Report says Bush was unprepared for post-war chaos

[Judi Lynn]

Report says Bush was unprepared for post-war chaos

Barry Schweid | Washington, United States



27 July 2005 08:07

An independent panel headed by two former United States national security advisers on Wednesday said chaos in postwar Iraq was due in part to inadequate postwar planning.

Planning for reconstruction should match the serious planning that goes into making war, said the panel headed by Samuel Berger and Brent Scowcroft, national security advisers to former presidents Bill Clinton and George HW Bush, respectively.

"A dramatic military victory has been overshadowed by chaos and bloodshed in the streets of Baghdad, difficulty in establishing security or providing essential services, and a deadly insurgency," said the private report sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations.

"The costs, human, military and economic, are high and continue to mount," the report said.

Two years after after a stunning three-week march on Baghdad, US and Iraqi military forces have been unable to secure and rebuild the country, and reconstruction has fallen victim to a lack of security, the report said.
(snip/...)

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=246466&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/

[LittleClarkie]

1. You mean they went to war without a plan to win the peace

Do tell.

They could have saved the money on the report, and just dug up one of Kerry's old campaign speeches. He hammered that point time and again.

[bribri16]

30. What is meant by a "stunning victory" when the enemy didn't fight?

We are so filled with the "cowboy" mentality it never occurred to us that if the Iraqis had had WMD and had decided to fight back they probably would have kicked our asses as they are doing now without any weapons. We take great pride in killing by numbers...mostly innocent civilians. Even during desert storm the only thing the Iraqi had were unreliable scud missiles and there is plenty of film showing how we carpet bombed retreating Iraqi troops carrying white flags. We have learned nothing since Viet Nam.

[daleo]

46. It's a bit like Napoleon's victory in Moscow

Sure he marched in the city, hung around an empty city for a while, declared victory and left. His troops suffered horribly on the way home. The Russians wouldn't play by his rules.

[Arugula Latte]

47. Yeah -- a MARCH on Baghdad? WTF?

More like bombing the shit out of the city and slaughtering innocents.

[donco6]

52. Yes, "stunning victory"

Remember the videos of the "defense of Baghdad?" The dozen or so units of rickety old men haphazardly double-timing around the streets? I mean, what did it take to knock them off? We had already bombed all their defenses, taken out all their aircraft . . . what on earth could be seen as "stunning" in our victory? It was like swatting a dead fly.

[KeepItReal]

33. State Department had a plan and the experts to carry them out

Rumsfeld's pentagon did not want to execute State's plan.

Look it up:

"The Bush administration's failure to plan adequately for the postwar period has been well documented. The Pentagon, for example, ignored extensive State Department studies of how to achieve stability after an invasion, administer a postwar government and rebuild the country."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/11/AR2005061100723.html

Here's an insider's account of the State Department's Future of Iraq Project:

http://web.mit.edu/ssp/fall04/patterson.htm

"I spoke to General Garner. He told me that he was instructed by Secretary Rumsfeld to shelve the Future of Iraq Project."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/fighting/turfwars.html

[AlGore-08.com]

49. Or read Gore's 9/23/02 on why the then proposed invasion was a bad idea?

http://www.algore-08.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=48&Itemid=123

Speech Transcript: Iraq and the War On Terrorism
Monday, 23 September 2002
(Remarks as prepared)

By Al Gore

INTRODUCTION Like all Americans I have been wrestling with the question of what our country needs to do to defend itself from the kind of intense, focused and enabled hatred that brought about September 11th, and which at this moment must be presumed to be gathering force for yet another attack. I'm speaking today in an effort to recommend a specific course of action for our country which I believe would be preferable to the course recommended by President Bush. Specifically, I am deeply concerned that the policy we are presently following with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century.

(snip)

The foreshortening of deliberation in the Congress robs the country of the time it needs for careful analysis of what may lie before it. Such consideration is all the more important because of the Administration's failure thus far to lay out an assessment of how it thinks the course of a war will run - - even while it has given free run to persons both within and close to the administration to suggest that this will be an easy conquest. Neither has the Administration said much to clarify its idea of what is to follow regime change or of the degree of engagement it is prepared to accept for the United States in Iraq in the months and years after a regime change has taken place. By shifting from his early focus after September 11th on war against terrorism to war against Iraq, the President has manifestly disposed of the sympathy, good will and solidarity compiled by America and transformed it into a sense of deep misgiving and even hostility. In just one year, the President has somehow squandered the international outpouring of sympathy, goodwill and solidarity that followed the attacks of September 11th and converted it into anger and apprehension aimed much more at the United States than at the terrorist network - - much as we manage to squander in one year's time the largest budget surpluses in history and convert them into massive fiscal deficits. He has compounded this by asserting a new doctrine - - of preemption.

(snip)

Anticipating that the President will still move toward unilateral action, the Congress should establish now what the administration's thinking is regarding the aftermath of a US attack for the purpose of regime change. Specifically, Congress should establish why the president believes that unilateral action will not severely damage the fight against terrorist networks, and that preparations are in place to deal with the effects of chemical and biological attacks against our allies, our forces in the field, and even the home-front. The resolution should also require commitments from the President that action in Iraq will not be permitted to distract from continuing and improving work to reconstruct Afghanistan, an that the United States will commit to stay the course for the reconstruction of Iraq.

(more... )

[marew]

2. No surprise there! Too much abstract thought... n/t

[AtomicKitten]

3. Duh.

[Why Syzygy]

4. This is obvious beyond measure

but, we have not reached "postwar" as of yet. When will it end?

Sometimes I get so infuriated thinking back two years ago to the duped and tailgaters who followed along with this murderous scheme.

It's as if bushco HAD to have a war of his own. To match poppy for one thing. To enrich the pockets of his VP for another. To please some of the fundie crowd. To make it seem like he actually is President of the United States.

Just all so disgusting. And people die to put on his show.

[radfringe]

5. so he wasn't lying

when he said there were NO PLANS ON MY DESK....

[madeline_con]

8. "... NO PLANS ON MY DESK...."

Sometimes, he really does tell the truth, hard as it is to believe. Much of the time, other people lie for him, while he drools off stage.

He said Roberts will "strictly interpret the law."

Think about it. :scared:

[magellan]

6. Inexcusable because this was predicted BEFORE the war

Memo: U.S. Lacked Full Postwar Iraq Plan
Advisers to Blair Predicted Instability

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 12, 2005; Page A01

A briefing paper prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers eight months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq concluded that the U.S. military was not preparing adequately for what the British memo predicted would be a "protracted and costly" postwar occupation of that country.

The eight-page memo, written in advance of a July 23, 2002, Downing Street meeting on Iraq, provides new insights into how senior British officials saw a Bush administration decision to go to war as inevitable, and realized more clearly than their American counterparts the potential for the post-invasion instability that continues to plague Iraq.

In its introduction, the memo "Iraq: Conditions for Military Action" notes that U.S. "military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace," but adds that "little thought" has been given to, among other things, "the aftermath and how to shape it."

snip....

[Starfury]

14. Yup. One might almost think the instability was intentional.... n/t

[Athame]

16. No matter how cynical I get

I just can't keep up. :shrug:
Lily Tomlin

[reprobate]

55. I'd be interested to know what you think was the real intent.

Try a I might I can't come up with his reason to take over Baghdad and let the whole country degenerate into chaos. This way he can't even get the oil.

[Starfury]

65. Sure thing, here's my theory....

It's just a theory, but unfortunately, I haven't been able to disprove it. And now that Justin Raimondo (Libertarian, but quite sharp) seems to share my theory, I'm more nervous.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=142789&mesg_id=142789

[reprobate]

66. That Raimondo article certainly is eye-opening.

And it explaines a lot. But it's not unlike these assholes to think they are in charge of the world, while Chalabi and Iran are playing them for fools.

I'm willing to accept PNAC's goals were to take over the middle east oil, but I think that they were, as Raimondo says, fooled by iran into creating an extremist islamic superstate. And that COULD lead to a world war.

Of course, if you can believe that the neocons were involved in 9/11, which I do, then the more radical explanation could be true. There is no morality involved with the neocons apart from their ideology. Their view from what I can tell is that anything is moral if it leads to their world dominance.

[madeline_con]

7. "Bush was unprepared ..."

He misunderestimated what he was getting into.

War president, indeed. What a shmuck!

[Disturbed]

9. God told him to attack Iraq.

Shrub forgot to ask what to do after that.

The RW are good at running sleazy, dishonest campaigns but screwups about governing and anything else.

[DoYouEverWonder]

11. Bush didn't underestimate anything

what is happening now is what they did plan for in a post war Iraq. It's called genocide, except the people committing genocide will never admit it. This is the neocon dream, the new world order. Get rid of all the useless eaters and then the rich and powerful won't have to share their resources with anyone anymore. That's one of the reasons why they don't give a shit about the environment. They figure when they get rid of enough of us the earth will repair itself. This is what we are dealing with here.

[Burried News]

20. I'm with you and Starfury, the chaos was intentional and

domestic confusion the psyops plan.

[Mika]

37. I knew chaos was the plan when Rummy said "freedom is messy" early on.

There were no plans = Winston repaste from the Min of Truth.

________________________________


Good news Brothers and sisters: chocolate rations have been increased to 20 grams.

http://www.online-literature.com/view.php/1984/5

It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it. Parsons swallowed it easily, with the stupidity of an animal. The eyeless creature at the other table swallowed it fanatically, passionately, with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had been thirty grammes.

[madeline_con]

50. I'd heard of starvation as population control....

I'd not heard the earth healing angle. But, given a few billion deaths, it would be able to bounce back. Interesting and insane theory. Thanks for the info. :)

EDIT:

I'd like to add that the "logic", twisted as it is, behind the rapture and the war on non-"christians" is beginning to make sense. I *understand* their POV, but I don't agree.

[ixion]

10. in part due to planning, and in part due to the illegal invasion itself

hey, but far be it from me to state the obvious. :eyes:

[acmavm]

12. Why would you have to plan when you think you have God in your

pocket and you're soooooo delusional that you tell Pat Robertson that 'there will be no casualties' when asked what he would tell the American people when out troops started dying.

This, even to someone who is lazy and not very smart, should be very informative to what kind of clown bush** is. And I don't mean clown in a funny ha-ha way. He's an evil buffoon.

[dbt]

13. Jeebus. How much money was spent on this independent panel?

The Hon. Advisors could have read any number of posts (for free!) here on The DU before the war, posts which held that "we" were sending in woefully inadequate numbers of troops for an occupation.

Reckon that's what happens when you "run the government like a business." Cost-cutting trumps Common Sense every time.

[skids]

18. Not to mention, the common sense of reconstruction supplies.

You can't build the peace if the only thing you spend significant amounts of cash on is military hardware. About the best these asshats could manage was (delayed) humanitarian supplies. No thought to the needs of a country that was in pretty shit poor shape before being bombed and run over by an assortment of tanks, halftracks, and trucks.

The lack of justification was only act one in their parade of incompetance.

[joeunderdog]

15. POPPY warned him:

http://www.thememoryhole.org/mil/bushsr-iraq.htm

"My flunkie son just doesn't listen..."

[wildwww2]

17. Bu$h was only prepared to lie us into chaos. Not get us out of it.

And now I can hear him and his followers say. "Get over it". I wonder if the families of the service men and women who died for a big batch of lies can get over it?
Peace
Wildman
Al Gore is My President

[babylonsister]

19. Hmmmm... didn't the DSM also say this? nt

[JNelson6563]

21. Except for this of course

(Credit to a DUer who's got this in their signature)

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

22. We needed a report to tell us this? n/t

[Patty Diana]

23. The US Generals submitted their plans to shrubco_Both the plans and the

Generals were shitcanned. This is like the Stalin purge of his military, pre WWII German Invasion, which costed the lives of millions of Russians. These neojerks continue to defy the lessons of history.

[tanyev]

25. Yep. I think I've also read that State Department

did submit a comprehensive post-war plan, but it was promptly tossed into an Oval Office trash can.

[flordehinojos]

24. POPPY PROMISED THE RICHIES THAT JUNIOR WOULD NOT DISAPPOINT THEM. HE WOULD

MAKE SURE OF THAT. POPPY PROMISED ... the thing is that JUNIOR HASN'T DISAPPOINTED A ONE OF US WHO KNEW THAT HE WOULD BE A TOTAL AND ABSOLUTE FAILURE... HE LIVED UP TO WHAT WE EXPECTED OF HIM. AS FOR THE RICHIES WHO BELIEVED POPPY ... well they were just suckered punched by POPPY!

[DS1]

26. Are you kidding? Bush wasn't prepared for post-Election 2000 chaos

He's never been "prepared" for anything, except the few times he'd remember to eat before going on a Houston bar-crawl

[rocktivity]

27. If "A dramatic military victory has been overshadowed

"by chaos and bloodshed...difficulty in establishing security or providing essential services, and a deadly insurgency" then maybe it SHOULDN'T BE CALLED a "military victory!!!"

:headbang:
rocknation

[smoogatz]

28. Cheney said they'd be greeted as liberators.

That's what Chalabi told him, so it must be true. Bushco is, without question, the dumbest and most delusional collection of ideologues to illegally seize control of a major power since Mao and his cadres plunged China into a famine that killed 30 million people in the early 1960s.

[shadowknows69]

29. Gee

I guess that's where having some actual experience in the military would have been useful. "You mean they might resist us invading and killing them and destroying their country to bring them democracy?"

[MaineDem]

31. Thank God for the foreign press!!! (nt)

[Roland99]

32. But it's a "catastrophic success"!

[natrat]

34. you would think backwsoods morons from texas were running things

[Doctor_J]

35. In other news, the sky is blue

:eyes:

[Strawman]

36. Probably because he's never had to "prepare" for anything in his life

That's always someone else's worry.

[geckosfeet]

38. OMFG ! They needed a "report" to figure that out? nt

[shanti]

39. what IS * prepared for??

he's been a failure at everything so far.

[Orsino]

41. He's unprepared...

...to lead an expedition in search of his own ass.

[bunny planet]

40. The CIA is now actively pushing back against the Executive branch.

I think soon we might see the Military pushing back big time against Rummy and his Pentagon. I've heard rumors for years that the military HATES Rummy and holds him personally responsible for bungling the war, and destroying the military.

[progressivebydesign]

42. Can we move these stories to a new forum entitled: NO SHIT SHERLOCK! ?n/t

[Javaman]

43. Thanks guys for pointing out the obvious AFTER the fact...

We are now in the age of "duh, no shit, haven't you been paying attention?"

[xchrom]

44. lol -- so, who knew?

i wonder who got paid what for this so called ''report''?

damn, i'm in the wrong business -- i bet they got bunch o'bucks for that bit of obviousness.

but i don't let bush or the pentagon off for this -- i think they did KNOW what was going to happen -- and i'm more convinced than ever that top gop strategists, neocons and corporate muckymucks wanted this chaos.

[no_to_war_economy]

45. how shocking ! wonder what * was doing instead ..

[madeline_con]

53. Was that the porn version of "Felix the Cat"?

:shrug:

[mtnester]

48. This is news?!?!?!

:sarcasm:

[pitohui]

51. dude was unprepared to eat a pretzel

big news here

[democratic veteran]

54. Right

He wasn't prepared on 9-11 either. Thought all the intelligence stuff was a 'permission slip' to go on vacation.

[WhiteTara]

56. chimpy should have been looking behind

the drapes for the non existant flowers along with the non existant WMDS. But he drinks too much for coherent thought.

[Up2Late]

57. US failed to plan for post-war Iraq- (says) report (from CFR) (Reuters)

(I know what you thinking, another report that says they screwed up, but THIS report is from the
"Council on Foreign Relations!":hi: This is (was?) a very well respected (by the RW) Washington Think Tank! This is about as close as you can get to GHWBush coming out and saying Jr's needs to get a wooppin'!)

US failed to plan for post-war Iraq-report

Wed Jul 27, 2005 01:47 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An independent assessment of the tumult in Iraq led by two top former presidential advisers found the Bush administration had been unprepared for post-war Iraq and had underestimated the number of troops needed in a miscalculation that helped fuel the insurgency. The report by a Council on Foreign Relations task force, released on Wednesday, concluded that the failure to prepare properly for the period after the war had given "early impetus for the insurgency" now gripping the country.

The task force was headed by two former national security advisers, Democrat Samuel "Sandy" Berger and Republican Brent Scowcroft, and presented a bipartisan critique of the Bush approach. Scowcroft, national security adviser under President Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, had warned publicly of the risks of military action in Iraq in the run-up to the 2003 invasion.

"The critical miscalculation of Iraq war-planning was that the stabilization and reconstruction mission would require no more forces than the invasion itself," the panel reported. "Pre-war inattention to post-war requirements -- or simply misjudgments about them -- left the United States ill-equipped to address public security, governance and economic demands in the immediate aftermath of the conflict, seriously undermining key U.S. foreign policy goals and giving early impetus to the insurgency," it said.

It was released as turmoil continued to ravage Iraq despite the presence of about 135,000 American troops, fueling continuing doubts about the country's future. The report said President Bush still had not made the changes in policy and government structure needed to respond to future post-conflict situations and said this should be a top foreign policy priority.

<http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=9192881&src=rss/domesticNews>
(more at link above)

[calimary]

58. Old news to many of us. Nevertheless, GREAT to see picked up

somewhere in the media. I don't mind these retreads a bit. For many news consumers out there, the retread may be the first they've heard of it.

[barbaraann]

59. George W. Bush was unprepared for kindergarten.

n/t

[Auntie Bush]

64. He was also unprepared when he got that woman pregnant!

[truthisfreedom]

60. i strongly disagree. bushco had a STRONG plan for post-war chaos. it's

what's for dinner, people. they WANTED violence and endless war.

[Donailin]

62. probably not, they had expected to be in Iran by now

but you know, those pesky insurgents screwed up their plan. Not to worry, we're still building those 14 bases in Iraq.

[TankLV]

61. He was unprepared to be installed as pResident.

As far as I can tell, he's only prepared to send others off to die and drink and snort.

[wookie294]

63. It's good to see Brent Scowcroft involved

Scowcroft is a Republican who oppsed the war. Too bad he's not employed at the White House today. I hope he continues to speak his mind.