Powell faults strategy after fall of Baghdad
WASHINGTON — Colin Powell says the United States took too long to strengthen its forces in Iraq after Baghdad fell early in the war.
Powell, secretary of state for then-President George W. Bush, said the decision to use a lighter force to defeat the Iraqi army was correct. But he said in a television interview broadcast Sunday that the administration should have realized the initial success in 2003 was only the start of a longer fight.
“Unfortunately, the war wasn’t over” after Baghdad fell and Saddam Hussein was ousted, Powell said. “The war was just beginning. And then it took us, in my judgment, too long to recognize that we needed to put more force in.
“I think we would have been in a much different place if we had surged in the fall of 2003, rather than many years later,” he said on CNN.
Asked whether the war was worth a $700 billion cost and more than 4,300 American lives, Powell responded, “Well, that’s a judgment history will have to make. You never know what these costs will be.”
But Powell listed favorable results that would go into such an assessment. “A dictator is gone. A despicable regime is gone. And the Iraqi people have been given a chance to have a representative form of government, living in peace with its neighbors.”
Discussing the war in Afghanistan, Powell said he agrees with President Obama’s national security adviser, James Jones, that military force alone won’t bring victory. “All the troops in the world are not going to make this better,” Powell said, unless the Afghan people see economic development and a responsible government that is not corrupt.
Powell, a former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law governing gays in the military should be reviewed. But he declined to make any recommendation.
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