Buried RAND Report to Resurface Today

Earlier this year, it was revealed that the Army quashed public release of a 2005 report by the RAND corporation, their federally-financed research arm, that came to some “sharp conclusions” about who was responsible for the myriad of shortcomings in Iraq.

According to the New York Times, that report will finally be released today:

In 2005, the RAND Corporation submitted a report to the Army, called “Rebuilding Iraq,” that identified problems with virtually every government agency that played a role in planning the postwar phase. After a long delay, the report is scheduled to be made public on Monday.

The Times also describes the most recent study by the Army, “On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign,” the second volume of an ongoing history of the Iraq conflict.

Prepared from over 200 interviews conducted by military historians, the report attempts to avoid controversial elements of the conflict, often unsuccessfully:

[T]he study documents a number of problems that hampered the Army’s ability to stabilize the country during Phase IV, as the postwar stage was called.

“The Army, as the service primarily responsible for ground operations, should have insisted on better Phase IV planning and preparations through its voice on the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” the study noted. “The military means employed were sufficient to destroy the Saddam regime; they were not sufficient to replace it with the type of nation-state the United States wished to see in its place.”

The study also discusses Gen. Tommy Frank’s reorganizing of senior command in 2003, a move that served to further handicap the already paltry strategy for creating stability in Iraq:

A fundamental assumption that hobbled the military’s planning was that Iraq’s ministries and institutions would continue to function after Mr. Hussein’s government was toppled.

“We had the wrong assumptions and therefore we had the wrong plan to put into play,” said Gen. William S. Wallace, who led the V Corps during the invasion and currently leads the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command.

Faced with a brewing insurgency and occupation duties that they had not anticipated, Army units were forced to adapt. But organizational decisions made in May and June 2003 complicated that task

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