MR. WEINSTEIN: I think I need to repeat the question. The question was – Professor Morris at Johns Hopkins University he had four questions for the panelists if there were any things they wish to reconsider in the war strategy with regard to troop levels, the looting that occurred, the decision to dissolve the Iraqi Army, and the inability to fight the insurgency. And let me begin by returning to our author first, and remind everyone that we’re running low on time.
MR. WOLFOWITZ: It’s a huge question. It’s a very good question and requires another forum to really try to answer it. I guess I’d make a couple of observations. There were two issues about enough troops. One was enough troops for the major combat, and a lot of people said we didn’t have it, and obviously we did. And there was a very difficult balance that had to be struck between surprise, which meant a smaller force, and enough troops, or a lot of troops, which meant a much slower pace, and with the potential of many disastrous consequences. And I don’t know whether things would happened or not, things like the destruction of the oil field, but also things that probably wouldn’t have happened but we feared like the use of chemical weapons.
The other enough-troops issue was enough troops for the afterwards, and I think on that point, yes, we were clueless on counterinsurgency. I think I said in my comments quoting Doug’s book, no one anticipated this insurgency. A lot of people were very slow to recognize it once it had started. And I do think that a real failure – and you can assign responsibility all over the place – was not having enough reliable Iraqi troops early enough and fast enough, because I think a sensible counterinsurgency strategy wouldn’t have been to flood the country with 300,000 Americans, but rather to build up the Iraqis forces to be able to protect the population much more quicker.
