Heed the Lessons, Not the Lies

Government Executive, 00172626, Jul2003, Vol. 35, Issue 9


By Winslow T. Wheeler,

Victory in future wars is often a function of learning from the one
just fought. In 1944, President Roosevelt learned from France's
failure to learn from its victory in 1918 and told his secretary of
war, "It would be valuable ... for postwar planning to obtain an
impartial and expert study of the effects of the aerial attack on
Germany." The result was the 1946 "United States Strategic Bomb
Survey," by such scholars as Paul Nitze and John Kenneth Galbraith,
which had a profound effect on the U.S. military.

After the first Persian Gulf War, Franklin C. Spinney cited
Roosevelt's missive in a March 1991 Newsday commentary recommending a
study of Operation Desert Storm.

Spinney, described in the news media as a "Pentagon maverick," argued
that the world was again changing and that the U.S. military needed
another thorough and impartial evaluation to chart defense planning.
He suggested that the nonpartisan National Academy of Sciences lead
the analysis.

No such study resulted.

Air Force Secretary Donald Rice commissioned a "Gulf War Air Power
Survey" in 1991, but when its findings failed to conform to Air Force
dogma, he limited printing to just 500 copies. In April 1992, the
Defense Department produced its official "Conduct of the Persian Gulf
War," but the study was thinly disguised selfpromotion. Several books
were written about the conflict, but none of the authors had access
to critical Defense Department data, which remained classified.

In the absence of readily available, comprehensive information, a
public image of the first Gulf War emerged. It all added up, most
agreed, to the supremacy of American high-tech weapon systems and a
revolution in warfare.

It also was garbage.

In 1997, the General Accounting Office released a 235-page study. It
had none of the eminence of the fabled "United States Strategic Bomb
Survey," none of the authority of an official Defense Department
study, not even the selling point of an effort to censor it. But it
did have data.

The report was "Operation Desert Storm: Evaluation of the Air
Campaign," which I produced along with four smart, tough colleagues
at GAO. Not only did we win access to virtually all of the Defense
Department's relevant data, but military officials were unsuccessful
in manipulating the results. The report is crammed with information
the myth-makers of Desert Storm never wanted anyone to know:

On the first night of the war, F-117s successfully destroyed just
two, maybe three, of the military's 15 air defense targets. By day
five, Air Force Intelligence assessed those defenses as being "down,
but not out."
About half the Tomahawk missiles launched "failed to arrive at their
intended targets."
Instead of "one target, one bomb," successful attacks against
bridges, for example, required an average of 10 bombs — all of them
precision-guided.
In the new, 2003 war against Iraq, some people seemed taken aback by
events that should not have surprised them. As many as several
hundred innocent civilians may have been killed by U.S. precision-
guided munitions. This seemed to shock some U.S. journalists; others
nodded knowingly as Defense spokespeople explained that these weapons
go wrong only on the rarest occasions and that maybe Saddam's weapons
did the damage. Scores of American soldiers were killed not by
Saddam's over-touted Republican Guard and Iraq's best weapons, but by
poorly trained fanatics with assault rifles and rocket-propelled
grenade launchers designed in the 1940s. The news media and the U.S.
command were caught flatfooted.

Today, we are setting ourselves up for a replay. The hucksters of
various technological wares are selling the same snake oil we saw
immediately after Desert Storm:

Air power, especially stealth, decimated the Republican Guard.
This war had fewer civilian casualties than any comparable one in
history.
In response to mid-war critics who called for more "boots on the
ground," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, "Never have so many
been so wrong about so much."
Rumsfeld should not be leading the gloating. He should be reviewing
lessons from the past, quietly noting who are today's loudest data-
free prognosticators and demanding answers to unsolved operational
problems such as friendly fire. Indeed, Rumsfeld has more to lose
than anyone. The "Rumsfeld Doctrine" is now being proclaimed as the
model for the future even before this war is understood. If his
doctrine flops the next time around, Rumsfeld will be the goat, not
the acclaimed Caesar.

We need a thoroughly independent comprehensive analysis of this war
from a collection of nonpartisan, unbiased scholars, evaluators and
experts. Rumsfeld should be begging for it. He could be sorry if he
doesn't.

Rumsfeld should not be leading the gloating. Indeed, he has more to
lose than anyone.

~~~~~~~~

By Winslow T. Wheeler, Visiting senior fellow at the Center for
Defense Information.


Wheeler spent 31 years working for four senators from both political
parties and for the General Accounting Office, where he
directed "Operation Desert Storm: Evaluation of the Air Campaign."


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