Relaxed Politics

Yesterday the NY Times obtained a draft copy of the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction(SIGIR) report entitled: ‘Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience’… It is a scathing critique of this whole misbegotten and illegal enterprise that we were lied into. What struck me right off was the fact that Shrub was made aware of the potential quagmire we were about to be immersed in…

Secretary of State Colin Powell pointedly told the President that “when you hit [Iraq], it’s like a crystal glass. It’s going to shatter. There will be no government. There will be civil disorder. You’ll have 25 million Iraqis standing around looking at each other.”

Did that phase Shrub, Cheney, Feith or Rummy…? Nooo, of course not! In fact they were so deluded by our American Military prowess that we would be able to do it on the cheap. With a minimal number of troops and with a minimal amount of planning…

As Powell told Stuart Bowen, the author of the report…

I have no idea what CENTCOM was planning, and I have absolutely no idea what the Joint Chiefs of Staff were planning. I do know that political guidance they were getting from Rumsfeld, the NSC, and the White House was, `You got about three months to get this thing up and running.’

Well, this poignant vignette highlights the farcical levels of delusion that enveloped Rummy’s thought processes…

The history records how Mr. Garner presented Mr. Rumsfeld with several rebuilding plans, including one that would include projects across Iraq.“What do you think that’ll cost?” Mr. Rumsfeld asked of the more expansive plan.“I think it’s going to cost billions of dollars,” Mr. Garner said.“My friend,” Mr. Rumsfeld replied, “if you think we’re going to spend a billion dollars of our money over there, you are sadly mistaken.”

The “Fucking Stupidest Man on The Planet” Feith was the key architect of the of the failed project…

“One of our main themes was liberation rather than occupation,” Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith said. “There was this constant debate between those of us who said we’ve got to push the Iraqis forward,” Feith recounted, and others who judged that the Iraqis would only be ready to govern themselves after several years.28 Reflecting the views of Secretary Rumsfeld, Feith advocated a rapid transition to Iraqi control. Drawing lessons from past nation-building efforts, he and Rumsfeld believed that minimizing the military’s presence forced local populations to rely more rapidly upon their own leaders to resolve problems. They were convinced that the U.S.–by limiting the role of the military, as well as the duration of any nation-building effort–could avoid the “culture of dependency” that had taken root in other post-conflict interventions.

That fostered the piss poor planning for the ‘Phase IV’ aspect… What’s next… The report presented quite the conundrum…

Senior military officers have accused former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld of failing to order planning for the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, known in military parlance as Phase IV. The former secretary of defense defended his preparations for post-war Iraq. In addressing the controversy in written remarks, Mr. Rumsfeld told the Special Inspector General that he believed in the importance of so-called Phase IV operations.

However Rummy’s concern is hazy at best as he responded later…

Secretary Rumsfeld later stated, “I do not recall, nor do others present in the numerous discussions with General Franks, giving any guidance that could be interpreted as requesting CENTCOM not plan for Phase IV post-war operations, as General Franks will attest. Nor would I have minimized its importance.”

Au Contraire, Mon Frere…

Michael Fitzgerald, CENTCOM Chief of War Plans, attests that, “We, CENTCOM, were not in charge of designating and developing the government, determining who would be responsible in immediate post-conflict.” Michael Fitzgerald, former CENTCOM J5 Chief of War Plans, May 30, 2008.

As that exchange points out there was already fragmentation within Centcom and DoD as to the Phase IV planning and as Bowen writes, it didn’t end there…

For nearly a year, the National Security Council exercised loose coordination over separate State and Defense Department planning efforts and did not seek the participation of post-conflict experts at USAID. The marked separation between civilian and military planning that existed since October 2001 was followed by further fragmentation within the interagency planning process that began in earnest in August 2002. Even as officials thought they were moving toward an integrated master plan, the building blocks of that plan were being developed in a piecemeal fashion that rendered risks less visible to officials who might otherwise have planned to address them.

The reasons for this were in part bureaucratic, but in an important sense they were also the result of strategic judgments. Early calls for better-integrated planning and greater capacity to address worst-case scenarios were effectively subordinated to the views of Defense Department officials, who were committed to a rapid transfer of power. The liberation approach they backed became the operative strategy, with the White House elevating it to official U.S. policy by late fall 2002.

Strategic blunder would be the understatement of the century…

What is truly sickening is the subordination of American foreign policy into the neocon PNAC crew and DoD! It is clearly evident that they have no business being anywhere near the levers of power…

posted on Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 4:00 pm under Defense, Relaxed Politics, US Politics.