Iraq War, insurgency

After the end of major combat against the Iraqi military in 2003, there was a period of confusion and discontent, followed by a full-fledged insurgency. Officials differed on when it clearly began, but there was little question that it was in progress by August 2003, and possibly by July.

Early warnings
In May, Gen al-Shawani, leader of the Scorpions and CIA-favored (as opposed to Chalabi), met with Bush, Cheney, Rice, Tenet and Card. He said Sir, I'm going to tell you something. You need to know the truth. Baghdad is almost surrounded by insurgents. If you can't secure the airort highway, you can't secure all of Iraq.

The CIA station confirmed Shawani's impression. Bremer said he saw an Iraqi intelligence service document, toward the end of July 2003, describing how to conduct insurgency. T

August bombings
he large attacks in August were on the Jordanian Embassy, then the UN Mission, and then in the holy Shi'ite ares of Najaf. Feith considers the UN bombing, on August 19th, as the start of the insurgency.

Abizaid used the term "classic insurgency" in a press conference in May, and was immediately corrected by Rumsfeld. As Abizaid told Sanchez afterwards, "Well, there's no appetite in Washington to use the word 'insurgency'. And, by the way, we're not 'occupiers', either. We're 'liberators'"

Not all commanders agreed they then faced an insurgency. MG Ray Odierno, who had taken command of the 4th Infantry Division, told reporters, on June 18, "this is not guerilla warfare. It is not close to guerilla warfare," and described the operations he launched as mopping up. Asked about it a year later, he said "I didn't believe it was an insurgency until about July. What we really thought was, Remnant."

Force issues
The headquarters for foreign military units in Iraq is now Multi-national Force-Iraq (MNF-I), which was created, under Sanchez, on 15 May 2004.

On an overall basis, it reports to the United States Central Command, which also commands the U.S. troops in MNF-I. Other units report to their home nations, although there are a number of non-US commanders from the MNF-I Deputy Commanding General, and Australian, British and Polish commanders at division level.

MNF-I was not explicitly created due to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, but many suggest Abu Ghraib might not have happened if MNF-I had been in place, giving more supervisory resources than were available to JTF-7 or MNC-I.

GEN John Abizaid, Franks' deputy, took over the command, on July 8, when Franks retired. On the 11th, he stopped the troop withdrawal ordered by Franks."The operational environment in Iraq is fluid...in light of the current situation, [forces previously intended to redeploy]] will remain in Iraq until replaced by equivalent U.S. or coalition capability. |undefined"

Military recognition of insurgency
While Bremer concentrated on forming democracy, establishing the IGC on July 13, the military was concerned with security. Abizaid sent a memo, on 28 July, to Rumsfeld, called "Understanding the War in Iraq". It proposed three solutions:
 * 1) Accelerate involvement of Iraqis in security
 * 2) Focus on intelligence
 * 3) Provide reconciliation methods for Iraqis

Bremer attended a deputies meeting in Washington on July 22, at which he was informed of the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein. By August 1st, he was meeting with Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the first to hold the rotating presidency of the IGC. Speaking privately, Bremer expressed concern about Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shiite cleric, was urging resistance. He did not consider the Council responsive to the urgent situations.