I am particularly interested in a few aspects. How did the threat of WMDs effect the invasion and how the precautions effected you and whether if they were used how that would of effected the the success/ failure of the invasion ie how prepared were the forces involved to effect an invasion under this conditions.
It affected the invasion a lot! It was something that was planned for comprehensively. We were almost certain we were going to be hit at one point or another throughout the course of the invasion. Everyone, and I mean everyone was in MOPP level one until after the fall of Baghdad with a dozen or more times of us getting the alarm to go all the way to MOPP 4. (fortunately all of them were false alarms) In the event that an actual WMD attack had occured I'm sure it would have been a very different story. I'm not sure what the survivability factor would have been even with our personal NBC gear and the NBC systems within our vehicles. We may have been protected initially, but with all the logistics problems we had I find it very hard to believe that any NBC decontamination units could or would have been able to get to the affected areas in sufficient numbers to prevent large loss of life. We just kind of accepted that if we were hit with it, we'd fight for as long as we could, but us front line troops were probably not gonna make it more than 24-48 hours after those agents were introduced.
I am also interested how the coalitions transition from invader to occupier occurred and whether it was planned for. If not how had the higher ups failed to recognise that removing the countries power structure would leave a vacuum that logically they (the occupiers) would want to fill.
It wasn't planned for at all. I've done tons of research about that time period of Iraq and all the research points in the direction of the US government putting so much effort into the planning of the prosecution of the war, planning for after the war was an afterthought. Not to mention the rapidity in which the Iraqi Army collapsed and the speed at which Baghdad was taken...we simply were not ready. It was presumed the fight for Baghdad was to take 6 months alone, as opposed to the week that it took. This translated to guys like me on the ground clearly. After most the fighting stopped in Baghdad I fully presumed I was going to be home within a month. We were done, we had done the job. The Iraqis were really exhuberant, celebrating in the streets, shaking our hands and telling us things like "Bush good, Bush good". It was an awesome feeling because it felt like we had really done something. BUT....then the looting started. At first we were told to stand down. We were told we were "liberators" and to let the Iraqi authorities deal with it. Little did we know that most the IPs had abandoned their posts during the fighting and now A LOT of them were actively participating in the chaos. We idly stood by while a lot of the infrastructure was systematically reduced to almost nothing. Finally, we were given a little leeway in administering some type of rule of law which often turned into essentially vigilante justice where if we found you stealing stuff, we'd destroy your car, or bike, or whatever.
This idleness on our part didn't last long though, soon we found ourselves hunting down Ba'ath party members. And I mean all of them. Meanwhile, things started to get pretty bad for the Iraqis with limited power, sewage, water etc. Plus people out of work, uncertainty about the future, Saddam was still at large, Summer was heating up and people were starting to get pissed. Really pissed... A lot of Iraqis had the mindset that "we were America, we can fix anything instantly..." Easy to see how this can present problems when ones on patrol and they're coming up to you and asking when their power is going to come back...when their children can go back to school, why can't we stop all the crime...etc...we had no answers for them really. It was a long year for me after that because it only got worse for them and for us.
I also think there is some interesting discussion to be had about the US's steep learning curve of COIN. In Iraq going from being virtually counter productive to going on to rapidly learn and become extremely effective in a short period of time .
