It’s been praised by a number of top Army officials privy to it, and many think it’s a vital to make clear the lessons learned in the disastrous occupation of Iraq. But “The United States Army in the Iraq War” study remains unpublished, and may never see the light of day.
With officials citing the need to “relearn” many of the lessons of Vietnam at the start of the occupation of Iraq, Gen. Ray Odeirno commissioned the study in 2013. By 2015 it was completed, and had been compiled into a two-volume document.
Most Army officials on the record say it should be public, and some in Congress are also pushing for the completed document to finally be released. Yet there is a quiet resistance from senior leadership at the time, who are worried a report that declared the war “largely unsuccessful” will make them look bad.
The Army’s current position is that the study is “not an official history,” but that it would be published by the Army War College in the future. Whether it becomes publicly available then is uncertain, though it is clear that some simply prefer that the war’s failures remain unspoken.
War hysteria drove us into the Iraq War. In May of 2003, a Gallop poll concluded that 79% of Americans favored the invasion. You have to shake your head at the public naivete after 9/11: Weapons of mass destruction, Saddam’s complicity with “terrorists”… Americans swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.
But, here in the United States of Amnesia, who cares?
“War hysteria drove us” , maybe…more accurately tho, the GOP drove us to war. House vote…GOP…war-215…no war-6…….dems..war-82..no war-126. Similar for Senate.
Netanyahu in 2002
“If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region…”
Of course, if we never admit defeat or that we were wrong, we can never learn from it and can keep committing the same mistakes as well as making new ones.