Operation Iraqi Freedom

The Forward Resuscitative Surgical System (FRSS) is a small, mobile trauma surgical unit designed to support modern US Marine Corps combat operations. The experience of two co-located FRSS teams during 1 year of service in Operation Iraqi Freedom is reviewed to evaluate the system's efficacy. Between March 1, 2004, and February 28, 2005, two FRSS teams and a shock trauma platoon were co-located in a unit designated the Surgical Shock Trauma Platoon (SSTP). Data concerning patient care before and during treatment at the SSTP was maintained prospectively. Prospective determination of outcomes was obtained by e-mail correspondence with surgeons caring for the patients at higher echelons. The Los Angeles County medical center (LAC) trauma registry was queried to obtain a comparable data-base with which to compare outcomes. During the year reviewed there were 895 trauma admissions to the SSTP. Excluding 25 patients pulseless on arrival and 291 minimally injured patients, 559 of 579 (97%) combat casualties survived; 417 casualties underwent 981 operative procedures in the two SSTP operating shelters. There were 79 operative patients with a mean injury severity score of 26 (range, 16-59) and mean revised trauma score of 6.963 (range, 4.21-7.841) who had sustained severe injuries. Ten (12.7%) of these casualties died while 43 of 337 (12.8%) deaths were seen with comparable cases treated at LAC. Small task-oriented surgical units are capable of providing effective trauma surgical care to combat casualties. Further experience is needed to better delineate the balance between early, forward-based surgical intervention and more prolonged initial casualty evacuation to reach more robust surgical facilities.

The Legacy of Iraq critically reflects on the abject failure of the 2003 intervention to turn Iraq into a liberal democracy, underpinned by free-market capitalism, its citizens free to live in peace and prosperity. It argues that mistakes made by the coalition and the Iraqi political elite set a sequence of events in motion that have had devastating consequences for Iraq, the Middle East and for the rest of the world.

Today, as the nation faces perhaps its greatest challenge in the wake of the devastating advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and another US-led coalition undertakes renewed military action in Iraq, understanding the complex and difficult legacies of the 2003 war could not be more urgent. Ignoring the legacies of the Iraq war and denying their connection to contemporary events could means that vital lessons are ignored and the same mistakes made again.

Operation Iraqi Freedom was the United States’ military intervention in Iraq as part of the Global War on Terror. Since it was launched thirteen years ago, Iraq has become wracked with ever-increasing violent sectarian conflict and terrorism. The emergence of the Islamic State—the most effective and powerful jihadi group in the world—has caused the conflict to spill over Iraq’s borders, destabilising the region and threatening those who oppose its radical version of Sharia law. This paper aims to understand how this operation has gone so horribly wrong—not merely being ineffective, but to the point of producing the exact opposite of what it meant to achieve. To achieve this it will analyse American political and military policymakers, the warplanning process, and the events in the immediate aftermath of boots on the ground and the subsequent toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The argument is ultimately that the Bush administration missed the true centre of gravity in formulating operational strategy, allocating it to the decapitation of the Baathist regime, rather than the will of the people as it should have been for a war of liberation. This error in the foundation of the Iraq strategy will be shown to have wide felt ramifications throughout civil-military operations, effectively creating the conditions for insurgency.

: This century will be characterized by a volatile international political environment, persistent conflict, and internal strife. Regional tensions will continue to create uncertainty, resulting in political dynamics ripe for civil war, political upheaval, sectarian violence, and insurgency. This is the environment in which we will conduct air operations for decades to come; as such, leaders will have to understand the complexity of the situation and how best to influence the battlespace adjacent to air bases. To prepare for future contingencies and enable air operations, the Air Force must grow new air base defense leaders and build capabilities that rapidly adapt to crises, especially in an ever-evolving, asymmetric operational environment. There are three components to improving base defense operations in such uncertain circumstances. First, we must develop leaders who understand and are competent in the craft of base defense in varying environments. Second, we must invest in inn...

The relationship between the United States and its northern neighbor Canada has generally been seen as a symbiotic one, both economically and ideologically. Recently, with the events in the Middle East, and President George W. Bush's fixations thereof, Canada's differences have come to light as the country democratically refused to participate in the military action. Marc Ouellette, in the following article, traces the contours of this political difference -- a very different democracy -- exposing the fixations of a country with a solution for its apparent political invisibility.

An examination of how members of military marriages were affected by and adapted to OIF/OEF deployment found three themes: communicating to stay connected, emotional and marital intimacy, and managing change. The findings demonstrate the nuanced and subtle nature of deployment-related challenges. While open and frequent communication was important in the adaptation process, communication was not synonymous with transparency. Unshared stories created a void that prevented couples from confiding in and supporting their partners. Although wives maintained their marriages by restraining sexual desires and over-extending their responsibilities post-deployment, these behaviors had a negative effect on marital quality. Clinical and research implications are discussed.

Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) was launched on March 20, 2003 to move the regime of Saddam Hussein and help
Iraqi people to rebuild a new Iraq. The outcomes of the operations demonstrate that plans and preparations were hastily made
and with a lack of contingency plans. The role of civilian agencies working with the new Baghdad regime in the post-war era
was not implemented successfully. The post war period’s desired end states were not achieved as planned. What were the
assumptions of CENTCOM before the OPLAN 1003? What did the counterinsurgency policy rely on? What was the reaction
of the Iraqi people against the OIF army? How does this policy affect the desired end state? The aim of this article is to
respond to the aforementioned questions. This paper seeks to demonstrate the weaknesses of the counterinsurgency policy
pursed in the OIF and the measures taken in wake of the failure. Finally, the lessons learned are described and suggestions are
given.
Keywords- Counterinsurgency; Iraq; Operation Iraqi Freedom; OPLAN 1003, Policy.

: The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been an integral part of the American consciousness for most of the new millennium. Military successesand failureshave dominated the headlines. Names such as Tora Bora, Abbottabad, Abu Ghraib, and Fallujah, unknown to the American public (and even regional specialists at the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom) a decade ago, have become catch phrases for a new generation of political and military analysts. Yet perhaps the most enduring legacy of US involvement in these wars has been the evolution of US military doctrine and the concomitant growth of the whole-of-government approach that puts stability operations and civil affairs on equal footing with combat operations.The whole-of-government approach is defined as one where a government actively uses formal and/or informal networks across the different agencies within that government to coordinate the design and implementation of the range of interventions that the governments agencies will be making i...

Increased exposure of women soldiers to combat in current conflicts heightens interest in the question of whether risk and resilience factors differ for female and male military personnel prior to deployment. The authors examined this question in a panel of 522 National Guard soldiers (462 men and 60 women) poised for deployment to Iraq. Soldiers completed a battery of self-report measures, including the PTSD Checklist, Beck Depression Inventory-II, and scales from the Deployment Risk and Resilience Inventory. Modest differences were observed between women and men on predeployment risk factors and some risk-related correlations with PTSD and depression measures; however, gender did not moderate the associations between hypothesized risk/resilience factors and baseline mental health. Implications for interventions and future research are discussed.

: The expanding complexity of sub-national and cross-national threats to national security strains the analytical capabilities of the Department of Defense (DoD) and the intelligence community, highlighting the need for methods and tools that can make this emergent complexity manageable. With an ever-increasing spectrum of threats, more objective analytic capabilities that draw on all-source intelligence and advances in computational methods are needed to help provide insight and aid in the understanding of individual and group behavior. This paper summarizes work utilizing the Senturion predictive analysis software at the National Defense University (NDU). The Center for Technology and National Security Policy (CTNSP) at NDU has been testing the Senturion capability since 2002, and has begun to support the application of this new technology in DoD. Senturion is a simulation capability that analyzes the political dynamics within local, domestic, and international contexts and predic...

This book proposes a significant reassessment of the history of Iraq, documenting democratic experiences from ancient Mesopotamia through to the US occupation. Such an analysis takes to task claims that the 'West' has a uniquely democratic history and a responsibility to spread democracy across the world. It also reveals that Iraq has a democratic history all of its own, from ancient Middle Eastern assemblies and classical Islamic theology and philosophy, through to the myriad political parties, newspapers and protest movements of more recent times. This book argues that the democratic history of Iraq could serve as a powerful political and discursive tool where the Iraqi people may come to feel a sense of ownership over democracy and take pride in endorsing it. This could go a long way towards mitigating the current conflicts across the nation and in stabilizing and legitimating its troubled democracy. Taking an interdisciplinary approach and referring to some of the most influential critical theorists to question ideological assumptions about democracy and its history, this book will be useful to those interested in political and legal history, human rights and democracy.