Cordesman's Iraq scorecard

The Iraq War Three Years On: A Scorecard

Anthony H. Cordesman

(Excerpt from longer piece on The Washington Note.)

...As a result, I believe it is time to look quite frankly at the war in terms of how it has achieved it is original its objectives after three years, and consider what this means the need to avoid rushing into wars we do not really understand or prepare for in the future:

Objective One: Get Rid of Iraqi WMD Threat: Happened before the war. The main stated objective of the war was pointless.

Objective Two: Liberate Iraq: Security for the average Iraq is now worse, and the new political freedom is essentially freedom to vote for sectarian and ethnic divisions. Some progress to be sure, but much more limited than the Administration claims. It will be 2007-2008 at the earliest before stability can be established -- if it can. We essentially used a bull to liberate a china shop, without any meaningful plan to deal with the consequences. We have tried to fix the resulting problems, but we still don't know whether we can salvage our early mistakes.

Objective Three: End the Terrorist Threat in Iraq: There was no meaningful threat in the first place. Neo-Salafi terrorism now dominates the insurgency and is a far worse threat. Al Qaida now has serious involvement in Iraq. The impact on the region has alienated many Arabs and Muslims and has aided extremists. It has given Iran leverage that has added a new risk of Shi'ite extremism.