DERELICTION, NOT PLANS AWRY
Best laid plans? Eh. My own sense is that there was an Administerial arrogance that everything could be managed as the situation developed, through 'lessons learned' or as call-and-response. I'd still call it "dereliction of duty", not "plans that went awry", knowing full well that is a far more powerful indictment.
There may have been sexing up of intelligence or manipulation of intelligence product for 'policy' purposes at the Office of Special Plans. But, for those who saw through all that to begin with, the lie that we were fully prepared to go to war is somehow more perfidious than making thick a thin case against an irrepentant and unreforming President Saddam Hussein.
ALL THE QUESTIONS
I'm interested in all the questions that these documents do not answer. Who developed an estimate of 48 months for Phase IV? Was General Franks 100% behind that estimate? Who backed an assumption such as "DoS will promote the creation of a broad-based, credible provisional government prior to D-day"? Where are the planning scenario sensitivities, showing a range of outcomes, from best to worst, not mere point estimates? Was anything - anything at all - incorporated from the seemingly orphaned Project for a Future Iraq, carried out for a year sort-of by the State Department in the run-up to war?
RE-ELECTION
Andrew wonders aloud, "it still doesn't fully explain why the administration refused to start over ...". I suspect that the reason can be answered in one word: "re-election", which translates into casting everything as "going well according to the unseen, classified plan", even though Bremer was winging it, which is all he could do, given his prep time.
Besides, you can take a step back even further and ask, "Who in the Administration told the American people that phase IV might last four years (48 months), under the basic planning scenario?" Who from the Congress?
sullylink
