--- Page 1 ---
Prelude to War7
Courtesyof U.S. Central Command, 14 January 2003
from the beachhead, 15th MEU (SOC) flew in to seize
a landing strip in Afghanistan that became known as
Forward Operating Base Rhino. This was the start of
roughly two months of Marine operations in country,
first in and around Rhino, and later from Kandahar
Airfield, which 26th MEU (SOC) later seized on 14
December.
Repeating a phrase attributed to war correspon-
dent Richard Harding Davis in 1885 and used many
times since, General Mattis wrote in a 26 November
message, "the Marines have landed and the situation
is well in hand."15 *Itwas, in the words of the Naval
Institute's annual review of the Marine Corps, a dis-
play of "flexibility and operational reach...[thati
stunned many outsiders."16 The task force's move-
ment from ship to shore was right out of the Marine
Corps doctrine known as expeditionary maneuver
warfare, which called for fast and deep movements,
*Some journalists reported the remark as, "The Marines have
landed and we now own a piece of Afghanistan," which the Pen-
tagon apparently "scrambled to disavow." (See, for example,
Christopher Cooper, "How a Marine Lost His Command in the
Race to Baghdad," Wall Street Journal, 5Apr04, p. 1)
directly from the sea to objectives inland. But this
was still something relatively new and largely untried.
General Mattis was not exaggerating when he com-
mented that if he had proposed this kind of opera-
tion at Quantico or Newport, Rhode Island, the home
of the Naval War College, he would have been told
it could not be done.17
In the meantime, back in Hawaii there were
changes afoot that would shift some of the burden
•from the small liaison elements in Tampa and
Bahrain, and from General Mattis himself. On 24 Oc-
tober, the Commander, MarForPac, Lieutenant Gen-
eral Earl B. Hailston, had formally taken on the
additional duty of Commander, MarCent, and begun
to play a much more prominent role in the CentCom
arena.18 By January 2002, Hailston was in the process
of moving his flag to Bahrain "to establish [the] Mar-
Cent HQ in theater in support of CincCent Com-
mander-in-Chief, CentCom] and Operation Enduring
Freedom."19 Even though he occasionally shuttled
back to Hawaii, Bahrain became his home for much
of the next year and a half.2° Hailston's move, made
with some 200 of his Marines, signaled the Marine


--- Page 2 ---
8 Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
Corps' intent to build a strong infrastructure in theater
to support Marine commanders on the ground. It was
as much a matter of Iraq as it was of Afghanistan; by
early 2002 the administration had directed the mili­
tary to plan for a possible war with Iraq while con­
solidating its gains in Afghanistan.
The new MarCent headquarters in the Gulf was
not even up to the standard of MarCent Tampa's
building; like virtually all Marine headquarters in and
around the Persian Gulf through the summer of 2003,
it was never much to look at, let alone to work in. At
first MarCent even had trouble finding a home in the­
ater. When they landed at Sheikh Issa Air Base in
Bahrain, the Marines from Hawaii and Tampa started
to build an expeditionary headquarters on a part of
the base. But the initiative had not been fully cleared
with the Bahrainis, there had been some kind of
cross-cultural misunderstanding, and they "re­
quested" that MarCent find somewhere else to go.
The Marine coordination element commander,
Colonel Kiser, who was familiar with Arab ways and
with the Navy establishment, came up with a quick
Componency
T
he first time out ider tried to understand the
relationship between Central Command' "er­
vice components" and "functional components,"
their heads spun and they had to reach for their
favorite painkiller. Each Armed Service had a erv­
ice component, with a headquarters and a staff,
commanded by its enior officer in theater. Thes
components were 1arCent, 1 avCent, AI'Cent, and
CentAF. Their purpo e a to proVide and u tain
their forces. avCent and CentAF were conunand
that could easily transform themselves into func­
tional commands, that i , commands responsible
for combat at sea and in the air. It seemed natural
for the naval commander to take on the additional
duty of the Coalition Force Maritime Component
Commander for naval warfare, while the CentAF
commander could become the Coalition Forces Air
Component Commander for the fight in the air.
There was even a commander for special opera­
tions, Coalition Force pecial Operations Com­
mand (CFSOC). It al 0 eemed natural for the
ArCent commander to become dual-hatted as the
Coalition Forces Land Component Commander, but
what about MarCent? There were no provisions for
an "Expeditionary Forces Component Command."
In the Gulf War of 1990-1991, there had been noth­
ing even remotely like a functional component
command for the war on land; the CentCom com­
mander, AImy General H. orman Schwarzkopf,
had decided to take on the additional dutie f
being his own land component commander, not
unlike the Confederate general Braxton Bragg,
who had been his own supply officer. After he be­
came the CentCom commander in the late 1990s,
General Zinni had wrestled with the problem. His
view was that the United tates had fought two
ground wars in De ert tonn. General Schwarzkopf
had taken on more than anyone man could han­
dle, and the effort of the AI'my and the Marine
Corps had not been fully coordinated. Zinni de­
cided that he wanted the Army and th Marine
Corps to establish a standing joint land forces com­
ponent command in the region. This became Joint
Task Force Kuwait 0TF Kuwait) with it head­
quarters at Camp Doha, Kuwait.* Marine, and Ma­
rine units, rotated through the command, whose
staff was largely identical with that of ArCent. In
the fall of 2001, for example, then-Brigadier Gen­
eral Emerson r. Gardner, Jr., was in command of
JTF Kuwait. ArCent and the joint task force mor­
phed into Coalition Forces Land Component Com­
mand in late 2001, under the command of a
three-star Army general, Lieutenant General Paul
T. Mikolashek, who moved his flag to Kuwait in
December. Like hi predecessor Zinni, General
Franks wanted a trong Coalition Force Land
Component Conunander, with its own staff, to
focus on the ground war while he focu ed on his
own responsibilities for the war at the next higher
level. The officer who was to command Coalition
Forces Land Component in 2003, Lieutenant Gen­
eral David D. McKiernan, found that there was
"huge goodness in that arrangement."**
*In 2003, while serving at Coalition Forces Land Component
Commander, Marine BGen Christian M. Cowdrey made much
the same point, commenting that the combined/joint land head­
quarters CFLCC fulftlled a function that would have been diffi­
cult for any other organization to fulfill, that of orchestrating the
plan. (BGen Christian B. Cowdrey intvw, 26Apr03 (MCHC,
QuantiCO, VA); Tom Clancy, Gen Anthony Zinni, and Tony
Koltz, Battle Ready [l ew York, : G. P. Putnam's on, 2004],
p. 315; see also Zinni intvw)
**Kevin Peraino, "Low-Key Leader; LtGen David McKiernan is
the Soft-Spoken oldier with d1e Hard Job of Commanding U. .
Ground Forces in Iraq," ewsweekWeb Exclusive, 19 Mar03.

--- Page 3 ---
Prelude to War9
solution. He crafted an arrangement with NavCent for
MarCent to come onto the Naval Support Activity it-
self, even though there was little room to spare on
that small base. NavCent agreed to allow MarCent to
set up on a baseball field that was, by turns, the
source of fine dust and, when it rained, some very
sticky mud.21
The result was an unusual overlay of temporary
structures on a base with some amenities. Some of
the MarCent Marines worked in the general-purpose
tents on the baseball field. They had some air condi-
tioning, as much for the computers as for the Marines,
but were often hot and uncomfortable, Other Marines
worked in only slightly more comfortable expedi-
tionary buildings. Like most Marines on major staffs
after 11 September, the MarCent Marines worked in-
credible hours, under great pressure, with little time
off. But there was a small upside; less than 100 yards
away was a well stocked food court, as well as a
gym, exchange, and swimming pool. Sometimes,
when the force protection condition was high, one
might witness the anomalous sight of half-camou-
flaged U.S. Navy personnel with loaded rifles sitting
or lying among the palm trees and brush outside the
food court, on the lookout for any terrorists who
might have made it through the perimeter, which was
an elaborate affair with concrete barriers, barbed
wire, and sentries. This was not quite as farfetched
as it sounds; not only was there a continuing terror-
ist threat, but, especially in early 2003, there were
also anti-American demonstrations and occasional ter-
rorist attacks throughout the region. If there had been
a firefight, the personnel on base could have watched
it while sipping cappuccinos. It was an unusual way
to go to war.
MarCent now became the only purely "service
component command" in theater, with the enormous
responsibility of providing and sustaining thousands,
and potentially tens of thousands, of Marines and
sailors.Like his counterparts at NavCent; Army
Forces, Central Command (ArCent); and Air Forces,
Central Command (CentAF), General Hailston re-
ported to the Commander-in-Chief, Central Com-
mand, General Tommy Franks, who held sway over
all U.S. forces in the region, whatever their purpose.
Unlike his counterparts, General Hailston was not a
tactician. He would get the Marines to the war, make
sure they had what they needed for the fight, and
generally offer advice to General Franks on how best
to employ them. It was Hailston's job to look 45 to 60
days into the future, anticipate Marine requirements,
and then fulfill them, all in all an enormous under-
taking. But when Marines went into combat, they
DVIC DM-SD-05-04888
LtGen David D. McKiernan, USA, a graduate of the
College of William and Mary, gained experience in
the Balkans as a staff officer in the 1990s. In Septem-
ber 2002, he assumed command of the US. Third
Army and US. Army Forces Central Comman4, and
became the Coalition Forces Land Component Corn-
inander in preparation for Operation Iraqi Freedom.
would fight under one of the "functional compo-
nents" like the Coalition Forces Maritime Component
Command (CFMCC), which was NavCent's warfight-
ing guise. For example, Admiral Moore became both
the NavCent commander and the CFMCC com-
mander. There were similar arrangements for CentAF
and ArCent to become, respectively, the Coalition
Forces Air Component Command (CFACC) and the
CoalitionForcesLand Component Command
(CFLCC). This was a radical departure from the or-
ganization for Desert Storm some 10 years earlier,


--- Page 4 ---
10Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
Marine Corps Photo 0201 12-M-1586C-002
Afghans greet Marines from the 26th Marine Expedi-
tionary Unit's CompanyA, 2dLightArmoredRecon-
naissance Battalion, on a routine mounted patrol
through a village near Kandahar, Afghanistan.
which had been fought without a unified land corn-
mand.
This created a dilemma for the Marine Corps,
naval infantry and air forces that did not fit neatly
into any of these categories. In 2001 the result was
another set of complications. Task Force 58 initially
reported to NavCent/CFMCC. This was a natural re-
lationship, especially while the task force remained
afloat. Once it was ashore, and after CFLCC had
stood up in mid-November, it had to develop a rela-
tionship with that headquarters, which had assumed
responsibilityforalloperationsonlandin
Afghanistan. Accordingly, on 30 November, CFMCC
assigned tactical control of Task Force 58 to CFLCC,
without giving up operational control. Especially at
first there was some friction between Task Force 58
and CFLCC; the CFLCC culture was "Big Army," the
world of large staffs and detailed reporting, certainly
a change for the Marines on Task Force 58. But over
time everyone made it work, the "TF 58 staff was
able to adapt to the new information requirements
while continuing to develop a solid working rela-
tionship with the CFLCC staff. The positive relation-
ship would last throughout the operation as CFLCC
buttressed and represented CTF 58's interests."22
Between 2001 and 2003, the words "combined" and "coalition"
were used in the titles of these organizations to mean the same
thing. While "joint" refers to U.S. commands with more than one
service, "combined" or "Coalition" refers to commands that also
include foreign elements. For the sake of simplicity and consis-
tency, I will use coalition.
Most Marine staff officers in the Persian Gulf be-
came well versed in the intricacies of operational
control and tactical control. By and large, what Gen-
eral Hailston exercised was operational control, or-
ganizing and employing forces, sustaining them, and
assigning general tasks, but not tactical control,
which was the specific direction and control of
forces, especially in combat. The two exceptions
were CJTF-CM and an organization known as the Ma-
rine Logistics Command (MLC), which would play a
prominent role in the Iraq War in 2003. Like the or-
ganization for the land war, this, too, was different
from Desert Storm. Then the senior Marine in the-
ater, Lieutenant General Walter E. Boomer, had com-
manded I MEF and MarCent, a heavy burden for one
commander, who in both capacities reported directly
to General Schwarzkopf.23
General Zinni has argued that especially in a major
contingency, each function requires a separate staff,
with a different focus.24 General Hailston's chief of
staff, Colonel Stephen W. Baird, believed the arrange-
ment in Desert Storm had stressed the I MEF staff and
forced General Boomer to divide his time between
warfighting and Service component issues.2' Having
one commander responsible for "shaping, providing,
and sustaining" Marine forces and another com-
mander for warfighting would free the warfighter to
focus on combat. The Service component com-
mander, who would be senior, could forge a rela-
tionship with the commander-in-chief and protect the
sanctity of the Marine air-ground task forces, resisting
the understandable propensities of non-Marines to
break task forces into their building blocks, splitting
ground and air components apart and sending them
to fight with their counterparts in the Army and the
Air Force.26 (General Hailston agreed with this point
of view.) Speaking in late 2003, General James T.
Conway added the commonsense point that it would
have been difficult for him to command both Mar-
Cent and I MEF, since in one capacity he would be
the equal of the CFLCC commander, and in the other,
his subordinate 27
Even with the improved organization of the force,
there was some Service rivalry. One notable point of
contention was the "force cap" placed on the Marines
while Task Force 58 was ashore—CentCom decreed
'Neither Gen Boomer nor Gen Hailston reported directly to Head-
quarters Marine Corps (HQMC). However, there was a lively ex-
change of views and data between the CentCom theater and
HQMC, especially the office of the Deputy Commandant for Plans,
Policies, and Operations (PP&O). During 2002 and 2003, Gen Hail-
ston and LtGen Emil R. Bedard of PP&O were in close contact,
discussing and coordinating plans virtually on a daily basis.


--- Page 5 ---
Prelude to War11
that initially there could not be more than 1,000
Marines and sailors in Afghanistan in late 2001. Some
Marines interpreted this as a gratuitous slap in the
face, "Big Army" making sure the Marines did not
steal the show, and, by extension, making it easier
for the Army to assume the Marine mission in
Afghanistan, a process that was well under way by
mid-January 2002.28 But the Marines complied and
were still able to carry on with their mission.
Task Force 58 was released from CFLCC control
on 3 February 2002.29 Although small numbers of
Marines stayed in country, either as individuals or as
units, for quite some time, the 26th MEU(SOC) left
Afghanistan on 13 February. This spelled the end of
Task Force 58's engagement in that country. Now the
nature of the task force's achievement was even
clearer. Apart from validating some of the tenets of
expeditionary maneuver warfare, it showed Marines,
literally and figuratively, how far they had come from
the traditional "two up and one back" mind-set that
had characterized the war in Vietnam and, to a cer-
tain extent, Desert Storm, which had had some of the
characteristics of an old-fashioned linear battlefield.3°
Task Force 58's experience also showed Marines
how far they had come since Desert Storm in another
way. Despite the friction over matters like the force
cap (some friction was inevitable), there had been
nothing like the bad blood and the temper tantrums
that are discernable beneath the surface of the mem-
oirs of the Gulf War; in Afghanistan, and then in Iraq,
senior participants almost uniformly reported that the
level of cooperation was unparalleled, both among
the Services as institutions and among their chiefs as
individuals. To cite just one example, CFLCC's Gen-
eral McKiernan stated categorically that "there were
no rifts" between the various commanders.31
There are a number of possible explanations for
the relative good feeling, the general atmosphere of
trust, among the Services after September 2001.
These ranged from the maturing of joint routines at
the combatant commands, to the exigencies of the
situation, that is, the unifying effect of the events of
11 September, to the backgrounds and the personal-
ities of the commanders. A number of controversial
A Marine crew chiefguides a CH-46 Sea Knight of Ma rifle Medium Helicopter Squadron 365 at Kandahar In-
ternational Ahport in Afghanistan. Squadron aircraft flew re-supply, long-range reconnaissance patrol,
ground escort, armed interdiction, and heliborne assaults in search of Taliban and Al Qaeda forces.
DVICDM-SD-02-06319


--- Page 6 ---
12Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
issues such as the employment of Marine air in the
joint environment, which had been a serious point of
contention during Desert Shield/Desert Storm, had
more or less been resolved during the decade since
the Gulf War. CentCom commanders like General
Zinni, first and always a Marine but also something of
an iconoclast and nothing if not a "joint" visionary,
had created and exercised joint structures such as
Joint Task Force Kuwait, with its provisions for alter-
nating Marine and Army commanders. Similarly, op-
erations Northern Watch and Southern Watch, run for
years by United States and allied air forces to enforce
the no-fly zones in the top and bottom one-thirds of
Iraq, were successful combined and joint opera-
tions 32
Analyzing the backgrounds of the participants in
the Iraq War, historians Williamson Murray and Major
General Robert Scales, USA (Retired), have made the
comment that the officer corps was far better trained
and educated in 2003 than it had been during the
Gulf War, let alone Vietnam. The key here is the word
"educated"; beginning in the 1980s, officers were not
only well trained, able to perform battlefield tasks,
but they could also think in "operational terms." "The
new emphasis," Murray and Scales wrote in their ex-
cellent overview of the period, The Iraq War, "was
on maneuver, deception, exploitation, and decen-
tralized leadership."33 In the Marine Corps the reform
movement had started informally with meetings after
hours at Quantico, sometimes over beer, but just as
likely over coffee or sodas, and spread little by little
to other bases. Many of the ideas that emerged were
eventually enshrined in doctrine, particularly FMFM
1: Warfighting, during the commandancy of General
Alfred M. Gray in the late 1980s. Not everyone be-
came a maneuverist, but it is fair to say that by the
end of the 1990s, virtually everyone was familiar with
the term and had been influenced by it in some
way.34
The personalities of the commanders, and how
they meshed, were also part of the picture. General
McKiernan commented that "the big strength in this
campaign was the personalities of the various com-
ponent commanders. ... Youcan say a lot of that
[inter-Service cooperation was possible] because of
developments in joint doctrine and training...buta
lot of it [was]...alsoin the chemistry between
the leaders."35 General Franks, with his down-to-earth
style, was known as an officer who listened to his
subordinates. A strong proponent of military trans-
formation, he was a commander who identified the
desired "effects...andtasks and purpose, but [left]
the planning to the component commanders."36
He had a long-standing "joint" reputation, having
been the ArCent commander under Zinni. It had
been a natural progression for him to take the com-
mander's chair and continue the joint tradition. Even
after becoming the commander, General Franks had
stayed in touch with General Zinni, using him as an
unofficial mentor and even trying, in late 2002, to use
him as an official mentor for a CentCom exercise.
(Zinni did not come to theater, because by then his
blunt pronouncements against the coming war had
made him persona non grata with the Pentagon.)37 At
MarCent, General Hailston had an unusually varied
background, having served as an infantryman, an avi-
ator (whose call sign was "Titan"), and a force serv-
ice support group commander. He had relationships
with other senior commanders, especially CFACC's
Lieutenant General T. Michael Moseley, USAF, which
went back many years. He also had a reputation for
not suffering colonels gladly and for taking good care
of his younger Marines, not necessarily bad traits to
have in 2002 and 2003 (at least so long as you were
not a colonel). The field historian assigned to his
headquarters, Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Acosta, at-
tested to the general's ability to ask penetrating ques-
tions across a broad range of subjects, and to keep
supplies and equipment flowing to theater.38
Murray and Scales assert that General McKiernan,
who was to become CFLCC commander in September
2002, "proved to be an inspired choice."39 An armor
officer who was quiet but compelling, McKiernan's
background included joint and combined experience,
in addition to senior Army commands. He, too, was
not afraid of new ideas and wanted to find the best
organization for the fight, as opposed to doing things
the way they always had been done. He had what
Newsweek was to call "a temperament as... evenas
the desert," which also made it easy for him to work
with other Services.4°
The officer who set the tone for virtually all
Marines in theater was General James T. Conway. A
graduate of Southeast Missouri State University, he
was commissioned in 1970 and had had a successful
career in the infantry. When away from the fleet, he
served as the commanding officer of The Basic
School and then as president of the Marine Corps
University. He also served two tours on the joint staff
in Washington. From 2000 to 2002, he was the com-
manding general of the 1st Marine Division, and then
from August to November 2002 he served as the
deputy commanding general at MarCent, which gave
him an opportunity to work closely with General
Hailston on CentCom issues while he waited to take
command of I MEF. This was the commandant's mi-

--- Page 7 ---
tiative. General Jones wanted to maintain continuity
on the West Coast and to make General Conway
even better prepared for his next job, to command I
MEF and to balance its equities against MarCent and
CFLCC requirements 41*
Murrayand Scales described Genera? Conway as
*When asked how the right Marines, a virtual dream team, had
come to serve in key billets in the CentCom area of operations in
2002 and 2003, the Commandant of the Marine Corps said it had
been as much a matter of good long-term personnel policies as of
any specific, short-term assignments. (Gen James L. Jones, Jr.,
intvw, 14Jun04 [MCHC, Quantico, VA])
"big," he was well over six feet tall, "bluff, well-read,
and well-educated," and concluded that he "repre-
sented all that was best about the new United States
Marine Corps, which General Al Gray as the com-
mandant had built up."42 He was a popular com-
mander, described as an officer and a gentleman
who was good to work for and who took care of his
troops.43 He was nothing if not involved in what his
subordinates were doing. For example, he had a pol-
icy of wanting to be briefed in person on unusual,
high-risk evolutions, as a young British reconnais-
sance officer was to discover during the war when
Prelude to War13
DVIC DM-SD-05-06318
LtGen James T Conway, commanding general of I Marine Expeditionary Force, addresses the officers of Regi-
mental Combat Team 7 at Camp Coyote, Kuwait. Gen Conway had charge of a battalion landing team dur-
ing Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm before assigned command of the 1st Marine Division and then
IMarine Expeditionary Force.


--- Page 8 ---
14Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
he was whisked from his position in the desert in
order to brief the I MEF commander, in person, on an
upcoming operation. It was typical of General Con-
way to focus on the extraction plan; he wanted to be
sure there was a plan to take care of the soldiers and
Marines in the worst case.44 Even months after the
war, he remained acutely conscious of the casualties
that had occurred during the campaign—able to re-
cite numbers and remember individual cases.45 He
has described his own command style as "democra-
tic," which meant he preferred to command by first
listening to his subordinates and then outlining his
intent. He knew when to give his subordinates free
rein and when to intervene. A review of the journals
kept by the field historian at I MEF headquarters dur-
ing the Iraq War reveals that, like General Hailston,
General Conway spent much of the time asking ques-
tions and gathering information. They also show that
he was typically optimistic, slow to anger, and virtu-
ally unflappable, equal to any challenge, whether
contemplating the possibility of a chemical attack or
dealing with a difficult counterpart or subordinate,
traits that he would need in Operation Iraqi Free-
dom.46

--- Page 9 ---
Chapter 2
Inside Our Own Loop:Jomt Planning for War in Iraq
Operation Enduring Freedom set the stage for Op-
eration Iraqi Freedom. The second operation was not
a clear-cut sequel to the first; for military planners,
there was no straight line from success in Afghanistan
in the winter of 2001-2002 to a war in Iraq in 2003 to
remove the dictator Saddam Hussein from power. But
Enduring Freedom was in many ways the starting
point for Iraqi Freedom.
Coalition Forces Land Component Command
(CFLCC) and Coalition Forces Maritime Component
Command (CFMCC) were still very much in existence
when the focus shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq early
in 2002. The Marines in Task Force 58 who fought in
Afghanistan between November 2001 and January
2002 had operated under both of these commands
and had developed good relationships with them. If
anything, General Franks was more convinced of the
need for an organization like CFLCC in a war with
Iraq. In Afghanistan there were few U.S. troops on
the ground, but a war with Iraq could be a larger,
more complex undertaking by far and most likely
would be won or lost on the ground. Alongside
CFLCC and CFMCC, Coalition Forces Air Component
Command and Coalition Forces Special Operations
Command remained very active commands that the
Marines would engage.
Both for the individuals who went to Afghanistan
and for the organizations that sent them, the experi-
ences of Task Force 58 in Enduring Freedom set
some of the specific conditions for war in Iraq. Inte-
grated into a combined, joint operation that fused air-
power,specialoperations,andinformation
operations, the Marines had operated hundreds of
miles from the beachhead, relying heavily on Marine
airlift, especially by Sikorsky CH-53E Sea Stallion heli-
copters followed by Lockheed KC-130 Hercules cargo
carriers. They had succeeded without a large staff, or
a plan that was hundreds of pages long, relying in-
stead on common sense, good liaison officers, and
"hand con" (not a formal relationship like tactical
control or operational control but one sealed with a
handshake).
The focus began to shift to Iraq even before Task
Force 58 left Afghanistan. In the wake of 11 Septem-
ber, the administration had looked to see if Iraq was
behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon before deciding to fight in Afghanistan. But
it seems that Iraq was never far from the administra-
tion's mind and that while overthrowing the Taliban
and uprooting Al Qaeda were short-term objectives,
Iraq, more specifically, removing the regime of Sad-
dam Hussein, had always been a long-term objective.
Military planners followed the administration's lead
on both Iraq and Afghanistan.47 In the fall of 2001,
staff officers from Headquarters Marine Corps to Cen-
tral Command (CentCom) to CFLCC were considering
the possibility that U.S. forces could be called upon
to invade Iraq. There were some preliminary plan-
ning directives, but even without them many Marines
and Army officers simply assumed that Iraq would
come after Afghanistan. CFLCC's Major General
Henry W. Stratman, USA, spoke for many when he
said that after 11 September the assumption was not
whether, but when, the United States would go to
war with Iraq.48
In January 2002, General Hailston, in his capacity
as the Commanding General, Marine Forces Pacific,
directed I MEF to focus its efforts on preparing for
"contingencies" in the CentCom theater."CG, Mar-
ForPac. ..decidedto focus I MEF efforts on prepa-
ration for contingencies in the CentCom theater. I
MEF's role in PacCom activities was minimized or as-
sumed by III MEF and MarForPac" to the virtual ex-
clusion of other activities.49
This was when I MEF's majors and lieutenant
colonels, along with a few colonels, who make any
large staff run earned their pay. They entered into
what was for many of them the most intense period
of their careers in the Marine Corps, one that would
not let up for some 18 months. Even before they de-
ployed from the United States, they came close to
spending every waking minute working on the plan,
often in windowless secure spaces. When they were
not working in a vault, they might be traveling from
one drab base to another for a conference or a war
game. They no longer had any time for themselves,
let alone their families or their "honey do" lists.
For the I MEF intelligence section, the focus on
CentCom meant embarking on "a wide variety of ac-
tivities, including presentation of many staff orienta-
tion and mission analysis briefings,... supporting
estimates and plans,...development[of require-

--- Page 10 ---
16Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
ments]... hostingvisits from national and theater in-
telligence organizations (CIA, DIA, MCIA, CentCom,
ArCent, and V Corps) and [making] liaison trips." For
its part, I MEF's current operations section became
involved in various exercises in the CentCom area of
operations. In April, for example, it participated in
Base 802669A1 (R00667) 12-99
theexercise "Lucky Sentinel," a combined/joint com-
puter-assisted command post exercise designed to
train and sustain the battle staff of Joint Task Force
Kuwait. It was conducted "in conjunction with Ar-
Cent; CentAF; and the Kuwaiti military," good prac-
tice for the events that were about to unfold.


--- Page 11 ---
Inside Our Own Loop17
Similarly, I MEF's future operations section used ex-
ercises like "Desert Scimitar" and "Lucky Sentinel" to
prepare for war in the Middle East, while the MEF
plans section was involved in longer-range, high-
level operational planning. In the subdued words of
the I MEF command chronology, "G-5 directed most
of its efforts...[to]...details[of] I MEF's slice of
the USCincCent's plan in concert with the nation's
strategic objectives."50
This was a dramatic understatement. For a few
months, the plans section took the lead in the intense
and exhausting task of laying the groundwork for
Marines to participate in a war for Iraq. In January
2002, General Hagee sent one of his lead planners
for Korea, Lieutenant Colonel George W. Smith, Jr., to
Tampa with Colonel Jonathan G. Miclot, the plans of-
ficer at 3d Marine Aircraft Wing. Their mission was to
represent MarCent, not just I MEF, on CentCom's
long-range planning element.5' This was a happy
consequence of Marine staffing practices. In his Mar-
Cent capacity as a component commander, General
Hailston made the decision to let I MEF, the warfight-
ing command subordinate to him, play the leading
role in operational planning.
The long-range planning element was small and
run mostly by Army ground officers, who had been
working in the same directorate as Major General
Commissioned in 1968 through the Enlisted Com-
missioning Program, LtGen Earl B. Hailston went
to flight school and served in a variety of aviation
and ground assignments before assuming the multi-
hatted position of Commander, U.S. Marine Forces
Pacific/Commander, U.S. Marine Forces Central
Command/Commanding General, Fleet Marine
Force, Pacific/Commander. US. Marine Corps
Bases, Pacific, on 10 August 2001.
Photo courtesy of Field History Branch
Keith J. Stalder, an even-tempered Marine aviator
who was the deputy J-3 at CentCom and would be-
come the deputy commanding general of I MEF later
in the year. Since late 2001, the focus of the planning
element's much compartmented work had been Iraq,
and the timeline was short—this was not theoretical
planning for some unlikely contingency in the dis-
tant future. The word was that CentCom might need
to be ready to fight as early as the spring of 2002;
this could be a "come as you are" war. In that regard
it would not be unlike the campaign in Afghanistan,
which had been a relatively quick success.
The vision that guided the planning was to win by
creating "shock and awe" through multiple lines of
operation putting simultaneous pressure on the
enemy—from the air, from conventional ground op-
erations, and from various kinds of special opera-
tions,toinclude"non-kinetic"operations and
operations by proxies like the Kurds. There were
three main groups in Iraq—the Shia majority, the rul-
ing Sunni minority, and the Kurds. The Kurds lived a
more or less autonomous existence in the northeast
corner of the country and had large, well-armed mili-
tias. Neither the Kurds nor the Shia had much love
for Saddam Hussein, who had suppressed them in
unimaginably brutal ways. For Marines, "shock and
awe" was something like the "combined arms effect,"
on a grand scale, of forcing the enemy into a series
of dilemmas he could not resolve; if he turned to face
one threat, he would make himself vulnerable to an-
other threat. It was something like facing mortars and
machine guns at the same time; was the infantry bet-
ter off staying in fixed positions during a mortar at-
tack, or getting out of its holes into a field of machine
gun fire?
While often associated with the air offensive in
what was not yet officially known as Operation Iraqi
Freedom, "shock and awe" was more than a theory
of air warfare. The concept has both a recent and a
more distant past. In the recent past it can be traced
to a book published by the National Defense Uni-
versity in Washington, D.C., in December 1996 by
Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade titled Shock
and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance, with contri-
butions by retired Generals Charles A. Homer, USAF,
and Frederick M. Franks, Jr., USA, both of Desert
Shield/Desert Storm fame, and retired Admiral Leon
A. Edney, who had been commander-in-chief at At-
lantic Command. The authors' purpose was to offer
an alternativeto the strategy of overwhelming
force—sometimes called the Powell Doctrine, on dis-
play in Desert Storm, by pointing to the potential of
the many new technologies to achieve "rapid domi-


--- Page 12 ---
18Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
nance" that would paralyze the enemy's will to re-
sist, ideally but not necessarily before any ground
forces were committed. It is easy to see why this doc-
trine is especially attractive to the Air Force, as it sug-
gests that airpower alone could be decisive.
The authors of Shock and Awe readily conceded
that their theory was not entirely new, with an-
tecedents in the World War II concept of "blitzkrieg"
and various operations since. Iraq war historians
Williamson Murray and Major General Robert Scales
discuss how General Anthony Zinni and his Army
counterparts used ideas like "rapid dominance" and
"overmatching power" when they considered joint
contingency plans against Saddam Hussein.52 Zinni
himself has commented that after Desert Storm, a
more or less traditional war, he was convinced that
the Marine Corps needed to learn to think along mul-
tiple lines of operation. Marines would also have to
work better in the joint arena. These were, he said,
the lessons he tried to inculcate in I MEF after he be-
came its commanding general in 1994. He added the
sage comment that, like many, he imagined at the
time that he was on the cutting edge, but realized
later that the winds of change were blowing in other
places in the Marine Corps around the same time.
Transformation is not a straightforward, top-down
process.53
Looking back to 1989, Murray and Scales found
an interesting precedent, a small war before Desert
Storm that was almost like a laboratory experiment of
the ideas that dominated planning in 2001 and 2002.
This was Operation Just Cause in Panama: "Maneu-
ver in Panama was nonlinear and focused on con-
trol of the whole operational area rather than on the
sequential capture of key terrain and high ground
characteristic of more traditional forms of maneu-
ver."54 Just Cause was complemented by new forms
of technology such as laser-guided bombs that en-
abled pinpoint targeting,that were to improve
markedly over the next 10 years, in turn enabling fur-
ther strides in doctrine. Murray and Scales concluded
that Just Cause had little effect on Desert Storm,
which did not incorporate much of this kind of
"shock and awe," and added that the U.S. military's
lack of preparation for the postwar period in Panama
had contributed to widespread looting and lawless-
ness after the fighting had stopped.55
Throughout 2002 and into 2003, the basic concept
for a war of "shock and awe" against Saddam Hus-
sein did not change. General Franks made sure of
that. Nor did other threshold concepts change once
they had been established. These had to do with the
would organize for the fight, who they would report
to, and with basing the 3d Marine Aircraft Wing in
theater. Smith and Miclot found that their counter-
parts in the long-range planning element were work-
ingfromascenariothathadtwoMarine
expeditionary brigades performing various missions,
mostly to do with security, in southeast Iraq while
the Army's V Corps carried the fight to the enemy in
the north. Over the next 40 days, the two Marine
planners worked patiently to lay down the Marine
expeditionary force "marker"; the argument that the
Marines should fight as one expeditionary force in
Iraq, the whole force being greater than the sum of
its parts, let alone two independent Marine expedi-
tionary brigades.56
This took some doing. Although it was something
they had always known and heard, Smith and Miclot
learned again, firsthand, just how peculiar the con-
cept of the Marine air-ground task force is to non-
Marines; no other Service has anything quite like it.
Many Marine and Army units of apparently compa-
rable size are not in fact comparable; the Marine unit
typically has more organic power, because it comes
with its own air support. This is one of the factors
that led to disconnects when joint planners were
placing Army and Marine units on the board. As Lieu-
tenant Colonel Smith put it, it was difficult to get into
the Army's "comfort zone," to make his Army coun-
terparts comfortable with the "MEF single battle" con-
cept, but he felt that after 40 days of hard work, he
and Miclot had succeeded.57
The other threshold issue they took on was "bed-
down" for the Marine aircraft wing, essentially a mat-
ter of forward basing. This may not sound like a
particularly dramatic issue, but with the U.S. Air Force
occupying ever more space on the air bases in
Kuwait, it was important for the Marine Corps to
stake claims to space for its aircraft near the front.
Otherwise the wing would have had to look for
bases farther afield, which would degrade its ability
to get into the fight and especially to provide re-
sponsive close air support. Miclot worked hard and
succeeded; Smith considers him one of the unsung
heroes of the war for identifying, and resolving, the
issue early on.58
On 12 February 2002, in Washington, Smith and
Miclot back-briefed the trio of officers who held the
key positions for shaping basic Marine Corps policy
and "major muscle movements" in 2002 and 2003—
Lieutenant Generals Hailston (in his MarCent capac-
ity), Hagee (in hisI MEF capacity), and Emil R.
Bedard (the deputy commandant of the Marine Corps
basic organization for combat, how the Marinesfor Plans, Policies, and Operations (PP&O), basically

--- Page 13 ---
Inside Our Own Loop19
Photo courtesy of Col Charles J. Quilter II
An Iowa native, Col Jonathan G. Miclot was commis-
sioned from the U.S. Naval Academy and then deszg-
nated a navalflight officer in 1981. He commanded
VMFA(AW)-225 before being assigned as plans offi-
cer, 3d Marine Aircraft Wing.
the commandant's current operations division). Smith
and Miclot were gratified to find that the generals
wholeheartedly supported their work on both the
unity of the Marine air-ground task force and the
bed-down issues, something that did not change for
the life of the operation. Within a few months, Gen-
eral Hagee would become commandant and General
Conway would take his place at I MEF; but at the top
of the Marine Corps, the I MEF-MarCent-PP&O nexus
remained the central forum for consultations and de-
cisions about Iraq and certainly played a prominent
role in the sourcing conference that took place later
in February to come up with a preliminary troop list
for Iraq. (The levels of involvement shifted somewhat
over time. Initially, Bedard played the most promi-
nent role. As the lay-down for Iraq started to gel,
MarCent and I MEF played more prominent roles,
while Bedard tended to monitor developments. Al-
though under CentCom's operational control, Mar-
Cent also reported to Headquarters Marine Corps,
generally to Bedard, on strictly Marine Corps busi-
ness such as deciding which Marine units to deploy
to CentCom or how to outfit them.)59 Thanks to the
state of technology for secure communications, the
commanders and the planners were able to stay in
very close touch throughout the process, and the sen-
ior officers who were read in on Iraq could develop
and maintain arguably the best situational awareness
in the history of warfare. They could find out almost
anything they wanted to know.60
It was Marine Corps doctrine that the Marine ex-
peditionary force should not only fight as a Marine
air-ground task force, but that it should also plan as
an air-ground task force. Planners for the constituent
parts of the task force should integrate their work.
They should not work as stovepipes, waiting to in-
terface at senior levels after plans were well ad-
vanced. Instead they needed to function as a
network, at all levels, from the start.'
Officers of I MEF used the same approach in their
work with other Services. In the interests of coordi-
nated planning, Colonel Joseph D. Dowdy, and Lieu-
tenant Colonel Smith, who was the I MEF plans
officer at the time, reached out to their counterparts
during the many planning conferences that took
place over the next few months. These included ses-
sions at Transportation Command at Scott Air Force
Base in Illinois; V Corps headquarters at Heidelberg,
Germany; and CFLCC headquarters at Camp Doha,
Kuwait, not to mention the commanders' conferences
chaired by CentCom on a regular basis. The Marines
were generally able to establish and maintain good
relationships with their counterparts, especially at the
working level. Sometimes it even reached the point
where planners identified more with one another
than with their parent commands, sure sign that re-
lationships had gelled.61
It was always assumed that I MEF would fight
under CFLCC. When CFLCC had taken control of land
operations in Afghanistan in November 2001, Cent-
Com had charged it with the traditional Joint Task
Force Kuwait missions of defending Kuwait and gen-
erally being prepared for war with Iraq. That had not
changed in 2002, and from the start CFLCC had
played the central role in planning for the ground
war against Iraq and for I MEF's role in it.62 The
arrangement was that, exercising operational control,
MarCent would flow I MEF to theater and provide for
its sustainment, relying mostly on the Marine Logis-
tics Command drawn largely from the 2d Force Serv-
*While in Tampa, LtCol Smith was able to hold a secure telephone
conversation with Gen Hagee virtually every day, briefing him on
developments and receiving his guidance.
"This was one of the fundamentals of the Marine Corps planning
process: "continuous planning requires continuous coordination
laterally and between echelons as plans are adjusted and refined
over time." (U.S. Marine Corps, Planning [Washington, D.C.: De-
partment of Navy, 19971, p. 83)


--- Page 14 ---
20Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
ice Support Group for that purpose. But then Mar-
Cent would assign I MEF to CFLCC's tactical control
for combat operations alongside the Army's V Corps.
The result, General McKiernan commented later,
would be the first time since the Korean War that
there would be a combined 'operational-level, land
component command/warfighting headquarters."63
Like planning, educating other Services about the
Marine air-ground task force and safeguarding its eq-
uities was a continuous process. It went on long after
the initial lessons in Tampa in January and February
2002. Marines at many levels engaged their counter-
parts at CFLCC and other commands, finding ways to
make the lessons stick without being resented by
their "students." The process started at the top. From
the highest levels on down, Marine commanders and
planners stayed on message. General Hailston con-
tinued to defend I MEF's identity as an air-ground
task force. While stillI MEF commander, General
Hagee did the same when meeting with General
Mikolashek, who remained in command at CFLCC
through the summer of 2002. Then, when General
Conway was preparing to replace General Hagee as
I MEF commander and General McKiernan became
the new general on this particular block, Conway
hosted McKiernan and his subordinates at Camp
Pendleton. First the Marines presented the I MEF ca-
pabilities brief. Among other "lessons" about the air-
ground task force, General Conway wanted to make
sure his new boss understood that "our air" was also
"his air," a concept General McKiernan came to em-
brace.64 He also wanted to give his subordinates—
now-Major GeneralMattis, who had become
commanding general of the 1st Marine Division, and
Major General James F. Amos, the 3d Marine Aircraft
Wing commander, a chance to talk through issues
with CFLCC planners. The specific issues were per-
haps not as important as opening channels of com-
munication among general officers at CFLCC and I
MEF; the participants remember feeling that the meet-
ing cleared the air. General McKiernan's view, that
CFLCC was there to "shape" the fight by its subordi-
nates, not to plan it, must have gone over well with
the Marines.65
The generals set the tone for their respective com-
mands, and much the same process happened at
lower levels as subordinates worked their way
through the many practical issues involved in joint
operations. General McKiernan characterized the pre-
vailing attitude throughout CentCom as: "Let us co-
ordinate, and let us cross talk, and then come
together at a series of...conferences....Iwould
say that that was always done very well."66 In addition
to the exchanges between counterparts, most com-
mands also made a point of exchanging competent
liaison officers, just as General Mattis had done in
Afghanistan. One of the important lessons learned in
Afghanistan and Iraq seemed to be that commands
understood the importance of finding strong officers
to serve as liaison officers; liaison officer was no
longer a suitable billet for an underachiever whom a
commander wanted out of sight and mind.67
Technology helped the process along. Counter-
parts and liaison officers may have held personal
meetings whenever they could, but they also could
and did look each other in the eye almost every day
over secure video-teleconferencing links—this hap-
pened before, during, and after combat. Virtually all
of the generals in theater were regular and,it
seemed, enthusiastic users of this technology. At the
same time, there was a robust exchange of e-mails
and discussions in chat rooms on the SIPRnet (the
secure military internet system), where officers could
also consult the drafts of one another's plans and
work through revisions. In short, there were unpar-
alleled opportunities for the secure coordination of
operations, especially in peacetime; operational se-
curity did not have to be the obstacle to efficient
planning it had been in virtually every other major
war before Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was no
longer as true that senior headquarters imposed op-
eration plans and orders on subordinate commands.
Looking at the process of planning for Iraq, a Fort
Leavenworth study concluded that since networks in
"the information-age ...enable,...distributed,par-
allel planning, V Corps, I MEF, and the subordinate
divisions were near-equal architects for the final
plan." This conclusion assumes that the subordinate
commands had the requisite clearances to access
highly classified files.
In retrospect, integrating with CFLCC appears to
have been relatively easy compared to working with
CFACC. Groups of Army officers, especially at CFLCC
and in parts of V Corps, came to accept and even
embrace the concept of the Marine air-ground task
force as an organization with integrated ground, air,
and support assets. Although there were nuances in
the picture that make it difficult to generalize, it is
safe to say that the same was never true to the same
degree of CFACC, the Coalition air forces com-
manded by Lieutenant General Moseley, who was
not only a functional and a component commander,
but also one whose forces had been conducting op-
erations in theater for quite some time, especially Op-
eration Southern Watch. They were flying combat
missions under his command while his counterparts

--- Page 15 ---
Inside Our Own Loop21
Photo courtesy of Field History Branch
Gen Michael W. Hagee, Commandant of the Marine
Corps, receives a brief on current operations from
LtGen Earl B. Hailston, Commanding General, Ma-
rine Forces, Central Command.
were still thinking about what they would bring to
the fight if and when it occurred.
Before leaving CentCom, General Zinni had laid
some of the groundwork for cooperation between
CFACC and I MEF by instituting a standard operating
procedure for joint fires, which addressed "battlefield
coordination, direction, and procedures for...air
and ground-based fires systems" and was ratified by
all of the Service chiefs.69 He had his Army and Ma-
rine Corps subordinates work out an arrangement for
the employment of Marine air under Joint Task Force
Kuwait, and established the general principle that
Marine air would support Marine ground forces, of-
fering any "excess" sorties to CFACC.7° In 2002, while
he was still at I MEF, General Hagee and General
Moseley renewed the same general agreement about
the employment of Marine air with General Moseley:
Lieutenant General Moseley ...,Lieutenant
General Hagee...,andLieutenant General
Hailston... metin June ...andagreed to
make CFACC the air space control authority,
with I MEF MACCS [Marine Air Command and
Control System] controlling air in support of I
MEF. I MEF would publish its own direct sup-
port air tasking order (DSATO) to task I MEF
aircraft, which was to be included in CFACC's
theater ATO [air tasking order]. When Lieutenant
General Conway took command of I MEF from
Lieutenant General Hagee, the arrangements
and relationships did not change; Lieutenant
General Moseley continued to endorse the prin-
ciple of I MEF MACCS controlling air assets sup-
porting the MAGTF [on the] ground.71
When interviewed in the spring of 2003 about co-
operation with CFACC, Generals Hailston and Amos
were upbeat about the subject. They reported gen-
eral agreement with General Moseley on the role of
Marine air in the looming conflict, one that was dif-
ferent from that in Desert Shield/Desert Storm when
a fair chunk of Marine air had been split off from I
MEF and worked for the equivalent of the CFACC.72
As General Amos put it, he found General Moseley to
be a commander who readily understood the utility
of the Marine aircraft wing as a part of the Marine
air-ground task force while asserting his own rights to
the air space over the battlefield.73
The problem, once again, was finding a way to
get into the joint comfort zone—to get things right at
the working level, to focus not on general agree-
ments but on specific details that would apply in
2003. The default setting at CFACC was to control all
of the air space in the area of operations. The Air
Force liked to control air space through the air task-
ing order, described as "the daily master plan
[which] listed all of the strikes, CAPs [combat air pa-
trols], tanker missions, and other supporting functions
for a 24-hour period."74 Air tasking orders were pre-
pared about 96 hours before their time of execution.
Accustomed to decentralized planning, and interested
primarily in supporting I MEF's scheme of maneuver,
the Marine aviators had not changed overmuch from
Desert Shield/Desert Storm, when they had been
"deeply suspicious" of what they saw as an inflexible
system that might not be able to respond to last-
minute requests for support, that is, the Air Force sys-
tem seemed to be better suited for strategic or
operational offensives than for the kind of tactical
uses that were the bread and butter of Marine air. In
the end, in this new war the agreement among the
generals was to "nest" Marine command and control
under CFACC. There would be a Marine air tasking
order within the CFACC tasking order; the primary
mission for Marine air would be to support the I MEF
scheme of maneuver; excess sorties would be made
available to CFACC, and there would be provisions
for the reverse to occur as well. Excess CFACC sorties
often "volunteered" to fly Marine missions; they
seemed to enjoy working within the Marine air con-
trol system.75
A related and very complex issue was the separa-
tion of what came to be known as "Air Day," the day
the air offensive would begin, and "Ground Day," the
day the ground offensive would begin. These terms
were commonly abbreviated as "A-Day" and "G-
Day." (In this war, there was an often-confusing mix
of civilian and military acronyms whose meanings


--- Page 16 ---
22Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
were not entirely clear to everyone.) To summarize
what was a lengthy and sometimes hard-fought set
of transactions, CFACC thought the war should start
with its house brand of "shock and awe," attacking
carefully selected targets with precision munitions,
some simultaneously, others in a particular sequence.
The main targets were the air defense capabilities that
had survived Operations Northern and Southern
Watch, as well as leadership and command-and-
control nodes. With their coverage of nearly two-
thirdsofIraq,Northern and Southern Watch
represented an early, ongoing, and effective sup-
pression of enemy air defense campaign.
At times it seemed that CFACC thought the air of-
fensive could win the war by itself; there was a prece-
dent of sorts in Serbia when NATO air attacks in 1999
had, by themselves, brought about the desired result:
"in every way that mattered, airpower won the fight-
ing in Kosovo, while ground units served to consoli-
date that victory."76 This fit with the view, held by
many in Washington, that Saddam's regime was held
together largely by the threat of force, and for that
reason his support was weak and shallow. This was
a variant on the "kick in the door and the house will
collapse" train of thought, assiduously promoted by
people like Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, that seemed to
guide a lot of the planning for this war.77
It followed, for those who held this belief, that
CFACC planning did not have to be as integrated as
planning by other CentCom components and that
CentCom should allow CFACC enough time to create
its war-winning effects. That would be something on
the order of 30 days, not too different from the 38
days in Desert Storm that had preceded the ground
war; in that war, the two campaigns had not been in-
tegrated but sequential. Now, in 2002, CFACC wanted
a boundary that put Baghdad under its control for
those 30 days, as well as the use of Marine fixed-wing
assets that, presumably, the Marine Corps would not
need until the ground war started. This was not only
an argument against synchronicity; it also under-
mined I MEF "single battle" doctrine. Simply put, the
Marines did not want to break up the air-ground task
force, even temporarily.
Unwilling to give up the benefits of synchronizing
the air and ground campaigns, many Army and Ma-
rine officers consistently argued for a much shorter
air offensive. Lieutenant Colonel Smith remembered
that as early as late February 2002, the prevailing
view at CentCom was that the offensive should last
no more than 48 hours.78 Within I MEF, General Amos
continuously repeated that his first and most impor-
tant priority was supporting the Marines on the
ground. General Mattis was one of the leading pro-
ponents of synchronicity, making his arguments
forcefully throughout the planning phase. He wanted
almost no preliminary air attacks before the ground
attack and for the air and ground offensives to start
very close to the same time. One of the planners at
division, Lieutenant Colonel Paul J. Kennedy, came to
the conclusion that it was Mattis who won I MEF over
to his way of thinking by "socializing" (that is, effec-
tively promoting) this concept, which stood the
CFACC concept on its head. If the air and ground
campaigns were synchronous, or nearly synchro-
nous, the Marine aircraft wing would have few air-
frames to spare for CFACC, because it would be busy
supporting I MEF.79"
No matter who originated the idea, I MEF consis-
tently argued for a much briefer air offensive in its
dealings with CFLCC, which adopted much the same
position, and made its arguments to other elements
in the CentCom chain. These arguments became
more compelling in late 2002 as CentCom focused
more and more on the southern oil fields after con-
cern for their preservation turned into a strategic im-
perative.In the end, one of the most telling
arguments against a lengthy preliminary air offensive
was that it would put Saddam Hussein on notice that
the ground offensive was coining and would give
him time to sabotage his own oil fields, as he had in
the Kuwaiti oil fields during the Desert Storm air of-
fensive. It was largely for that reason that in Decem-
ber 2002 and January 2003, I MEF and CFLCC joined
forces to argue for no preliminary shaping whatso-
ever, which did not resonate with CFACC. The final
prewar consensus was that the air offensive should
be relatively short and that the two phases should he
as closely integrated as possible.8°
The commander of the British air component in
Iraq, Air Vice Marshall Glenn L. Torpy offered a good
summary of the factors at play in the final stages of
the debate in early 2003, which suggests how difficult
it was to close the gap between CFACC and the other
components:
As we developed our thinking...therewas
a shortening of that phase [the air phase] and
it came down in the early part of...[20031
from approximately 16 days... toa matter of
five days....[Tihatwas driven even closer to-
gether, as we got closer to the likelihood of
*Ltcol Kennedy was right in so far as Gen Mattis was a very ef-
fective advocate for his ideas. However, it appears that others at I
MEF and centcom had reached the sanie conclusion on their own.
(Ltcol Paul J. Kennedy intvw, 6Nov03 lMcHc, Quantico, VAI)

--- Page 17 ---
the operation ['s] being executed, for three fac-
tors...Firstof all, there was a growing real-
ization that we needed to secure the southern
oil fields as swiftly as possible to prevent any
subsequent damage....Therewas nervous-
ness by the American land component and by
General Franks over the vulnerability of having
a very large land contingent in a fairly small
area in Kuwait [waiting for the air campaign to
end]....GeneralFranks felt that if he had the
ability to synchronize the components together
as comprehensively as possible then he would
have the [best] chance of... gettingthe cam-
paign over and done with as quickly as possi-
ble.81
Inside Our Own Loop23
In the days just before the war, the commanders
appear to have agreed to shorten the air campaign
even further. According to the Fort Leavenworth
study, the final plan was for the gap between A-Day
and G-Day to be 15 hours. This happened after
"Colonel Kevin Benson, the CFLCC C-5[withwhom
Marine planners had an excellent relationship] devel-
oped and forwarded to the CentCom staff a series of
position papers advocating adjust [ments in]...the
G-A Day sequence.82*
The dispute over the separation of A-Day and G-
Day went hand in hand with a painful set of disputes
over the time-phased force and deployment data
(commonly known as TPFDD, closely related to the
TPFDL, with the "L" standing for "List"), the comput-
erized system for getting U.S. forces to a fight in good
order. It could phase forces to match a plan, and
make sure the support they needed would arrive at
the right time. Especially in a small, single-Service
contingency, this was the kind of rational process
everyone was comfortable with. In large deployments
the process was trickier; there was a finite amount of
lift, especially airlift that the Services had to share.
Most of these assets belong to Transportation Com-
mand. When the debate over the sequence of the
campaign has not been settled, and when no one
knows when the war will start, the result can be a
three- or four-sided scramble for scarce resources.
This is generally what happened between January
and July 2002. No one had enough forces in theater
at that point; there was not even a firm date by which
On 1 March, Gen James conway commented that the air cam-
paign was likely to be brief in order to achieve surprise, which
implied a very short separation between A-Day and G-Day. This
was consistent with the scenario for the 10 March 2003 I MEF re-
hearsal of concept drill, when General conway reminded his staff
not to "expect a return of A and G separated by multiple days."
Photo Courtesy of Col George W. Smith, Jr.
A graduate of the University of North Carolina, LtCol
George W. Smith, Jr., was commissioned in 1985. Fol-
lowing several staff and school assignments, he re-
ported to headquarters IMarine Expeditionaiy Force
in July 2000 where he served consecutively as a fu-
ture operations planner and a regional plans officer.
everyone had to be ready to cross the line of depar-
ture. But there was strong and continuing pressure
to be ready to flow forces to theater, which lent some
urgency to the discussions about the deployment
data. Believing they would start the fight, and having
their own plan for that phase (which they had de-
veloped more or less on their own), CFACC planners
argued that they should be first in line. But if CFACC
won the deployment data argument, then it mattered
less who won the argument about the separation of
A-Day and G-Day, because the ground forces could
not be in theater and ready to fight until CFACC had
finished moving its forces. In other words, the dan-
ger was that the deployment data could drive the war
plan, which was the reverse of what was supposed
to happen, the deployment data was designed to be
a tool for planners. We had, Lieutenant Colonel Smith
concluded wryly, gotten inside our own "observa-
lion/orientation/decision/action" (OODA) loop.83
There were additional complications to do with
*The OODA loop is a concept pioneered by U.S. Air Force Col
John Boyd. Boyd's argument was that if you want to win an aer-
ial dogfight, you will go through this loop faster than your enemy,
that is you will get inside his OODA loop.