Final question
ou must first read the article and answer the question and then type it directly to the paper
MGMT 3300 INTRODUCTION TO MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONS
FINAL EXAM

Question # 3: (30)

In Session 13, we discussed how perception and bias can lead to errors in decision-making. Attached is an excerpt from the article, “Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath” which analyzes the background, personalities and conditions, during 2002-2003, that led to the Bush Administration’s decision to invade Iraq.

Using this article as your primary source, you are to cite, using specific references/quotes where available, as many instances as you can identify (more instances = more points) of each type of bias listed.

1. Overconfidence Bias: (5)

Instructions:

For each of the 5 decision-making biases, your answer should follow this “model”:

? Define the Bias—what does the bias mean in your own words

? List a minimum of 2 specific quotations, events or sentences that illustrate the bias.

Type your answers directly into this form. Delete these instructions before finalizing your paper—i.e. what you submit to me for grade should not include the these instructions

2. Anchoring Bias: (5)
3. Availability Bias: (5)
MGMT 3300—INTRODUCTION TO MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONS
FINAL EXAM

Question # 3: (Continued)

4. Hindsight Bias (5)
5. Escalation of Commitment Bias: (5)
6. We identified 4 means of reducing bias and errors in decision-making. If you had to choose just 1, which would it be and how might it have strengthened the decision-making ability of the Bush Administration. (5)
Excerpted from:

Choosing War:
The Decision to Invade
Iraq and Its Aftermath
by Joseph J. Collins
April 2008titute for National Strategic Studies
The Context

After favoring Saddam Hussein in his long war with Iran, the United States was shocked when the unpredictable dictator invaded Kuwait, a state to which he owed dozens of billions of dollars for its support in the struggle with Iran. In August 1990, the United States organized a vast international coalition and in the following year forced Saddam from Kuwait.

Down but not out, Saddam managed to put down subsequent rebellions in the south (among the Shi’a) and the north (among the Kurds) of Iraq. Today, the coalition’s failure to “finish the job” in Iraq in 1991 is often seen as a huge mistake. Critics have argued that Saddam was on the ropes and that he was ripe for not just a knockdown, but a knockout blow.

In 1991, however, President George H.W. Bush and his National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft, saw it differently. Years later, President Bush and Scowcroft wrote:

“While we hoped that a popular revolt or coup would topple Saddam, neither the United States nor the countries of the region wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi state. We were concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head of the Gulf. Breaking up the Iraqi state would pose its own destabilizing problems. . . . Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in “mission creep,” and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. . . . We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad, and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed. . . . Under those circumstances, there was no viable “exit strategy” we could see, violating another of our principles.”

After Operation Desert Storm in 1991, UN inspectors hunting weapons of mass destruction (WMD) played a long cat-and-mouse game with Saddam’s military and intelligence bureaucracies. In 1998, Saddam unilaterally ended the inspections, raising suspicion in the West and at the United Nations that he was accelerating his programs. President Bill Clinton later conducted punitive strikes on Iraq with the tacit support of many nations in the Security Council. To the incoming Bush administration in 2001, Saddam was a tyrant, a regional bully, and a supporter of terrorism. The new administration was also composed of many veterans of the first Gulf War—including Vice President Richard Cheney and his chief of staff Lewis Libby, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and her deputy Stephen Hadley, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and National Security Council (NSC) staff member Zalmay Khalilzad—who also saw Saddam Hussein as an ugly piece of unfinished business from their collective past.
Saddam’s relationship with terrorists was always a concern. Years later, analysts would argue about whether Saddam had an operational relationship with al Qaeda, but in truth, his relationships with many terrorist groups were active and never in doubt. He was among the most active supporters of Palestinian terrorism. The Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a leftist, anti-Iranian terrorist/military force, was resident in Iraq, conducted operations against Iran, and cooperated with Saddam’s paramilitary and armed forces. Also, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who became al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, was resident for a time in a remote, Kurdish-controlled section of northern Iraq with his group, Ansar al-Islam, before the U.S. invasion. He had visited Baghdad and received medical treatment there.

Since the Republicans had last been in power, Saddam had tried to assassinate the elder President Bush. The sanctions against him were weakening. He had ignored many UN Security Council resolutions. His possession of chemical weapons and illegal missiles and his active WMD research and development (R&D) programs were widely held articles of faith among security experts. His relationship with terrorist groups was beyond question. Even the Clinton administration—after congressional pressure—had declared that regime change in Iraq was U.S. policy.

After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001, Saddam’s regime took on a more ominous appearance. The vast majority of Bush administration officials did not believe that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11, but they saw new reason to be concerned about Saddam and his WMD programs. While an immediate attack against al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan was critical, so was the prevention of new attacks on the U.S. homeland, which many feared could include al Qaeda borrowing or stealing a nuclear device from a rogue state or former nuclear power.

When terrorists can strike the U.S. homeland and cause mass casualties, terrorism ceases to be only a law enforcement issue. In the eyes of the administration and most of the American people, the struggle with terrorism had become a war, and the use of military force was one of its available instruments.

Because of the new threat from al Qaeda and the dangers of proliferation, the President embraced the doctrine of preemption—which some saw as a doctrine of preventive war—and declared Iraq (along with North Korea and Iran) a member of the “axis of evil.” The doorway to war was wide open.

The War Plan

Suggestions about military operations against Iraq came from the Pentagon as early as September 12, 2001, but President Bush sidelined them during the fighting in Afghanistan. In November 2001, however, on the edge of achieving initial military success in Afghanistan, he asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to begin planning in secret for potential military operations against Iraq. That mission passed quickly to the U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM), headed by General Tommy Franks, USA.13 Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard B. Myers, USAF, and Vice Chairman General Peter Pace, USMC, played a supporting role with the activist Secretary exercising his legal authority to be the direct supervisor of the combatant commanders. Most Defense secretaries before this administration chose to work with the combatant commanders mainly through the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The role Secretary Rumsfeld played in the development of the details of the battle plan and the flow of the invasion force was unique in recent memory.

Over the next 15 months, Franks and Rumsfeld remained in close and near continuous contact. Not only were there dozens of briefings and face-to-face conversations, usually with the Chairman or Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in attendance, there was a steady stream of memos (known by his staff as “snowflakes”) from the energetic Secretary that posed issues for the Pentagon and Central Command staffs. In retrospect, Rumsfeld wanted to conduct a quick, lightning-like operation in Iraq, followed by a swift handover of power to the Iraqis. He did not want a large scale, ponderous operation like Desert Storm, which he saw as wasteful and outmoded. He also did not want U.S. troops unnecessarily bogged down in an endless postwar peace operation. Long, costly, manpower-intensive post-combat operations were anathema to Rumsfeld, who was as interested in force transformation as he was a potential war in Iraq.

Throughout their dialogue, and into the deployment of the force, the aggressive, hands-on Rumsfeld cajoled and pushed his way toward a small force and a lightning-fast operation. For his part, Franks—who shared Rumsfeld’s belief in the importance of speed—was caught between trying to placate his boss and to satisfy the physical needs of his forces. According to secondary sources, Franks may have briefed the President on his war plan as many as 10 times.

Franks never briefed either Rumsfeld or Bush on options short of war. A simple soldier, Franks took his charge to prepare a war plan as a mission to develop a full-scale, direct military approach to the overthrow of Saddam’s regime. There were never plans for creating enclaves, supporting a guerrilla war, or using only special operations forces and airpower in a coercive manner. The CIA and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Policy did look at the possibility of covert action or actions short of war, but no agency believed that such actions could take out this entrenched regime and replace it with a better one. The CIA also did not have an active set of relationships with resistance movements in Iraq as it did in Afghanistan. In addition, much critical intelligence about Iraq was not verifiable against sources on the ground. There were grave limits on the U.S. ability to confirm judgments that we believed were true. For their part, the Joint Chiefs of Staff—statutory military advisors to the Secretary of Defense, the President, and the National Security Council—also met with the President twice on the war plan.

All of the chiefs supported the plan. None of them brought up any misgivings about Phase IV, post-combat stability operations. In October 2002, President Bush sought congressional approval for a prospective military operation against Iraq. Propelled by a high threat perception, the resolution passed both houses handily.

International Support and Weapons of Mass Destruction

On the allied front, the United States made a concerted attempt to garner support within the UN and among allies, but unlike Operation Desert Storm or Operation Enduring Freedom, the permanent members of the Security Council decided that they wanted no part in either authorizing or participating in the operation. Rubbing salt in the wound, Germany and France led the battle against the United States on this issue.

Few U.S. allies would sign up for the initial assault. A low level of allied commitment no doubt encouraged an already reluctant Turkish government—faced with strong public opinion against the war—to disallow the use of its territory to launch a northern front in Iraq with the powerful U.S. 4th Infantry Division.

On the eve of the 2003 war, all disputes on such details as aluminum tubes and uranium oxide from Niger aside, most international intelligence agencies believed, as did former President Clinton, that Saddam still possessed a major chemical weapons stockpile, a significant missile force, and active R&D programs for biological and nuclear weapons. I find nothing in credible sources to support the notion that the WMD threat was concocted by U.S. Government officials and then sold to a gullible public, nor do I believe that any one Iraqi source tricked us into our beliefs. We now know that there were many holes in our knowledge base, but senior officials and analysts were almost universally united in their core beliefs.

Military and Interagency Postwar Plans

In many of his war plan briefings to the President, Franks mentioned Phase IV stability operations, the period after the end of major combat operations. Indeed, Franks did not underestimate the work that might have to be done. On two occasions, Franks’ memoirs indicate that he told first the Secretary of Defense and then the President and the entire National Security Council that Phase IV might require up to 250,000 troops, over 100,000 more combatants than were in the initial invasion force. He also noted that this phase might last for years, although he did believe that it might be done quicker with a smaller force under the right circumstances. It is also clear that they honestly expected a relatively easy and inexpensive occupation and that they were conscious of inflated cost and casualty estimates in previous conflicts, such as Operation Desert Storm.

On March 4, 2003, the President and the NSC reviewed for a final time the U.S. and coalition objectives in Iraq. Among the objectives noted were maintaining the territorial integrity of Iraq, having Iraq be seen as a democratic model for the region, maintaining the coalition’s freedom of action in counterterrorism, capturing and destroying WMDs, and putting Iraqis in charge as fast as possible.

In May 2003, war A was ending, but war B was about to begin. We had a complex, flexible plan for war A but no such plan for war B. War A was a rapid, high-tech, conventional battle, war American style, but war was a protracted conflict, an insurgency with high levels of criminality and sustained sectarian violence, just the sort of ambiguous, asymmetric conflict that the American public finds hard to understand and even harder to endure. The military had not prepared for insurgency and took more than a year to adjust well in the field.
Errors in Decision Making and Execution

Problems in planning on the ground and in Washington contributed to serious shortcomings in U.S. performance in Operation Iraqi Freedom. With 4½ years of hindsight, it is clear that these shortcomings included:

• underestimation of the problems of occupying a fractious Muslim country the size of California
• ineffective civil and military plans for stability operations and reconstruction
• inadequate on-scene manpower and poor military reaction to rioting and looting in the immediate postconflict environment, which further encouraged lawlessness and insurgency
• provision of inadequate forces to occupy and secure Iraq, which encouraged the initiation and continuation of an insurgency
• slow civil and military reaction to the growing insurgency
• problematic funding and contracting mechanisms that slowed services and basic reconstruction, both of which were a partial antidote to insurgency
• failure to make effective use of former Iraqi military forces, which, when coupled with de-Ba’athification, alienated the Sunni minority
• slow and often ineffective development of new Iraqi security forces
• continuing inability to provide enough trained civilian officials, diplomats, and aid workers to conduct effective stabilization and reconstruction activities
• slow creation of an interim Iraqi authority that could have minimized the perception of occupation and enhanced the perception of liberation.

Of all of these mistakes, a series of faulty assumptions was one of the most significant factors in our postwar policy. These initial assumptions were a thread that ran through many missteps, and thus it is important to ask where assumptions come from. In every case, assumptions are affected by wishful thinking, stress, predispositions of the key actors, uncertainty, and the process used to arrive at decisions. For example, the policy preference of key players for no or very short postwar occupations or peace operations is just the sort of predisposition that can affect planning priorities. In complex national security operations, intelligence estimates also play a vital role. In the case of Iraq, intelligence was faulty on WMD, the state of Iraqi infrastructure, and the usefulness of Iraqi police and military. This incorrect or dated intelligence contributed in large measure to the “rosy scenario” assumptions that infected Iraq planning.

The core assumption held by many leaders in the national security establishment was that the war would be difficult, the peace relatively easy, and the occupation short and inexpensive.

The supporting assumptions were five in number:

1. First, the war was expected to include tough fighting and end in a climactic battle.

2. Second, our leaders were repeatedly told by exiles that the United States would be seen as liberators, welcomed with “sweets and flowers,” as renowned scholar Kanan Makiya told President Bush. (Further, US officials) wanted a quick turnover of authority to Iraqis. The rapid turnover of power to Iraqis was key to the U.S. postwar plan, but it could not be arranged in advance or imposed by fiat.

3. A third supporting assumption was that the Iraqi people hungered for democracy and human rights and that this hunger would suppress the urge to settle scores or to think in narrow tribal or sectarian terms. This presupposition undoubtedly was enhanced by Iraqi exiles, many of whom had not been home in decades.

4. A fourth assumption was that Iraq without Saddam could manage and fund its own reconstruction. Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq had not been devastated by over 20 years of war, and its middle-class, educated population was mostly intact, unlike that of Afghanistan. Oil could pay for its modest reconstruction, a process that would be made easier by a small invading force and a highly successful effort to avoid collateral damage.

5. Finally, based on the best available U.S. intelligence, as Defense and NSC officials had briefed the President, U.S. officials assumed that they would receive great help from the Iraqi police, the army, and the ministries, all of which were seen by many experts as salvageable, malleable, and professional.

None of those things turned out to be true. The police were corrupt, ill trained, and not at all concerned with the rule of law. The virtual evaporation of the army during the war and its formal disbanding, and even the modest de-Ba’athification that was ordered (and then expanded by Iraqis on the ground), did nothing to replace a system where all national leadership had flowed from the Ba’ath party.

Sadly, much of the post-invasion state of affairs had been predicted. Many government and civilian experts had spoken well and loudly about the dangers of postwar Iraq, but their warnings were not heeded. Many analysts believed that the war and the subsequent peace would both be difficult. (In fact, a major report from the National Defense University that was read by the major principals stated):

“Iraq presents far from ideal conditions for achieving strategic goals. Saddam Hussein is the culmination of a violent political culture that is rooted in a tortured history. Ethnic, tribal, and religious schisms could produce civil war or fracture the state after Saddam is deposed. The Iraqi Army may be useful as a symbol of national unity, but it will take extensive reeducation and reorganization to operate in a more democratic state. Years of sanctions have debilitated the economy and created a society dependent on the UN Oil for Food Program. Rebuilding Iraq will require a considerable commitment of American resources, but the longer U.S. presence is maintained, the more likely violent resistance will develop.”

Why senior decision makers did not fully integrate these warnings into postwar planning is puzzling. Full awareness of these potential problems and the inadequate preparations to deal with them might have resulted in creating branches and sequels to existing plans, delaying the start of the invasion, or providing a larger force that could control more effectively terrain and population.

There is no understanding what happened in Iraq without understanding the players, their philosophies, and their associations. The tight link between Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld was a key association and one peculiar to this administration. Secretary Rumsfeld’s penchant for dealing one-on-one with the combatant commanders and diving into the details of war plans and unit deployments was also unprecedented in the postwar era. This is not to say that President Bush was manipulated by his powerful subordinates. He was very much in command and had demonstrated that he (was) fully capable of making decisions that run counter to the recommendations of his closest advisors. Still, in this case, the power wielded by Rumsfeld and Cheney was both considerable and unique.

While the focus of this project has been on policy decisions and process, it is important to add a final word on the decision to go to war. The U.S. reputation for power rests heavily on the outstanding performance of its Armed Forces in wars of necessity—the wars that follow an attack on the United States or one of its key allies or partners. The U.S. record in wars of choice—such as Vietnam and Operation Iraqi Freedom—contains more than a few defeats or Pyrrhic victories. In the greater war on terror, the United States cannot forswear wars of choice or disregard conflicts that might require post-combat stability operations or extended peace enforcement activities. (However), before the United States enters into wars, however, its leaders should remember the prophetic words of Winston Churchill:

“Let us learn our lessons. Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The Statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. Antiquated War Offices, weak, incompetent or arrogant Commanders, untrustworthy allies, hostile neutrals, malignant Fortune, ugly surprises, awful miscalculations—all take their seats at the Council Board on the morrow of a declaration of war. Always remember, (though), however sure you are that you can easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think that he also had a chance.”