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THE LOGISTICS OF EXITING IRAQ
In Iraq, even leaving is no simple matter
'It's going to be mind-boggling -- like picking up ... Los Angeles and putting all the pieces somewhere else,' one Army official says
By David Wood
Tribune Newspapers Baltimore Sun
July 18, 2007
BAGHDAD
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When it comes, the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and the dismantling of the vast American presence here promises to be as risky and unpredictable as the past four years of war.
Political and public demand for a quick withdrawal is rising. But nothing about withdrawal will be quick.
The 20 ground combat brigades deployed in Iraq would fill 10,000 flatbed trucks and take a year to move, logistics experts said. A full withdrawal, shipping home some 200,000 Americans and thousands of tons of equipment, dismantling dozens of American bases and disposing of tons of accumulated toxic waste, would take 20 months or longer, they estimate.
Yet the Bush administration, long intent on avoiding what it once called a "cut and run" retreat from Iraq, has done little to lay the groundwork for withdrawal, officials here said.
"We don't have the plan in detail yet. We're seriously engaged in trying to figure this out," said Marine Brig. Gen. Gray Payne, director of the U.S. Central Command's logistics operations center.
Even with the benefit of a detailed plan, Payne said, "this is going to be an enormous challenge."
Extricating combat forces during war is a tricky military maneuver under the best of circumstances, according to senior military officers and dozens of military planners and logistics experts in Iraq and at U.S. military facilities across the region.
A hastier departure could find military convoys stalled on roads cratered by roadside bombs, interrupted by blown bridges and clogged with fleeing refugees.
How the United States manages to disentangle itself from Iraq, whether in a graceful redeployment that strengthens stability or in a more chaotic retreat, would have profound repercussions for American power and prestige in the region.
Indeed, even though the word withdrawal has become this summer's most shopworn term in Washington, few have grasped the staggering difficulty, time and cost of actually carrying it out.
"It's going to be mind-boggling -- like picking up the city of Los Angeles and putting all the pieces somewhere else," said an official of the Army Sustainment Command, which would oversee much of the work.
The sprawling American presence has been built up slowly over the past four years, most of it trucked in over roads that initially were uncontested but now routinely come under attack as the sectarian war has intensified. Almost no stretch of the main military supply road, Route Tampa, is safe from IED attacks, intelligence officers said.
The end of America's last long war, in Vietnam, was planned in detail. Despite the popular image of a helicopter plucking the last Americans from a Saigon rooftop, the withdrawal of 365,000 military personnel took place in increments between 1969 and 1973. The planning took two years. Even so, Army history notes that "many U.S. bases" scheduled to be turned over to the South Vietnam government were plundered by the Vietnamese and the loot sold on the black market.
Today, with 71 percent of respondents in the most recent Gallup/USA Today poll endorsing the withdrawal of American troops within 10 months, there doesn't appear to be the patience for two years of planning and a three-year withdrawal. Congressional Democrats vowed to continue their fight for a withdrawal of forces by next spring.
"You start pulling the string," said one senior officer who asked not to be identified, "and things start to unravel."
Once Washington signals its intent to withdraw, Iraqis working in the security forces would begin looking elsewhere for protection, making them "unreliable combat partners," said Steven Simon, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former White House National Security Council official.
Some expect large-scale desertions. Iraqi government officials, translators and others closely identified with U.S. forces might join the exodus from the country, crippling government services. For U.S. troops during a withdrawal, "casualty avoidance" would become the main mission.
"It's going to be dangerous for everybody," Simon said.
These potential difficulties have provoked rising concern about the lack of planning for withdrawal, not only among military officers in Iraq but in Washington as well.
On Friday, two of the Senate's most respected Republican authorities on international and military affairs, Richard Lugar of Indiana and John Warner of Virginia, introduced a measure to compel the Bush administration to "immediately initiate planning" for the next steps in Iraq, "including a drawdown or redeployment of troops."
Others have urged the administration to persuade Iran to use its influence with Shiite insurgents in Iraq to achieve a relatively peaceful withdrawal -- just as the United States reached an understanding with China to persuade its Viet Cong allies not to interfere with the American reduction of forces.
Pentagon officials have assured lawmakers that a plan will be ready in time.
"When the time comes and the decision is made to begin to draw down forces, we will have put in place the capabilities logistically to do that in the right order with the right amount of equipment coming down in the right sequence," Jack Bell, deputy under secretary of defense for logistics and materiel readiness, told a Senate committee last week. Planning has been "under way for some time," he said.
Costs for the war, running at $12 billion a month, would increase as withdrawal begins, other officials said, with the military paying premium prices for a "surge" in airlift and contractor support, among other additional costs.
Until recently, KBR Inc. has held a controversial cost-plus contract, allowing it to bill the government for expenses plus profit, to provide logistics support to the military in Iraq and elsewhere. KBR, a former Halliburton subsidiary, has earned $22.1 billion under this contract since 2001. A Pentagon audit of $16.2 billion of this work found that $3.2 billion in KBR billing was either questionable or unsupported by documentation. Under a new arrangement announced last month, the Army has awarded three cost-plus contracts to separate companies to do the work, with a total value of $15 billion a year.
A shortage of aircraft means the Defense Department would have to charter transports to move troops out of the region. Under current agreements, the Pentagon pays companies such as FedEx and UPS $627.80 for each soldier it flies home -- for example, from Baghdad to Baltimore. For cargo, the Pentagon pays roughly $1.3 million for each cargo-loaded 747 aircraft flight.
Logisticians insist they can handle withdrawal.
"We know how to do this -- it's our job," said Maj. Stephen Sherbody, an Army logistician at Camp Anaconda in Iraq who studies Wal-Mart's trucking operations in his off-hours. The difficulty, he said, "is people are shooting at us."
Others doubt that all would go smoothly. A new report by the Government Accountability Office, the analysis agency of Congress, found severe problems in the U.S. Central Command logistics system, which would handle the withdrawal. The GAO found fragmented lines of authority, a shortage of skilled logisticians, and computer systems that can't connect with each other.
One result, the GAO found this spring, is that one third of all the steel shipping containers in Iraq and Afghanistan -- 54,390 containers -- are lost.
Copyright ? 2007, Chicago Tribune
