Reuters  --  Arab News

WASHINGTON, 17 April 2004 — The Bush administration went to war in Iraq with a flawed strategy that sought victory “on the cheap” and is now paying the price in the form of a growing insurgency and doubts about its goal of building a democracy, a top US Army analyst says in a recent report.

Lt. Col. Antulio Echevarria, director of national security affairs at the Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other administration officials rejected as “old think” early calls for more troops from senior commanders.

Instead, the administration hoped to address any military and financial shortfalls in Iraq through anticipated support from NATO and the United Nations.

“It low-balled the total number of US troops and other personnel that might have to be put in harm’s way to get the job done, and how long they might have to remain,” Echevarria said in the report titled, “Toward an American Way of War.”

“However, the hoped-for support from the UN and NATO failed to materialize, and the coalition force that invaded Iraq proved insufficient to provide the stabilization necessary for political and economic reconstruction to begin.”

Now, Echevarria writes, “successful accomplishment of the administration’s goal of building a democratic government in Iraq is, thus, still in question, with religious extremists, terrorists, criminals, Saddam loyalists and other anti-US factions contributing to an apparently growing insurgency.”

But his report, originally released in March, has drawn increasing attention since the Iraqi resistance spread from the Sunni to the Shiite community and sent the number of US deaths surging to 93 for the month of April.

— The report can be read on the War College website at www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/index.html.