depends upon developing security forces among Iraqis
themselves, and you write that a number of the Iraqi army battalions there in
Anbar were under strength, some by as much as 50 percent or more at times.
Why?

Mr. GORDON: Well, I went to Anbar and embedded as a correspondent, was my
first time back in Iraq, by the way, since 2003. And I was embedded with the
Marine teams that are training a new Iraqi army. And I was in Haditha, in the
Haditha triad which includes places like Hit and Barwanah and also Fallujah.
And the development of the Iraqi army--and also the Iraqi police--really is
the United States' exit strategy. I mean, that's the position of President
Bush, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. And the idea is there's a recognition on
the part of the American government that the insurgency is not going to be
defeated in any reasonable period of time, so the strategy at this point is to
transfer as much responsibility as possible to these new Iraqi security forces
so that they can assume the lead in carrying on this fight, which is going to
last for some time.

But one of the principle problems is just manning levels, troop levels. The
Iraqi army simply doesn't have enough soldiers in Anbar. Certainly not enough
to substitute for American troops. And I'll give you an example. There're
really two divisions of Iraqi troops in Anbar: the 7th Division, which is the
most recent of the 10 divisions in the Iraqi army; and the 1st Division. And
I was with both of them. But in the Haditha area, which was a very hot
area--meaning there's a lot of fighting and activity and a lot of IEDs being
planted--the battalion I saw there, the 227, they have an authorized strength
of in excess of 700, meaning they're supposed to have about 750 guys. And,
indeed, at one time, last fall, they had about 700. Well, the current number
is 400. Apart from the fact that that's a very small number, the trend was
not encouraging. I mean, they had started out at 700 and now they're down to
400. And one of the points I raised in the Times magazine piece is what kind
of exit strategy is this when the Iraqis are exiting faster than we are.

DAVIES: What happened to the other 300?

Mr. GORDON: They went AWOL. They never came back. I mean, there's a
practice in the Iraqi army which dates back to Saddam's period, where about a
third of the force is--a quarter to a third--is on leave at any one time.
What happens is they pay the troops and because there's no kind of decent
banking system in the country, the soldiers get in buses and go home to
deliver their pay, and since most of the Iraqi army is really made up of Shia,
not of Sunnis--in the 7th Division, it's overwhelmingly Shia--these people
have to go back to Basra, Nasiriyah, Najaf, parts of Baghdad--basically Shia
areas that are far from Anbar. And, you know, a lot of them vote with their
feet. They collect their pay, they go home, and they just don't come back
again.

First of all, Anbar's a dangerous area. Second of all, there's been all sorts
of problems in just getting them paid properly by a dysfunctional Iraqi
Ministry of Defense. And, you know, there are some other things they can do.
They can become policemen in their local communities.

Now they think they've stopped the slide and, actually, while I was there, the
number increased of this battalion from 350 to 400, but that's still far fewer
than the 700 it started out with last fall.

DAVIES: Let me get this straight: they pay soldiers in cash and then the
soldiers get on buses and physically have to take that cash back to their
families hundreds of miles away?

Mr. GORDON: Right. That's the system. That's how it's always been done.
There's no wire transfers of funds or other mechanism for paying them. So,
yes, they physically hand these people their pay, they sign a receipt for
it--at least they did with the unit in Haditha. And then, once a month, they
get on buses. They get a 10-day leave in this battalion. They're bused to Al
Asad, and then they get on another series of buses and eventually they make
their way all the way down to where their families are, which could be as far
as Basra, hand off the pay, spend a little time with their families, and head
on back. That's the system and it's not desirable for a lot of reasons, but
one reason is the insurgents attack a lot of these leave convoys.

DAVIES: You mentioned that, in addition to the tremendous danger that these
Iraqi soldiers face if they enlist in the Iraqi army, there are problems with
the logistics--simply getting them paid and fed. Talk about that a little
bit. Are we talking about corruption or incompetence or both?

Mr. GORDON: Well, you know, the Iraqi army is a kind of a project, you know,
that's still under way. But, you know, the things that the American
commanders are trying to do now is help the Iraqis develop their own
logistical system so the United States doesn't have to stay there forever and
support them. I mean, you have to provide the fuel and the food and the water
and the spare parts and the humvee tires and the mine-clearing equipment and
the whole panoply of stuff that makes an army run. So the national logistics
contract is really being shifted over to the Iraqis; a lot of this happened in
June.

But what's apparent is they're not quite up to it at this point in time, so
some of the food that gets out to Anbar--which is, you know, can be quite a
distance from the Baghdad area--is spoiled. Spare parts don't always arrive.
The unit I was with got IED'd. I was with them when they were hit by one of
these roadside bombs. It was a gory scene. One of the Iraqi soldiers was
killed, three were wounded. The next day we went out on another patrol and
one of the things that the Iraqis and the Marine's trainers were trying to
scrounge up was some mine-detecting equipment. Well, the Iraqi supply system
didn't provide it. That's a pretty important piece of equipment if you're
going on a dirt road. And as it turned out, we had to do without it. They
just couldn't find any. The Marines are going to try to give them some of
their own now.

So these are some of the deficiencies, and they add to the strain on the force
in Anbar.

DAVIES: One of the interesting parts of the piece in this Sunday's Times was
where you went to the barracks of the troops in Anbar and had some
conversations with them about what the conditions they faced. What did they
tell you?

Mr. GORDON: Yeah, I had pretty free reign, and I was embedded for quite a
while. I was out there almost a month all in all. And so a few nights I
would go over to the, in the Haditha area--this is really in the shadow of the
Haditha Dam. It's a surrealistic place. You got to imagine a 10-story
Soviet-style dam towering over everything in an area that is just quite a
violent area, a lot of opposition to an American presence, the scene also of
these allegations of atrocities that have played heavily in the American
media.

But I would go over to this Iraqi camp and meet with the "jundi." The jundi is
what is the Iraqi name for soldiers. And they would talk completely freely
about the problems. The one thing they were insistent on was their names not
be used. The officers made the same point. The officers were concerned that
the insurgents would somehow identify them and assassinate them, which is a
genuine fear. Soldiers were concerned that the Iraqi Ministry of Defense
would retaliate against them.

What the soldiers said was that a lot of times they don't get paid properly.
For example, there were a bunch of guys who were being paid as trainees, but
they were full-fledged jundi. They should've been getting soldier pay. Or
you'll have--one of the things the Americans are trying to do is build a
non-commissioned officer corps, sergeants and corporals and have them take on
responsibility. Well, there're people who were promoted to these ranks, but
then they're just paid as privates.

This is a big problem, and it's partly due to kind of a very confused system
that the Iraqi Ministry of Defense has in Baghdad. This is all done by hand,
it's not automated. It's a very inefficient system. But basically you have
guys who are not paid according to rank. Sometimes they don't get paid at
all. I mean, I met--there was a lieutenant who hadn't been paid for six
months. That's not so uncommon.

DAVIES: My guest is Michael Gordon. He is military correspondent for The New
York Times. He is also co-author, with retired Marine general Bernard
Trainor, of the book "Cobra II: the Inside Story of the Invasion and
Occupation of Iraq." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

DAVIES: My guest is Michael Gordon. He is chief military correspondent for
The New York Times. He has a piece in this Sunday Times magazine about
efforts to train Iraqi military forces in the province of al-Anbar.

Apart from the problems of spoiled food and pay that's late or doesn't get
there, how did the soldiers feel about the mission that they were undertaking
and their chances of success?

Mr. GORDON: Well, the soldiers I was with are soldiers who are still there,
despite all the dangers and hardships. So it's a bit of a self-selected
group, but I did meet Iraqi commanders and Iraqi soldiers who seemed
reasonably dedicated to the task. They certainly put up with a lot of
dangers. They don't have--they're getting armored humvees, but they don't
have the same quality of armored humvees as the Americans. They don't have
quite all the kit that the Americans have, and yet they share the same risks
and sometimes they're really in greater risk because they're a prime target
for the insurgents.

So I met people who were dedicated to their mission. You know, they take a
very long view of this. One of the Iraqi officers I talked to, I asked him
how long did he think the fighting would go on. He said he figured about 25
years. So I think, you know, there's some good news there that some of these
units are coming along and there's some capable commanders and some dedicated
people. The flipside is they still have a ways to go in terms of training and
they don't have the numbers.

DAVIES: Well, in the areas that you visited--Haditha, for example--what's the
balance of power there between the government troops and the insurgents? I
mean, are they making headway?

Mr. GORDON: Well, I think it's pretty well established that there weren't
sufficient American forces for the so-called post-war period. We never really
entered into a post-war period. It's always all been a continuation of the
war, but there weren't enough American forces following the fall of Baghdad.
And I was there then. And as a consequence of this, Anbar really become a
"Wild West" region. There weren't enough American troops, for example, to
control Fallujah, Ramadi or any of these areas in the early weeks and months
after Saddam fell. And this became a sanctuary for the insurgency.

Well, even now, there're not enough American troops in Anbar. It's primarily
a Marine mission, but there're some US Army there. And it's what the US
military calls an economy-of-force mission, which I think is just kind of a
polite way of saying they're trying to do their best with what they got.

And the situation, in terms of American force levels is actually going to
become worse. And that's because Baghdad has become such a great worry
because of the sectarian strife, because of the fear that this could lead to
an all-out civil war, that American forces are being diverted from Anbar,
which already doesn't have enough, to Baghdad. For example, military police
that would train the Iraqi police or one of the striker units, they're being
sent to Baghdad. So the economy-of-force operation in Anbar is becoming even
more of an economy-of-force.

DAVIES: So what's the consequence of that shortage?

Mr. GORDON: The consequence is that the American forces can maneuver where
they want in Anbar, but they can't protect the population against intimidation
by the insurgents. If the Americans in Haditha want to go down to Barwanah,
where there's a small base, or they want to go to this or that place, they can
do that and establish kind of control over that area, but the citizens in the
Haditha triad are subject to all sorts of intimidation and threats and
occasional assassination murder on the part of the insurgents. And we simply
don't have enough forces to protect them.

And there's another factor. There's never been enough troops at any one time
to protect the entire province. So they're always taking action in one area
at the expense of another. Now here's an example: when they did the Fallujah
operation in 2004 to clear out Fallujah, they had to take some forces from the
Haditha area just to have enough Marines to clean out Fallujah. Well, the
insurgents moved in and executed all the Iraqi police in Haditha on the soccer
field. We didn't have enough troops to protect them. So every time they've
take an action in Anbar, it's usually created a vacuum in another part of that
province which the insurgents have exploited.

DAVIES: Well, Michael Gordon, in your examination of the efforts to train,
equip, and staff an Iraqi army in the province of Anbar in this week's New
York Times, you talk to a lot of American military commanders. They say that
clearly more American troops are needed, and from your description it seems
clear that there aren't enough troops to provide security. You know, there is
another point of view you hear, that putting more troops into the
country--particularly in Sunni areas--are an irritant, that they generate
hostility and feed the insurgency. What's your sense of that and the American
commanders' sense of that issue?

Mr. GORDON: Well, I think there's not a unified view among the American
military. I mean, I quote the executive officer of one of the Marine
regiments as saying the Marines in Anbar and particularly that regiment's area
asked for more forces and they don't expect to get them, but they've asked for
them just to cover the area that they've been given.

I think at the senior levels of the American military, with General Casey, I
mean he was--I wrote a story for The New York Times just about a month or two
ago. He was projecting a program of troop withdrawals from Iraq this year and
next year. And I think, at the senior levels, they're more sensitive to
concerns in Washington.

My own view is that it takes troops to do counter-insurgency. It takes the
right type of troops, but it takes a fair number of forces. You hear the
administration--the president, Secretary Rice--talk about, `We have a strategy
of clear, hold, build.' Clear the town of insurgents, hold it with Iraqi
forces, and then win the population over by building something good there for
them. You know, reconstruction, political engineering. Well, we don't have
enough forces to do that in many parts of Iraq. We've done that rather
selectively in Tal Afar and certain places, but there are not enough forces to
pursue this strategy which, ostensibly, is the American strategy in Iraq.

DAVIES: You were in Iraq, I believe, when the fighting began in Lebanon. Do
you have any sense of how the Israeli action in Lebanon might affect the
dynamics of the Iraqi insurgency and sectarian strife?

Mr. GORDON: Well, I see a connection really going the other way. I
think--and this is speculative on my part--but I think there's a connection
between the situation the United States finds itself in in Iraq and the
situation in Lebanon. And this is the connection that I see: you got to step
back a few years, and you have to realize one of the reasons the Bush
administration invaded Iraq and carried out regime change, as they call it,
was not merely to get rid of Saddam Hussein, but, in their mind, the Bush
administration's mind, it was to teach an object lesson to Iran, which is
pursuing nuclear weapons; to Syria, which has had links with terrorism; to
desist from these sorts of activities. It was to have that sort of
demonstration effect. I've talked to administration officials, they
acknowledge that.

Well, it's had a bit of the opposite effect because Iraq has become such a
difficult situation for American forces and we're so overextended there, and
really Iraq hangs in the balance, you know, years later. And so, because of
the American difficulties in Iraq, what you find is not only are Syria and
Iran not intimidated by the United States, but they're a bit emboldened. And
they're taking steps that, well, they didn't take several years ago. And one
of those is to support Hezbollah.

And so I think, to a certain extent, our difficulties in Iraq inadvertently
kind of contributed to the situation in Lebanon because it was Hezbollah that,
after all, essentially started this war.

DAVIES: Michael Gordon is chief military correspondent for The New York Times
and co-author, with retired Marine general Bernard Trainor, of the book "Cobra
II: the Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq." He'll be back
in the second half of the show. I'm Dave Davies and this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

DAVIES: Coming up, we continue our interview with Michael Gordon, chief
military correspondent for The New York Times. He was just in Iraq and is
co-author of a book about the 2003 invasion and occupation. Also, Ken Tucker
reviews "Another Fine Day," the new album by the group of moonlighting
musicians known as Golden Smog.

(Announcements)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies filling in for Terry Gross. My
guest Michael Gordon is chief military correspondent for The New York Times.
He recently returned from Iraq, where he's written about efforts to build
Iraqi security forces and stem the violence in Baghdad. He's co-author, with
retired Marine general Bernard Trainor, of the book "Cobra II: the Inside
Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq."

Well, Michael Gordon, you recently were in Baghdad and you wrote about efforts
to increase security there, and that city's so torn by sectarian violence, and
that you wrote that there were plans to bring both American and Iraqi forces
from other parts of the country that are hotly contested into Baghdad. Why
the emphasis there? Why is it more important, for example, than pacifying the
Sunni triangle?

Mr. GORDON: Well, there're really two wars going on. There's the war
against the insurgency, which is essentially a Sunni-based insurgency with
maybe 10 percent foreign fighters, and that's the war in Anbar. But there's
another war going on, which is a sectarian war. Some people call it a civil
war, but whatever you want to call it, there's been a huge escalation in
sectarian strife in Baghdad, the capital of the country and the home of some
seven million Iraqis, which is about maybe a third or a quarter of the
population. And there are great fears that this could spin out of control and
really overwhelm the new government there.

Remember Prime Minister Maliki. One of the first things he did when he came
in is he said he was going to improve the security in the capital through a
new security plan. So he put his credibility on the line. Well that didn't
happen. They didn't improve the security, it deteriorated significantly. And
so that's the challenge that the American military is trying to cope with now
in working, also, with the Iraqi military.

DAVIES: You said that they used the inkblot strategy here. Describe that.

Mr. GORDON: Well, I think initially what the prime minister, Maliki, did, he
said he was going to improve, there's going to be a Baghdad security plan,
they were going to get control over the city. I mean, a new government, maybe
it's understandable, can't control all regions of Iraq, but you would expect
it to at least be able to control its own capital. And so what he did, I
think, was just create a lot of checkpoints, throw forces on the street.
Sectarian violence flared. Didn't work. And there were a lot of grisly
numbers back that up.

The idea now is to do kind of classic counterinsurgency strategy, which is,
you'll take an area--you'll take a neighborhood. Maybe start with a fairly
benign area. Flood it with American and Iraqi forces. Clean it out of
insurgents. House to house, you know, do sweeps. Establish a perimeter
around it so they can't sneak back in. Once you've got it stabilized, bring
in the Iraqi police so they can hold it so you don't lose it when you move
onto something else. And then begin to meet some of the basic needs of the
people there: essential services and whatnot. Then you move onto another
area. That's, really, the inkblot strategy.

DAVIES: Do you think it's realistic to--even using Iraqi forces as those
interacting principally with civilians--is it realistic to think you can go
into an area where Shia militias, for example, are embedded, and find all the
weapons?

Mr. GORDON: Well, if you can't do that then it's a lost cause. I think the
situation in Iraq is--people read about it in the news and it seems bad.
Well, it is bad. It may even be worse than people realize. And I think at
this stage of the game, sometimes people would ask, `Are we winning in Iraq?'
No, we're not winning in Iraq. We're just not losing in Iraq. And the kind
of discussions you have in Iraq that I had, including with American military
officers, is not whether we're winning--because we're not--it's whether it's
winnable at all.

And I think we're at a stage of the game where if you can't control the
capital, and you can't stop this escalating spiral of sectarian attacks, we're
at risk of basically losing control of the entire situation.

So I think whether this is realistic or not, I think it's our only recourse at
this stage of the game.

DAVIES: You mentioned it may be worse than some people think. You know, you
do hear some say that reporting tends to focus on the areas of greatest
insurgency or sectarian strife and that--I guess the numbers I've heard from
some people are that 14 of 18 provinces are relatively stable. What about the
argument that by focusing on conflict, we get a misimpression of the
situation?

Mr. GORDON: I'm very familiar with this argument as a journalist, and when I
was out there in the 2003 time frame, I did my nation-building stories in
Mosul and elsewhere, and it's certainly true that the media does have a
tendency to focus on the violence.

That said, the absence of security is really the primary problem in Iraq
today. That and the inability of the Iraqi government to function as a
government; what the US military calls ministerial capacity, to do things on
behalf of its citizens. And these are the two biggest problems in Iraq today.
And if you can't prevent vigilante groups from attacking the population and if
you've got people running around in uniform whose agenda doesn't reflect that
of the government but loyalty to this or that Shiite party, you know, you
can't do reconstruction if there's no security. You can't deliver basic
services if the policemen are being killed. And you can't call yourself a
government if there are areas of the capital that are not under--really not
under the government's control, but under the control of this or that renegade
leader. So security is really the main story, and the big challenge is to
establish security, and also for the Iraqi government to win over its own
people by doing things on their behalf. I mean, this is the big test at this
point in time.

And as for that number you threw out? It's irrelevant. I've heard this, you
know, that 14 out of the 18 governants are relatively peaceful. Well, you
know, all that tells me is that in the Sunni-dominated areas, there's a Sunni
insurgency and a lot of sectarian strife. The Sunnis are concentrated in four
or five provinces and this is the heart of the country, it's where the
capital's located, and it's where all the violence is.

DAVIES: Our guest is Michael Gordon. He is chief military correspondent for
The New York Times. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

DAVIES: If you're just joining me, my guest is Michael Gordon. He is chief
military correspondent with The New York Times.

Well, Michael Gordon, your book that you wrote with retired Marine general
Bernard Trainor, "Cobra II," which tells the story of the invasion and
occupation of Iraq, has been described by some as the definitive account of
this war, at least as yet. And one of the more remarkable things that you
describe in your book was that Saddam Hussein didn't think he would be
defeated by the Americans, that he was actually more concerned about Iran and
a Shiite uprising from within.

Mr. GORDON: Yeah, I mean one of the things that's fascinating about the war
is the extent to really both sides misread their opponent and committed very
serious mistakes. I was embedded for this war with the Allied Land War
Command, so I had a very inside view of how decisions were made and what the
strategy was and how it changed and Washington's interventions. And also, in
the course of working on the book with General Trainor, we came across some
classified debriefs of the Iraqi command. So we know what the Iraqis thought
in their own words before the war, during the war, and afterwards, looking
back on it. We put these two together.

And one of the things that's very striking, as you point out, is that prior to
the war, Saddam was worried about an adversary, and it's the same adversary
George Bush is worried about today. It's Iran. He was worried about Iran,
and for obvious reasons. Iraq had fought an eight-year war with Iran. Iran,
unlike Iraq, is seriously pursuing WMD. It wasn't subject to sanctions. And
so that was his big concern and it had a huge influence on his level of
preparedness for the American attack and also even on the way he handled the
WMD issue.

DAVIES: One has to bear in mind that he was--his forces were, you know,
ravaged by an American assault in the first Gulf War. Did the way he deployed
his military leave him open to an American assault in a different way? Did it
leave him unprepared to...

Mr. GORDON: You got to remember, the Iraqis look at the situation--they
don't look at it through our end of the telescope, they looked at it through
their end of the telescope. And, you know, the way the Iraqis were looking at

things and--the Americans beat them in the so-called Desert Storm campaign in
'91, but they stopped at the Euphrates. They didn't go to Baghdad. They
didn't try to perform regime change. And so when he looked back at the
lessons of the Gulf War, he pretty much concluded that it demonstrated that
the American military was certainly technologically capable, but also as
Saddam read the past defense, he concluded Americans didn't have the will to
go to Baghdad.

The Iraqis also thought that their WMD might have played a role. You know,
their view is that chemical weapons were effective in forcing a stalemate in
the war with Iran, and Saddam's view--and that of his high command--was that
notion that somehow Iraq might have WMD could have a deterrent effect against
the Iranians, against the Israelis, against their own population, against the
Shia, against the Kurds, so that they wouldn't challenge the regime. So as
the Iraq war approached, Saddam was trying to walk a very tight kind of
careful line. His strategy was to let the UN inspectors in to check anything
knowing that they would find no WMD. But he didn't want to resolve all the
ambiguity over whether he might have some hidden away. He wanted to maintain
that because he thought that was necessary for deterrence, vis-a-vis his own
population and vis-a-vis Iran. He didn't have WMD, but he wanted the world
community to think that he just might have it. And, of course, the CIA took
that and ran in the exact wrong direction and misinterpreted everything and
concluded that, in fact, he did have it.

DAVIES: You know, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, of course, had this
notion of a different kind of modern American army, one that was smaller,
lighter, more mobile, more high-tech. And you write in the course of your
examination of this war that at some point before the invasion, he essentially
tossed out the principal battle plan, which is this thing whose acronym is
pronounced TPFDL, the time-phase-force-deployment list. Why was this
significant?

Mr. GORDON: Well, the actual battle plan was actually--the central command
which drew up the battle plan, it was known as 10-0-3. And the plan that
Rumsfeld inherited called for about 380,000 forces to take Iraq, at a minimum,
was drawn up by General Zinni. And the reason General Zinni envisioned so
many forces is he--not that he thought it would be hard to defeat the Iraqi
military, but because he was concerned with what they call the troop-to-task
ratio. How many forces it would take to occupy and secure the country. He
really wanted to be able to lock it down.

Well, Rumsfeld considered that old-think. You know, the generals always ask
for more than they need, you know, kind of a legacy of the cold war. He was
very dismissive of that, and so over a period of interactions with General
Franks, they produced a far smaller plan. But then, as you correctly point
out, you know, as the war approached, not only did they begin with a fewer
number of troops than General Zinni envisioned, but they threw out the Army
plan, the Army kind of plan for introducing reinforcements, which was known as
the TPFDL. It's one of these awful military acronyms, the
time-phase-force-deployment list. Because Rumsfeld wanted to control all the
key decisions about how many reinforcements to introduce and how many not to
introduce once the war was under way. He didn't want it to be automatic.

And he made a very fateful decision, which turned out to be very ill-advised.
As American forces were moving in on Baghdad and taking Baghdad, he
off-ramped, he cancelled the deployment of the 1st Cavalry Division, the last
American division in the plan. As small as the force was in Iraq, there was
supposed to be one more division, the 1st Cavalry Division, that was supposed
to deploy. Well, that division was cancelled as Baghdad fell, and it deprived
the American military commanders in Iraq of that extra division. And I was
embedded with General McKiernan and the land war command then, and they wanted
that division.

So sometimes it's said at the White House that the commanders in the field got
all the forces that they asked for, and that's not factually accurate. The
commanders in Iraq in the summer of 2003 wanted the 1st Cavalry Division, and
it was cancelled by, well, following discussions by General Franks and
Secretary Rumsfeld.

DAVIES: One of the things you write, you know, it's been widely said that the
United States was ill-prepared for the tasks of occupying and pacifying the
country once the war was over. You write that, you know, the failure to plan
for civil administration was not an accident. Why didn't the Bush
administration see this as a big job and an important one?

Mr. GORDON: Right, I mean, the point that General Trainor and I had was that
people sometimes say, you know, they didn't have a plan for the postwar, or
they forgot about or it was an oversight, and that's not really the case.
They had a plan. The postwar part was called Phase IV, and they had a Phase
1V plan. They just had a bad plan, and an inadequate plan, and one that was
based on highly optimistic assumptions.

And what happened was the Bush administration entered office with an antipathy
toward nation-building as a project. You know, they looked at what the
Clinton administration had done in the Balkans, and they said, `Look, you
know, we went in there, we still have forces there, the public is still
dependent on Western organizations and armies. That's not the way things
should be done.' And President Bush himself was quite critical of this in a
famous speech he gave at the Citadel. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld gave a
speech a month before the invasion of Iraq in New York City, and the speech
was called "Beyond Nation-Building." And he said, you know, `The way they did
it in the Balkans created these unhealthy dependencies, putting all those
forces in there. We're not going to do it that way again.'

I mean, I think their vision was that Iraq was going to be kind of a turnkey
operation. We were going to go in there, take down Saddam, take down his
army, and then withdraw the vast bulk of our forces very quickly, turn it over
to the Iraqis and international community, maintaining some presence there, of
course, to control things.

And I saw a manifestation of this on April 16th, 2003, a day I won't forget.
It was General Franks' first trip to Baghdad, and I was at the Abu Ghraib
north palace, which was the headquarters then. And he came in--this is one
week after the fall of Baghdad, after that statue came down. And he came in
and he told his commanders that they should be prepared to withdrawal all but
one American division--plus a few odds and ends--by September, 2003. This was
the Bush administration vision. It was supposed to be an in-and-out war. And
that's what they planned for. And when it didn't turn out that way, when it
turned out there was an insurgency, they were very, very slow to react.

DAVIES: You write at the end of your book, "Cobra II," that "the
determination of American forces to fill the void left by civilian
policy-makers and to engage the Iraqis, as well as fight the insurgents, has
kept alive the hope of an outcome that would justify their sacrifice." A few
months have passed. Do you still see hope that this is going to work?

Mr. GORDON: I personally think it's premature to call this a failure, but
it's certainly become far more difficult, far more costly, than anybody ever
envisioned. I think that what's going on in Baghdad now, with this new
Baghdad security plan, is absolutely essential. And, you know, if the Iraqi
government, in partnership with the Americans, can't regain control over their
own capital, then I think we're going to be in a very difficult situation.
But I think we have to wait and see how this effort goes in Baghdad over the
next several weeks and months before drawing any firm conclusions about
whether this is going to be viable or not. So I'm still trying to hold out
hope that something can be salvaged from this.

But you know, at the White House they call this the strategy for victory. And
I think that, really, victory has been redefined over the past several years.
Originally, victory was we defeat Saddam. We get our forces out of there,
over to them, what a former diplomat called the "ding dong, the witch is dead"
theory of regime change. You know, we knock out the wicked witch, the
Munchkins are happy, we get in a hot air balloon--maintain a division, of
course, to keep an eye on things--but we do this with kind of low cost. Then
the insurgency rose up and victory became, `Well, we defeat the insurgency.
And then we're back on track with our plan.'

Well, they still call this the strategy for victory, but there is very little
chance that we're going to defeat this insurgency in the near term. So what
victory means at this stage of the game is we, over the next months and years,
hand over the primary responsibility for fighting this insurgency to the Iraqi
security forces. We stay there in some capacity to help them do this. They
manage to protect the government in Baghdad, which gradually expands its
authority. And this fight goes on for years and years. That's what victory
means at this stage in the game. And the debate is whether we can achieve
even that.

DAVIES: Well, Michael Gordon, thanks so much for speaking with us.

Mr. GORDON: Well, thank you.

DAVIES: Michael Gordon is chief military correspondent for The New York Times
and co-author, with retired Marine general Bernard Trainor, of the book "Cobra
II." He has a piece in this Sunday's New York Times magazine about troubled
efforts to recruit and train Iraqi security forces.

Coming up, Ken Tucker on the latest album by Golden Smog. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Ken Tucker reviews the new Golden Smog album and finds
it uninspired but enjoyable

DAVE DAVIES, host:

Golden Smog is a side project for veterans of rock bands such as Wilco, the
Jayhawks, Soul Asylum, and lesser-known groups. Golden Smog has put out three
albums since 1992, and the group's new fourth collection, called "Another Fine
Day," got rock critic Ken Tucker thinking about the pleasures and perils of
musicians moonlighting from their day jobs.

(Soundbite of "Another Fine Day")

Mr. GARY LOURIS: (Singing)
Today you've got a chip on your shoulder
You've...(unintelligible)
It's never too late.
Too bad you're just another year older,
Still ready to fight
The moon's on your side.

Woke up, can't find a direction.
Another fine day, another fine day.
Woke up...

(End soundbite)

Mr. KEN TUCKER: That's the title song from Golden Smog's album "Another Fine
Day," on which Gary Louris, former member of the Jayhawks, sings in an
attractive moan about the not-so-fine day he's having.

Like a lot of the music Golden Smog makes here, it's very pretty and very
melancholy. This persistent paradox, woeful beauty, dominates all of the
subjects and styles on which these musicians have chosen to collaborate.

(Soundbite of Golden Smog song)

GOLDEN SMOG: (Singing)
When I saw you at the station
It was after the election.
(Unintelligible)
Your behavior was appalling.
(Unintelligible)
Are you happy where you are?

Well I knew then it was over...

(End soundbite)

Mr. TUCKER: In the '60s and the '70s, you had supergroups like Cream and
Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young. Sometime after that, the concept became
open--like everything else in the culture--to irony and commercial
opportunism. We can hold out The Traveling Wilburys as an artistically
successful latter-day supergroup. You can't get any super-groupier than
having Bob Dylan and a Beatle in your band.

But Golden Smog's origin bands, like Jeff Tweedy's Wilco, Gary Louris'
Jayhawks, and Kraig Johnson's Soul Asylum, each individually started out as
homage music to musicians and groups they admired. Wilco and the Jayhawks,
for example, wouldn't have existed without Dylan or Grand Parsons or The Band.
Golden Smog music is often good, but it's also never strikingly original. Is
it any wonder that one of the catchiest songs on this new album was originally
commissioned--though never used--as a car commercial?

(Soundbite of "Corvette")

GOLDEN SMOG: (Singing)
Going to blow your mind,
Going to blow your mind with a Mustang!
Circle of voices in a crowded room, ohhhh,
Raising my head so...(unintelligible)
Ohhh

Kill me with kindness
Never enough, I find
Going to blow your mind
Going to blow your mind again
Going to blow your mind for the first time

The dream is never over,
The dream is never over.

(End soundbite)

Mr. TUCKER: That song, "Corvette," is striking for its verve on an album of
mostly midtempo ruminations, and its recurring lyric "the dream is never over"
is entirely fitting for a song meant to inspire you to achieve your dreams by
buying a new car. But it's a rare bit of optimism in Golden Smog's clouds of
melancholy.

More typical is a song such as "You Make It Easy," in which the singer says he
can't imagine himself with any other lover other than the one he's addressing
even as the tone of his voice suggests that this may also be the most
depressing notion he's ever had. Also, please note this layered, rather
Traveling Wilbury-esque chorus.

(Soundbite of "You Make It Easy")

GOLDEN SMOG: (Singing)
I want you to understand
I'm going to be your man
You make it easy
You make it easy

I like it here by myself
I want from no one else
You sometimes need me
You make it easy

And I want you
And I need you
And you know it's true
I can't see myself with no one else

(End soundbite)

Mr.TUCKER: Although the 15 songs here fade off in quality along about number
12, "Another Fine Day" is another fine Golden Smog album. And like all Smog,
Wilco, Jayhawks, and Soul Asylum albums before it, it also makes you want to
pull down older music by the older musicians they remind you of for a hint of
what inspired them.

DAVIES: Ken Tucker is editor-at-large for Entertainment Weekly. He reviewed
"Another Fine Day" by the group Golden Smog.

(Credits)

DAVIES: For Terry Gross, I'm Dave Davies.

(Soundbite of Golden Smog song)

GOLDEN SMOG: (Singing)
Where do I go, what do I see?
See plenty of people coming after me.
Where you going to? I don't mind
If I live too long I'm afraid I'll die.
So I will follow you wherever you go,
If the offer you had is still open to me
Strange as this road we are on
We are not...

(End soundbite)
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