iran was somehow moderating and that intelligence was conveniently forthcoming. >> former capitol hill staffer mike lofgren rights the party is over on c-span's q&a. ..

>> all this and much more on booktv on c-span2 this weekend. the full schedule is available at booktv.org. >> next on booktv, peter mansoor, joe david petraeus' executive officer from 2007-2008 talked about the short and long-term 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. it's 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 we're 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 who's who of counterinsurgency in the united states, and we're talking about what to do in iraq. and, of course, the iraq war --

i'm 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 1944-45, the subject of my next book. much nicer at a people who are thoroughly dead and, therefore, can't 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 i'm 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 didn't 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 high-tech 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 didn't 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 it's not happening. the window was evidence that an insurgency was developing, it wasn't 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 don't tell me there's 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 would've 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 wasn't 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 could've 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. it's a pretty disingenuous statement. he said what he also says is they've 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 would've 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 would've got a significant portion and we wouldn't have had start to re-create 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 can't 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 wasn't 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 didn't 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 don't 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 hadn't reached out to sunnis at this point with the reform of the debaathification degree in some of the political outreach, the could've 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 didn't 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 south-central iraq. uprisings that were in the case of the south-central iraq was put down by the first armored division, the unit of which i was brigade commander. and we don't 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 didn't 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 wasn't 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. mcmaster's approach and 2005. based -- faced with a similar problem, he didn't 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 can't -- that's 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, al-qaeda 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. al-qaeda's. but even then there's 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 didn't understand what was going on on the ground. i know this because i got hold of general casey's 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. it's like that happened two months ago and you are now, you're still putting it in your plan not as a fact on the ground for something that could happen. it's 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 here's where we are as the surge is announced. we don't understand that this is going to happen. all vacancy is that this is happening. if that's 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 made the decision to search. victory has $1000 a one has been writing saying it was really get a odierno. no, he was joking. know, is really david petraeus. guess what? it was president bush. he's the one who decided the search. to include members of his own party thing get out. but more important than the surge was how those forces would be used in accordance with the new counterinsurgency documents that were published in december 2006. first it was a provision of more forces that enabled a change in the strategic approach, and more importantly again the movement of those forces back off of big basis, positioning them within the communities that they would protect. that protecting the iraqi population from ethnic second violence was a way to drive down that violence and thereby enable politics, lease the politics

that used bombs and bullets as its grammar to move forward. the iraqi search on with it. we added 20-30,000 troops to the mix. they added 135 troops during the same time period. increasingly those forces better trained as her advise advisor eo cold. more importantly or as importantly, a were partnered with u.s. forces side by side so they could bottle -- model their behavior after the of the disciplined u.s. troops, and use troops could keep an eye on iraqi security forces to moderate the base of instinct. we improved techniques of population control, segmented baghdad into a number of isolated, or rather gated communities. we use biometric scanners to figure who belong to neighborhoods and who was planting the ieds and so forth. there was better synergy between conventional special operational forces rather than being two separate elements on the same battle space.

they were now working better together. we finally had enough forces to pursue the enemy throughout the breadth and depth of a record to eliminate the safe haven that had cropped up in the previous three years of the war. we created a force strategic engagement so, to seek out opportunities to cleave off portions of insurgency in the shia militias and bring them in to support of the government. you can never defeat them all. you have to fight them all and he did them all, that's a pretty tall order, especially in a virulent insurgency such as that which we face. i was learning and adapting going on but now it was more systematic. because you had a counterinsurgency doctrine that everyone had to follow. you have two leaders in general odierno and and five have mandated that entire force operate under the same doctrine. wasn't a hit or miss affair that it'd been since 2003. and, finally, we revamped our detention procedures to make sure that the jihadists didn't control the inside of the

detention facility and that they were simply turned into jihadists universities. so what did the surge do? it at it as a catalyst to compel a lot of other factors taking place. the most important of which was the tribal rebellion against al-qaeda which began in ramadi. surge wasn't the cause of the rebellion but it predated the surge by several months. but the surge was the reason that the awakening spread as rapidly and as fast as it did. what most people don't know in which i cataloged in my book is general petraeus went to ramadi the week after he took command and he saw what was going on in he ordered all of his subordinate commanders to support the awakening with all the forces and tools at their disposal. this is what allowed the awakening to take off. absent the surge, the awakening in my belief is confined to ramadi. and maybe, maybe anbar province at most but given the force of

the surge and general petraeus is ordered, it expand well beyond that it becomes a major factor in the defeat of al-qaeda. the creation of the sons of iraq program, that was only part of the surge. these were armed neighborhood watch and that reported the u.s. military leaders. general petraeus learned about one such opportunity and wailing about that it basically in his usual manner said this is a great idea can we are going to implement it throughout multinational force iraq. and so as these insurgent and very -- for his militias came in and offered to secure their own committees because they were tired of the depredations on their communities by other folks, men through a coherent chain of command it would make them wear a complaint uniform, and only later did we agree to

pay them. and we did this to prevent backsliding to make sure that they wouldn't turn back to the people who could outbid us. the cease-fire in august 2007 would never have been declared or excepted if the surge not already improved security dramatically in the country. and five iraqi government's willingness to confront and trying to, sadr city and amirah, and again the environment in which they felt bold enough to do. i'm going to cover 10 miss of the surge and i will end with these 10 myths and then will have some conversation. the firsthe first myth is that e encounters and she doctrine did not matter. u.s. forces had already adapted to the environment and in any

case security was already improving in iraq. i think this is patently false. become insurgency manual that was produced and published in december 2006 finally put a uniform stamp on the operational construct and the tactics used by u.s. forces in iraq but before then it'd been very hit or miss. as for security being good, before the surge, i'm sorry, that violence had already and i'm here is a graph of the violent incidents in iraq. laser is not working, you can see as the surge begins in january 2007, the number of incidents is at an all time high and remained tied for several months. it isn't until june 2007 operation phantom thunder, all the surge troops on the ground does violence begin to ebb

substantially. so you can see right here and then right here. but the surge begins right here. so violence had not ebbed. number two, the awakening was the real reason for the improvement is a good but it was a huge reason the here's general petraeus with shaikh sadr, one of the primary sheikhs involved in the awakening right out of central casting of lawrence of arabia. and i think i described this, general petraeus is pushed that he gave to the awakening, but really allowed it to expand beyond the confines of ramadi. number three, all we did was put the insurgents on our payroll. i think authority address this. there is very geneva convention compliant uniforms by the way. works for me. we only pay them $60 million a

month, and that's cheap at about five times the price given the amount of security they gave to their local communities. at the height there was 103,000 of these sons of iraq, that's 103,000 light in clergymen we added for a fraction of the cost including u.s. forces on the ground. number four, the surge wasn't the strategic shift bigger than a tactical adaptation that did little to change the situation on the ground. it was a strategic shift. here's, if the strategy is the application of ways and means to achieve an end, here's the ways and means that were adjusted during the surge. in the middle of this diagram everything al-qaeda needs to survive. and on the outside is everything we did to counter that. that is a significant amount of actions and it's not all just tactical adaptations on the

ground. general petraeus gulbis the anaconda plan after the civil war plant of the same name. in terms of kansas, this was, there was a change in as well. the ultimate goal was to let represented iraq, a democratic iraq that could be a u.s. ally in the heart o of the middle ea, and alec against the war on terror. but in the near term what we decide is to assist in the city was public the best we're going to do and that we did local initiatives and eventually get to a long-term situation where reconciliation was possible. myth number five, the surge was merely hearts and minds campaign. well, if that's the case in what is the first six months of the surge in deadly spirit of the war for u.s. forces? the fact is that this was not a campaign to win hearts and minds because of the campaign to control and to protect the

population in order to defeat the insurgency. that was a heck of a lot the fighting involved. myth number six, sectarian cleansing in baghdad had already stabilized the city prior to the surge. here's a map of the ethnosectarian violence, the orange blob, the more violence there is but at the beginning of the surge in january of 2007 there's a heck of a lot of sectarian violence. sectarian cleansing had not solved the problem. by july 2008 when the surge in his, there is no violence to speak of, ethnosectarian violence to speak up. and my contention is the surge that cause the ethnosectarian violence to ebb. myth number seven, the al-mahdi cease-fire with the real reason. i've already covered this. again, he would not have offered a cease-fire had the surge that already improved security. myth memory, general george

casey stretch of accelerating transition to the iraqi secret forces could have achieved the same outcome as the surge had we given it more time. this is a quote right on general casey's own joint campaign progress review, the last and conducted under his watch which he signed and it basically says we are losing. many other risks identified in the campaign plane have materialized. the assumptions did not hold. we are going to achieve our objectives. we need to protect the iraqi population from sectarian violence. true. so he didn't believe that this strategy was succeeding, and neither did the folks that work on the creation of the surge. the iraq study group report we were caught in a mission that has no foreseeable end, and at that point in time unfortunately they were right. myth number nine, the real reason for the improvement in security was the improvement in

capability of special operations forces. this is what bob woodward contends, the war within. general mcchrystal would disagree with this. i know general petraeus disagrees with this. it was the synergy between the conventional and the special operations forces, the conventional forces taking and holding ground, and the special operations forces then being able to target insurgent and terrorist operatives that created a dynamic that improved, helped to improve the situation on the ground. if you have a pure counterterrorist campaign such that existed in iraq, there's no way that it can solve the problem. the final myth, all the surge did was create a decent interval for the orderly withdrawal of u.s. forces from iraq. that's all it was designed to do. that's not what it was designed to do. that may be the way it turned out, perhaps, we will see.

but this goes to the perspective of two presidents. george bush looked on iraq has, in his model within south korea where u.s. forces now 60 years on are still there helping that country stabilize after a very difficult war. south korea was in south korea for several decades but it only became a vibrant democracy with several decades after the end of the korean war. but president bush wasn't able to see this through to its end. president obama was elected on an antiwar platform. and his vision of iraq, in my view, was more of that of vietnam, and unwinnable quagmire that u.s. troops needed to get out of as soon as they could and allow the locals on the ground to sort it out among themselves. and, unfortunately, by removing u.s. forces in my you get removed the glue that was holding the security situation together. when you remove that glue, then

the political dynamics that we helped to tamp down raised their ugly heads again, and it has to do a lot with how we handled the election in 2010 which i won't get into. but the situation now unfortunately is spiraling back downhill and it remains to be seen what is the future and of the war in iraq. and that's it. here i am watching general petraeus is back. and i would be happy to have a conversation now. spent thank you, colonel mansoor. spent thank you for those remarks, and my thanks to everyone who is here today. and it was just slightly over seven years ago that walking

across the deserted food court of the pentagon city mall tonight after general petraeus' confirmation hearings before he went to baghdad, that been colonel mansoor who was on the phone to someone motioned me to walk over to him as i was heading to the matter and said, cg want you to come out to iraq. and so begin about four soldiers of working for or with general petraeus. there are some themes that you talked about today, some themes that you covered in "surge" that i would like to tease out a little more fully and maybe open a little more ground for discussion. reading "surge" with military eyes, first, as someone who was there, a smaller college -- hog, it was a reminder of just how much activity, the level of a complex activity was going on in the headquarters in iraq at the

different levels, at the force level, at the core level, liaison to the u.s. embassy, liaison to the iraqi government and the united nations and so when. it's an amazingly complex landscape that general petraeus and general odierno and ambassador crocker have to manage and sacrifice, choose an incredibly difficult thing to do. and so among other things your book reminds us of the complexity of an endeavor like that. but reading it with military eyes, it also reads like a cookbook to me, because every few pages as i turn every few pages, i'm reminded of yes, the strategic counterinsurgency command has to be prepared to deal with this particular kind of problem, and it has difficult this kind of role, it has to execute this kind of responsibility. and its dozens of different strategic functions that have not yet been captured in military doctrine.

and they think it would be important for us to take a book like yours and to begin the process of getting it in an military doctrines we we don't have to relearn this every time we do a major contingency campaign in some foreign country. which as little as we would want it to happen, it's certain to happen again at some point in time. i hope we are better prepared, better equipped so that we can have the knowledge of how a counterinsurgency command like multinational force iraq and the u.s. mission in iraq worked so that we can have, we can be any more advantageous starting point the next time we have to do this kind of thing. and is also a reminder flip through the pages with military eyes of the different levers that a strategic commander like general petraeus has to poll so that he hasn't operations

command which is syntactical, overseeing packable operations on a day-to-day basis and has a trained and equipped commander under the general general which in windows 135,000 iraqi forces that you mentioned joined us on the battlefield during the course of the search. there's a detention command that is trying to do, what general petraeus termed counterinsurgency inside the wire so that no longer our detention centers for the insurgency terrorist academies but you're actually using intelligence to map out the insurgent networks inside the detention command so that you can have an effect on those that are still out on the battlefield. and on and on and on. there are so may different functional levers have to pull, and the ability to synchronize all of those is a rare trait i would say in a strategic and operational leader. likely we are to him general petraeus and general odierno who could pull it off. now, a lot of those levers do

not exist early on in the war, and a lot of those functional commands were not present early in the war. so it's really only, i would argue, as you get into the latter stage in general cases tenure in command and general petraeus' tenure in command, general petraeus had great some of his own levers. general odierno had a great some of his own levers in order to have those tools to fully address the complexity of the problem. and this goes to a second theme that i would like to touch upon which, could you pick the surge up from 2007, 2008 and put down some of the point in the war? could you have done in 2003 what was done in 2007 and 2008? could you have done it earlier, could yet fully exploited the opportunities that might have existed in 2003, four, five and six in the way they were exploited in 2007 and eight? there are some precursors for

the surge that i would argue unfortunately weren't present earlier in the war. the first is that there is a change in secretary of defense. in december of 2006. it's a sea change between secretary rumsfeld and secretary gates. and i think senior military leaders at the time would say that the surge probably couldn't have taken place without a change. secondly, one of the things that you get in the pages of "surge" wanted to get in the pages of michael gordon spoke, the endgame, and some others is a near encyclopedic knowledge of iraqi politics, iraqi society, iraqi culture and the interrelationships of the there is political factions, ethnic and sector in groups. and it tells you, it shows just how little we knew about iraq, that iraq was such a black box

to us in 2003 when the invasion took place, and it was a very hard learning process. it was one that we unfortunately have to pay for in blood between 2003-2006, just to get the knowledge so that you know, for example, that roddy -- ramadi is a sheikh, or as you put he is a minor sheikh of the miner driving lady stepping into a larger role, why? because the major sheikhs have fled from al-qaeda pressure and they're not in jordan. what we have known that kind of thing in 2003? the level of knowledge that you had to gain to be able to see where the scenes work that you could exploit is extraordinary. one of the things also, let's say in your opening chapter were you described what went before the surge, the major development

dismissed, i think, in the campaign, the campaign as its planned for in 2004-2006 is the indicators of an emerging ethnosectarian war. we can see in 2004 i think that the major problem, there's an insurgent problem and there's a problem of an incapacitated state. so you have to build the capacity of the state to be able to handle the insurgent problem on its own. but along the way when you get to the point where you're helping to build the capacity of a government that is itself hearty in ethnosectarian war, then you have to ask whether your strategy isn't defeating itself but i think that's the point that you come to you by the end of 2006. and i think general casey and --

that's the major fact that they are confronting. that's the pulling out, pulling the rug out from under the assumptions that underpin their campaign went up 2004, five and six. you also, i would also emphasize one of the points you make that, that general petraeus in 2007 half eyes and expands to the entirety -- codifies across the country some things that are being learned by trial and error in 2004, five and six, in places out in and bark. -- anbar province but as one former senior coalition, general officer put it to me, more recently, that it's the adaptability of those tactical units, u.s. units and some other coalition units in 2003-six that

is a process of buying time so that their seniors could eventually do the thinking they should have done in the first place. and the codifying that they should've done in the first place. third point i would make, one of the takeaways i think from your book, colonel mansoor, is that the iraqis are dealing, the nature of the problem that the iraqis are dealing with is an ethnosectarian struggle for power and resources as you put it, and i would add in many places -- in many cases are filed. to fill a vacuum that is great when saddam's regime disappears, a political vacuum. but they are also getting with the aftermath of complete state collapse. it's difficult to overstate i think the extent to which the disappearance, the collapse of the iraqi state is a cataclysm in iraq politically, socially,

economically that touches every iraqi. and then the difficulties that a foreign army has in trying to restore order, to stabilize an environment like absent all infrastructure of a modern state, you have a modern functioning state whose infrastructure disappears this has completely gone. that's something that i think it's difficult to appreciate from outside iraq. the people who are on the ground, like you in baghdad and later in the surge can understand what i'm talking about. there were places in west baghdad in 2007 that i remember seeing, well-to-do upper-middle-class neighborhoods that had been turned into utter wastelands or separate from the rest of the city, cordoned off by mounds of trash and burned out cars and barbed wires that the residents themselves had put in place, in some sort of

post-apocalyptic scene. and i thought to myself, well, what would beverly hills, california, look like if you turn off the electricity, if you removed all please come if you picked up no trash, if you had no running water and had that situation for four years. and that's the parts of baghdad and other major cities in iraq looks like. that was the extent of the problem. not an easy problem. and i would also say that, let me, to draw another analogy about the unnecessary collapse of the state in 2003, or let's say the finishing off of a job, collapsing the state with the disbanding of the iraqi army. to pronounce the iraqi army had to spend itself into spring 2003 but these were like going to a deserted pentagon on friday

evening in declaring that the department of defense had disbanded itself. they're going to come back. you can order them back to work and that's probably what should have been done. and having said that let me add that i'm not speaking on behalf of the u.s. army or the department of defense in any way. this is only my opinion as i should've prefaced everything i have said. lastly, to extrapolate from your book to the situation today, i think, unfortunately can you give us the key to understanding the violence that is rocking iraq today because the various strategic problems that you described being resolved or at least being tackled in the course of the surge, and i'm talking about the awakening and the splitting of the sunni mainstream away from al-qaeda and other insurgents, and delete power-sharing pact that takes place amongst the major political parties and installation of iraq from terrorist centuries in syria, in

iran, and the content of the shia militant groups, all of those things that are being eroded, that have unraveled to create the situation as it stands today. and, unfortunately, if we were to continue on with the violence chart that we would see it creeping back up today to probably we are back in 2006 in iraq they're probably in the early part of 2006. and so, you know, hopefully some sort of forces will intervene to keep from going where it was at the end of 2006. because at a certain point it is corrosive and there's nothing to stop it. you identified very well the things that need to be done in iraq to prevent that kind of outcome. and, unfortunately, the dynamics are moving in the opposite direction now.

spent thank you. that naturally segues into how you ended your talk, which is, isn't entirely fair to sort of blame the obama administration for the lack of the deal to keep american forces in iraq? after all, the negotiator played a key role in the bush nsc and he made a big effort to try and make it work and it seemed that the iraqi parliament was really a problem. how would you assess that negotiation? >> in two ways. the first, i would point out that president bush personally got involved with discussing negotiations with prime act maliki, almost on a biweekly basis. and present obama never develop a relationship. instead they get the portfolio to his vice president who just didn't have clout. and the iraqis know the difference between a vice president and president. and so they understood where they stood.

but if you backtrack before that i think the reason we weren't able to extend the sofa goes that we mishandled the outcome of the election of 2010. >> just for our audience, what is itself a? >> status forces agreement that allows u.s. forces do operate in foreign countries the election of 2010 was a pleasant election in iraq -- was a presidential election. he was a shia running in a part of supported by most sunnis in iraq as well as many shia and nonsectarian people. we have been telling the sunnis just enter the political process, things will be okay, your voice will be heard for politics through the ballot box. well, they won the election and was their voice heard? the interest of the we didn't back the winner of the election. we didn't see, even give them an

opportunity to try to form a government. he might have built but we didn't even allow the process to go to fruition. instead, our ambassador on the ground said no, malik is our guy. we need to back maliki and eventually the deal was cut in tehran and the glint of the smoke-filled rooms in iran, if you in which the office of the martyred sadr supported maliki for another term. and a lot we was sidelined. so what did the sunnis learn from this? that no matter if we win at the ballot box or not doesn't matter because who's going to be the next premise, will be decided in tehran and washington would be left out of the process. and this is the reason why no one was aboard the extension of u.s. forces in iraq the next year because what good were we? we were supporting the other side spent what was our reason?

>> i believe that he thought the maliki was a good ally and that he was the best hope for a stable iraq going forward. i think the best hope for a stable iraq going forward was a system in which democratic rules and rule of law was respected. and it wasn't. >> as colonel raburn indicated, we're now back in a situation where we were into the house and ate with 8000 deaths, something deaths every year in the number could go up. not maybe to 35,000 or whatever was in 2006 but clearly it's all going in the wrong direction. what, if anything, can the united states to do in your view to kind of camp and that down a? >> i don't think we should do anything. i've written an op-ed, maliki needs just to in his own juices for a while until he reverses the political decisions that

have suppressed and alienated the sunnis in iraq. and until he does that, until he agrees to share power because there was an agreement in 2010 or he would share power and he didn't abide by it. until he agrees to stop persecuting sunni politicians come which is done on a number of occasions, until he allows legitimate protests against his government, then why should we help them with a problem of his own creation? >> how would you assess the strength and/or weaknesses of al-qaeda in iraq now? is disturbing to see them back in fallujah and the body and other places where they were pushed out. >> clearly they are making a comeback, but the tribes have not aligned with them the way they did before 2006. this is the good news. the tribes know that al-qaeda, nothing could will come of aligned with al-qaeda again. so what has happened is the aligned that we created with the

tribes has broken down but they haven't gone back to supporting al-qaeda either they are more on the sidelines or they're fighting for themselves really survival. i don't think al-qaeda will ever be able to create a safe haven in western iraq. every time they tried to take and hold ground, they position themselves such that they can be combative. on the other hand, the situation throughout iraq will continue to spiral downward with car bombs and suicide bombings and political violence in tell you have, again, the resolution among the elites and buy-in among the elites that the best way forward is a political way forward and not a violent way forward. >> in your presentation you were somewhat critical of the general who was sitting in tampa during the war. the whole concept of a war that is administered out of sin, several thousand miles away. does that make sense?

are there some lessons to be learned about how, when patrice kaminsky had sort of a different level of authority because his talking to the president all the time. are there any lessons to be learned? does that structure make sense of? >> it does because central command has a wider responsibilities. ..

who really dealt with that from diplomatic point of view. >> and ended up doing some interagency video teleconferences, why is the commander in baghdad doing that? why not the commander in tampa? >> the focus on the wider region we felt there was too much emphasis on looking at what we were doing -- >> the u.s. military has gone through major experiences, lessons were not learned because they were too difficult to process one way or the other. we are never going to do that again. >> how is the u.s. military

position this time around? that is something you write about in your book. >> how would you -- people like lieutenant-colonel raborn, what is your assessment? >> listens a too difficult to learn. i disagree with that characterization. there was unwillingness to learn the lessons because we like to fight the normandy invasion and across france and germany. if we could do that every half century -- those are not the wars we have been handed. we have to learn how to fight the war as we have to fight. i agree with joel. none of us want to do a long-term counterinsurgency big unit campaign again. i hope it doesn't happen. it would be nice to be ready in case it does. i am a little bit encouraged the army is taking this operational

study of the iraq war, it reminds me of the lessons learned coming out of world war i. they produced a steady critical of the performance and they never published it. the french army cherry pick the couple of battles and develop their doctrine based on incomplete view of world war i. the american army does a good job of the army the does the best job is the german army. 400 officers, a number of committees for two years right after the end of the war. as a result they create the tactical doctrine that whatever you say about their strategy, their tactical doctrine is sound, firmly rooted in looking at at the experience of the conflict. it is an untrue statement, look

at the last war, doomed to fight the last war are not ready for the next one. was when you are ready to look at the last war and get the right context and learned the experience and understand what went on in the last war that you can then prepare your forces much better for what they might face in the future and that is the case looking at iraq and afghanistan and the lessons they have to offer, and vietnam and the lessons they offer if we ever have to do industrial strength counterinsurgency again. >> final question about how you proceeded in times of the research for the books, how did you go about it? >> what i really needed were the primary source documents that were in general david petraeus's papers. a lot of it was requesting classification of chunks of his

archivists which thankfully focus did and they did in a timely manner and that really helped. i was able of course, have all my contacts with my associates, had my own notes in the campaign and a plethora of secondary sources you could look at so it was really sort of an easy research for me. i didn't have to spend extended time at an archive and dig through papers because i already knew what i was looking for and where it was and it was sent to me on a cd. . no archive time at all. >> if you have a question, wait for the mic. take this gentleman here to begin with. it should be on. >> tony smith, retired army like you. on your opening slide where you look at overarching reasons for the lack of success, the assumptions going in, are you

being a little rough on cherry brandies young told rumsfeld on the issue on the dismantling of the iraqi army? having done a couple tours in the pentagon is inconceivable to me to believe that those decisions were made in isolation from leaders in the defense department? >> good question and there's probably a good book yet to be written when we have some hard and fast facts but i won't hold my breath that they 11 come back, people have a lot of height of what occurs. ambassador bremer was the president's representative and told secretary rumsfeld, if he was ordered to do something he felt was not right he could have gone to the president and said secretary rumsfeld says --

extensively, germany, disband the army. a really bad idea. can we keep this a discussion at the level of the national security council. and in fact president bush in his memoir says we should have discussed with the national security council, we didn't, i take responsibility. we might have come to the same conclusion but we would have discussed what could have gone wrong in those conditions. you might be right. we don't know. bremer, in my view, clearly didn't push back at all. >> research fellow with a national security program. i have a question. in terms of other myths that you painted you never mentioned the population displacement trends that were happening at the time. after the bombing in 2006 there was significant displacement internally and out of the country and segregation of

population separate from sectarian deaths. i would argue that was one of the other variables that contributed to the drops in violence because populations were sold segregating themselves and not returning home. they were moving into shi'ite areas and sunni areas. i was wondering if you could comment on that dynamic. i am not sure i disagree, the general argument that the surge helped by wonder why you are sticking to such a mano causal store. interesting point that had it happened in another point in time without the other variables you were presenting as myths would it have been possible my take was all those other conditions, the awakening, the cease-fire, displacement, sectarian violence reaching and maturation point, had to have been fair for the surge to have the impact that it had. i wonder about your response to that. >> the first one goes to the slide i showed on f no sectarian

violence in during the surge. if there was population displacement that was making matters better, why was there so much etna sectarian violence at the beginning of the surge and widened it continue. we took censuses, commanders on the ground went door-to-door to figure out who was living in the neighborhoods and this is the only place i have knowledge of in this granularity, there was a lot more fixing even throughout the surge. that narrative would have you believe that there was some sort of clean separation of the population. that is not what my commanders on the ground were reporting in the sense that they were taking. there was still a lot of mixing of the population. i believe it wasn't the segregation of the population, it was the gating of bad day

into gated communities and the biometric scanners and security checkpoints that basically stopped shechem alishas from playing on sudanese and likewise made it more difficult for sunni terrorists to inject, bombs and suicide bombers into she and neighborhoods. on the other point i agree with you. i don't think i'd presented a mano a causal explanation. in the book, in the conclusion i say the surge transplanted to a different time and place would not have worked. i never make the claim that it was the way to go before 2004-2006 and i fully acknowledge all these other factors came into play and were extremely important. my point is without the surge, there isn't that catalyst to bring it to fruition. i don't think that iraq is in a

better place in 2008 than it was in 2006 had we not had the surge. iraq would have broken apart as a country the way it was a trending. >> was an important signal to the iraqi population that the united states -- was there a sort of kind of -- not using it as a pejorative term but we are staying? >> absolutely. i mentioned that, i talk about it in the book. the psychological impact, we are not withdrawing, we are not turning this over. we are here with you, partnering to the end and they take their cue from what the president of the united states was saying when he said particularly we are all in, that meant something. it meant something to the sunni tribes and something to the general population of iraq and to the iraqi political leaders.

and going again to why the cellphone wasn't renewed in 2011 when there was no indication that president obama would fall in in iraq turned over to vice president this >> and you sitting in washington behind general david petraeus in 2007, tell us the atmosphere of that. one of the most important hearings of the first world war ii era. >> it was tense, it was a real, there had been the new york times that is by moveon.org. that he was a mouthpiece for the white house. it was a high-stakes two days. i thought general david petraeus handled himself marvelously given the amount of thrashers

they were under and scrutiny. an entire chapter in the book and that testimony. >> what were the stakes? >> there was a move to force a timely withdrawal on the administration and when those hearings were over on news that the way they had done general david petraeus had squashed that. wasn't necessarily his intent to create a political dynamic but was certainly the outcome of him giving his forthright testimony and what was happening on the ground and when the hearing ended i looked at him as we walked down the quarter and said six months. it was true. >> this gentleman over here. >> i was in baghdad in january of 2007 when general david petraeus and ambassador crocker showed a. i retired from the marine corps

and have a couple comments. there was another operational doctrine called amphibious warfare the we used in world war i and to an extent in world war ii by the army. the second thing is joel schumacher, hope you know, the unheralded element, the introduction the brigade modules, amazing transformation how the army brought in ten brigades and they were all together. i was very impressed by that. i was saying as a person who was used to joint task organizations but the fact is you could have almost the course of last group of units from different parts of the united states and europe come together in baghdad and work almost with one focus, significant achievement by the army and i commend all of you

for doing it, you did great job in doing that. what would you say to the state department. one thing i found amazing when i showed up there was part of the baghdad pr t that was unfunded, how in the world to use supplement your efforts in baghdad between lack of funding and for leadership on the part of the state department. recognize that is not their job, to do nation-building but there was significant responsibility, and surf funding and other sources of money to use we would not have been able to do any work at all. so how would you, given the fact that the defense department had significant resources and the state department figured out how to get that money through congress what would you say to the state department's role in this kind of warfare and how you use it to complement your programs or military programs in this kind of warfare? >> is a truism that we want to

the civilian surge as well as a military surge. we clearly needed capacity that civilians could bring to the counterinsurgency campaign. one of the things that was done during the surge and and very effectively was give brigade commanders and eventual reconstruction team so that a brigade commander who have resources and emergency response program had people that could secure civilians, embedded capability in his brigade area that helped with the reconstruction aspect of counterinsurgency war fighting. you know it wasn't perfect. did we get as many civilians as we needed? no. there were a lot of retired military and thank you for your service, by the way. i am not sure how to do this

better others then you take agency like the u.s. agency for international development and put it on steroids. it was much larger than it is today during the vietnam conflict and was much of a force in vietnam as a result of the program. i don't see that happening. there is no political energy to give the state department more resources in that regard because most people don't think we will fight a war like this again. may be in our lifetimes we won't but it would be nice to create that capability or the cavett in germination and be able to wrap it up when needed. scott any way you are right. i would say the civilian capacity the state department brought were absolutely critical. i point to the introduction of the new currency in iraq which

could not have happened without the treasury department officials that made it happen and it works wonderfully, stabilizing iraq and the military didn't have that kind of capability. so the state department folks and the civilians capacities, really crucial, they were not perfect but were desperately needed. >> a few more minutes left. some questions to get there. after he does his book signing. >> there is no policy by your personnel policy. could we have picked better -- sent by ambassador bremer could we have picked better people at the beginning and get people like general david petraeus and crocker to learn from those mistakes? >> the gentleman in front of

you? >> i am from the u.s. -- i have a comment but i will probably ask it later but the question is if you advise counterparts in the iraqi army today, people who are involved in the violence in on bar, what would you advise them from the lessons you have applied? >> the lady behind you. >> margaret will ski, george mason university. i-man analyst. i appreciate very much what you are trying to do and the importance of it. i think your presentations underscore too problems. one is a policymaking problem and the other is a planning problem. i wonder if you could talk about role of your organizations in better informing the policy decisions that were made at the outset, there were war games that were done in the 90s that

did a pretty good job anticipating the kinds of problems fat rise from an invasion in iraq and the second place, better informing policymaking process and the planning process itself. >> and one final question in the back. >> was admiring your memory. >> i want to ask you about that map of president bush and his commitment to south korea and obama to vietnam. a big rationale for maintaining a 60 or 70 occupation of south korea was the bank of japan. is there a parallel, strategic rationale for maintaining a 60, 70-year-old operation of iraq?

>> we begin with the great man theory that if we just had better people in place, things would have gone more smoothly, and i reject that notion. we didn't have the right people in charge in 2003, in the military or the political level but we also didn't have the right organization. we had the most junior three star in the united states army with an organization that was not fined to conduct the irresponsibility is and operational responsibilities and it wasn't until the spring of 2004 we had a four stock command and the three start command side-by-side and the division of those responsibilities, it was too much for any one person to handle fleet to be able to focus on countering a budding insurgency with political, military interface in baghdad and washington at the same time. you could have had the best

person you could imagine and would have been able to complete that job. in terms of ambassador crocker and ambassador bremer's position in 2003 would things of done better? possibly. in my view that is a better analogy. problem is he has to have worked for donald rumsfeld who isn't going to allow him a lot of leeway and is going to steer things in a certain direction as we know, as the previous question indicated, secretary rumsfeld wanted that to occur, he wanted the army to be disbanded. just like germany in 1945 which was the vision they have which was an inaccurate historical analysis. i am not sure better people would have resulted in a better

outcome. that is the fun thing about history. the second one, the big lesson is really a political one. the problems that iraq is facing today in and bar are a result of political impact at the highest level. if you can't get over the political impact and bring in all ethnicities and factions and parties into a political way forward, then feeling with the military aspects of countering terrorism and that level -- provision of specific tactics techniques and procedures, apache helicopters, hellfire missiles, that is only oyster. they wi . they will rear their ugly heads.

>> policymaking the. >> it is really interesting and a lot of people say i wish the military had -- give them a piece of their mind. i haven't studied what led up to the war with primary sources but from all but i met i think the military bought into what was being espoused by secretary rumsfeld. there were plans on the shelf that said we needed 300,000 troops but i was under a different commander. tommy francs was all in. he was okay. i think the military did give their best advice and wasn't very good advice. the bigger issue to me is how can we train and educate our leaders such that when they pin

on four sties you get better advice and this goes to the professional military education in this system and the need to have very rigorous sense of professional military education the counts in an officer's career and as a way station. >> finally, south korea, iraq, still in south korea. >> i give you a strategic reason for having a strong ally in iraq and that is the ability to have a lot of oil for decades to come and i know we all love green energy but for decades to come we are going to be dependent on hydrocarbons to fuel the world's economy and therefore the middle east is going to matter and continue to mater. >> when you fly back to ohio you are not going to take -- >> no. the new saudi arabia, we have shale oil