U.S. wargames predicted Iraq mess

The National Security Archive of George Washington University has just released the declassified report of wargames held in 1999 by the United States Central Command (CENTCOM), then under General Anthony Zinni, which had the aim of assessing the potential outcomes of an invasion of Iraq. According to the National Security Archive, the After Action Report of the Desert Crossing wargames was a production in which a number of major government agencies, including both the State and Defense Departments, participated. The report drew pessimistic conclusions regarding the outcome of an Iraq invasion, some of which—for example, societal "fragmentation along religious and/or ethnic lines"—were "interestingly similar to the events which actually occurred after Saddam was overthrown." It "stressed that the creation of a democratic government in Iraq was not feasible", and regarded a pluralistic government including "nationalist leaders" as the best that might be expected. The consensus of the report's authors was that there would be no unilateral U.S. intervention "except under the most dire circumstances such as WMD use or catastrophic humanitarian disaster." The report stresses the need for extensive planning for the occupation phase of any intervention in Iraq, and that the report itself should be no more than a starting point for such planning.

Gen. Zinni retired shortly after the report was written. He has stated (see links provided at the NSA site) that the report was quickly forgotten by those agencies with an interest in Iraq, including CENTCOM itself.

(The NSA site gives prominence to what seems to be a later claim by Zinni that he envisaged an occupation force of 400,000 in Iraq, more than twice the number of troops actually sent in by Donald Rumsfeld. However, I did not see this number in the non-searchable After Action Report posted by the NSA. In fact, at one point, while discussing the perceived U.S. threat to Iran, the report refers to a force of "up to 300,000 ground troops in the region").