[personally transcribed from C-SPAN3 video coverage of the 12/5/06 Senate Armed Services Cmte. Confirmation Hearing on Robert Gates for Sec. of Defense – Morning Session]
Sen. Mark Dayton: (2:50:25 mark in video) “You’ve said, and I agree with you, that hindsight is 20/20, and we’ve all made judgments at the time that with hindsight can be legitimately questioned. Given what we know today about the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, given the predicament that we’re in today, with that benefit of hindsight, would you say that invading Iraq was the right decision or the wrong decision?”
Robert Gates: [long sigh] “Frankly Senator, I think that is a judgment that historians are going to have to make. I certainly supported the decision to go into Iraq in 2003 - and not just because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. It was clear that the food for peace program, the oil for food program was failing; it was totally corrupted, and the money was being diverted. It was clear the sanctions were weakening, and I had no doubt in my mind that once the sanctions were removed by the U.N., and it looked like the French and Russians and others were moving in that direction, that Saddam, if he didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, would move quickly to try and obtain them. And you know, I think we have to look at the reality in terms of why we all thought that.
In terms just – and this is a little bit of a diversion but - I think one of the reasons why Iran is determined to have nuclear weapons is they see how complicated it is for us to try and deal with a North Korea that has nuclear weapons, and I think they believe that if Saddam had a nuclear weapon, we might not have attacked him in either 1991 or 2003. And I believe Saddam had the same calculus. So once the sanctions were lifted, there was no doubt in my mind that he would strive to get a nuclear weapon. He clearly hadn’t changed his spots in the slightest, and that is why I supported the decision to go in as well as the fact that I thought he had the weapons of mass destruction - as I like to put it - just like every intelligence service in the world apparently, including the French. So was the decision to go in right? I think it is too soon to tell. I think much depends on the outcome in Iraq.”
Sen. Mark Dayton: “What do you think were the key strategic or tactical mistakes that have lead to our current quagmire in Iraq? How can they be corrected or is it too late to do so?”
Robert Gates: “Well as I say hindsight as you suggest is 20/20, and I suspect members of the administration would make different decisions in light of hindsight, and I’ve made my own mistakes and have learned from them in hindsight. I would say to just give you two or three examples, I don’t think we had a full appreciation of just how broken Iraq was as a country before we ever went in, that after 35 years of Saddam, after eight years of war with Iran, after the First Gulf War, after 12 years of sanctions, that the country was broken economically, socially, and politically in every respect. Even if our soldiers had been greeted uniformly with flowers in their gun barrels, the cost of reconstructing Iraq would have been fairly staggering, and I don’t think there was that realization or the expectation that we would have to reconstruct Iraq.
Two other problems I think were created: the first was the demobilization of the Iraqi army. I know the argument that they had largely dissipated, but I think if we had widely advertised the fact that soldiers who returned to their barracks would continue to be paid, they would have a way to take care of their families, we wouldn’t have had several hundred thousand people who knew how to use weapons, had weapons, and were unemployed out on the streets.
A third example I think was the extreme de-Bathification policy. Frankly looking at it from a distance it seemed to me that we had forgotten the lessons of de-Nazification strategy in Germany in 1945 and 1946 and didn’t really appreciate the fact that every school teacher and power-plant operator for the most part in Iraq had to be a member of the Bath party to get the job, and that they in terms of being a threat to our interests or a threat to a democratic Iraq weren’t necessarily that; that it was the people at the top of the pyramid that were the problem.
And so a few more hundreds of thousands of people were thrown out of work, people who actually knew how to make some things work and who might have had a stake in keeping things together. So this whole thing will be the attention of historians for many years to come, but based on very short term perspective those seem to me to be some of the concerns that I would have had.”
We allowed the Iraqui's to fall back in with the civilian population and regroup into Guerillas. Quite frankly we didnt kill enough of them on the way in and we didnt take command as we looked around for some of them to step up. We should have taken brutal command that is the only thing they understand, then parcelled out the power as we saw fit.
After WW2 we placed MacArthur in charge of jpan until they formed their oen government We occupied germany and told thm how it was going to be until they got ready. here we went in and let them ry to make a government befoe they were ready we did not take brutal command.
here is the direct video link if the other doesn't work (Real Media player required): rtsp://video.c-span.org/project/iraq/iraq120506_gates1.rm