I wanted to make sure readers were aware of this devastating report from Knight Ridder about the administration’s post-war planning. Or in this case, non-existent post-war planning.
In March 2003, days before the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, American war planners and intelligence officials met at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina to review the Bush administration’s plans to oust Saddam Hussein and implant democracy in Iraq.
Near the end of his presentation, an Army lieutenant colonel who was giving a briefing showed a slide describing the Pentagon’s plans for rebuilding Iraq after the war, known in the planners’ parlance as Phase 4-C. He was uncomfortable with his material — and for good reason.
The slide said: “To Be Provided.”
That kind of sums up the administration’s answer to every tough question. It’s also eerily reminiscent of David Stockman in 1981 with his “magic asterisk” — Reagan could cut taxes and increased spending, but we’ll balance the budget with information that was yet “to be provided.” Iraq is the same approach — invade now, hope for the best, deal with a crisis at some point down the line.
Bush’s magic asterisk, of course, is considerably more disastrous. Thousands are dying in the biggest foreign policy debacle in a generation. It didn’t have to be this way, but the administration did nothing beyond acting on their expectations that we’d be “greeted as liberators.”
A Knight Ridder review of the administration’s Iraq policy and decisions has found that it invaded Iraq without a comprehensive plan in place to secure and rebuild the country. The administration also failed to provide some 100,000 additional U.S. troops that American military commanders originally wanted to help restore order and reconstruct a country shattered by war, a brutal dictatorship and economic sanctions.
In fact, some senior Pentagon officials had thought they could bring most American soldiers home from Iraq by September 2003. Instead, more than a year later, 138,000 U.S. troops are still fighting terrorists who slip easily across Iraq’s long borders, diehards from the old regime and Iraqis angered by their country’s widespread crime and unemployment and America’s sometimes heavy boots.
“We didn’t go in with a plan. We went in with a theory,” said a veteran State Department officer who was directly involved in Iraq policy.
This is unforgivable. The administration was told it was walking into a possible disaster, but they ignored anyone who dared to warn them. And now these same lunatics are saying they’d do exactly the same thing if they had it to do over again.
Pure insanity.