Liberate and Leave

Fatal Flaws in the Early Strategy for Postwar Iraq

Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Zenith Press; First edition (May 5, 2009)
ISBN-10: 0760336806
ISBN-13: 978-0760336809

The most difficult questions surrounding the embattled mission in Iraq have to do with the early days. What exactly happened on the ground after the first civilian team arrived? What really occurred inside the planning process? What was the core premise of the plan for post-war Iraq? No book yet has captured the story of the early days from inside the civilian planning process.

The original plan was to simply liberate, tidy things up a bit, turn the country over to a new set of Iraqis, and leave—a plan that proved a mismatch for the volatile reality on the ground. Absent a massive and immediate correction of course—within the first two months—Iraq would steadily fall into the violent and chaotic forces that rushed into the vacuum. As a result, it would take years to put the profoundly broken, wounded and divided country back together again.

Eberly’s telling reveals how the flawed premise presented by senior officials at the Pentagon, captured in the mantra “brief stay, light touch,” resulted in a severe shortage of troops and an inadequate plan for post-war stabilization. The reader experiences life on the streets of a nation completely battered and broken—politically, physically, psychologically.

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