Stardate 20030528.1321

(On Screen): Fred Barnes has a long article about Tommy Franks and CENTCOM during the operations in Iraq, and reveals some things which I hadn't seen anywhere else. (And he doesn't really reveal his sources.)

Even so, what he says rings true, especially with regard to Turkey:

The new warfare wasn't the sole source of the success in Iraq, nor is it the only aspect of transformation. Old concepts carried out more efficiently played a part. One was deception. The Turkish gambit was Franks's boldest effort to deceive Saddam. There's no proof, but the best guess is it affected Saddam's expectations of when an invasion might occur.

Weeks before the war, American military officers learned from their Turkish counterparts that Turkey was unlikely to allow the U.S. 4th Infantry Division to invade Iraq from Turkey in the north. Such an attack was a critical part of the Franks plan. But absent a northern front, Franks wanted Saddam to think an invasion from Turkish soil was still likely and that the war couldn't begin until weeks after the Turkish issue was resolved. So Franks insisted ships with the 4th Infantry's tanks and equipment remain off the shore of Turkey for weeks, as if awaiting the Turkish okay to unload. In fact, disinformation that the Turks would ultimately permit American troops to operate from their soil was slipped to Saddam's inner circle.

That's a very interesting idea. I myself spent a lot of time lamenting about the Turkish standoff and the seemingly fruitless negotiations, but it's true that they did have the effect of helping to convince Saddam that he had a lot more time. Indeed, once we publicly gave up, many speculated that it would be necessary to wait until 4th Infantry Division had moved from the Med to Kuwait and unloaded before the war could begin, a process which actually was completed about the time the war was over.

Barnes describes several other ways in which CENTCOM worked to try to attain surprise. Even when the diplomatic events in the world signaled "imminent war" (i.e. us walking out of the UN, Bush giving international agencies 48 hours notice to evacuate) they still pulled out a trick: the ground forces began to move without the widely-anticipated week or so of high intensity air preparation.