“Woulda, Shoulda” Anaconda Study

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley is about to launch a new kind of study of Operation Anaconda, the March, 2002 campaign in Afghanistan notable for the miscommunication between the Air Force and Army. Moseley wants the new study to show how the action would have unfolded if the Army had kept the Air Force plugged in with its plans, then compare and contrast how it might have played out versus how it did. Moseley sees the study as a different way to approach the task of “lessons learned.” There has been a lot of finger pointing over the operation, which has become the subject of several books. (Read our April 2005 article “The Echoes of Anaconda.”)