Wolfowitz’s Brain Fart

[Montagnard]

During the run-up to the Iraq invasion, Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of the Defense, had a brain fart that resulted in a fantasy of thousands of Iraqi freedom fighters trained by and doing battle along side the US against Saddam’ forces.

Outside of the delusional Pentagon civilian administration, only Steve Hadley supported the idea. The State Department suspected that Wolfowitz was trying to build a Chalabi army. Tommy Franks thought the Iraqi freedom fighters would just get in the way. After a briefing by William J Luti, a senior aide to Douglas Feith, Franks cornered Feith and told him, “I don’t have time for this fucking bullshit!”

The plan was scaled back somewhat and the recruited Iraqis would be used to guard supply lines, with 9 mm pistols. Two-star General Dave Bruno was assigned the task of training this Iraqi army at Tazar, air base in Hungary. When approached the Hungarian government went sideways and demand that only CIA vetted Iraqis be allowed to enter Hungary. They wanted assurances that no Iraqi or Iranian spies would be among those brought to Tazar.

By February the pool of applicants for potential freedom fighters was so small that Wolfowitz revised the plan and proposed that exile Iraqis living in Iran be recruited. The plan was to bring 3,000 Iraqi out of Iran, 300 at a time.

At the time of the invasion and after millions of dollars had been spent, only 622 Iraqis had been vetted and out of that only 95 showed up and out of that number on 73 completed the four weeks training course. Commenting on this fiasco, CENTCOM staff said that it showed that Feith and his team were better at drafting conservative policy manifestos than instituting programs.

That statement is sort of buttressed by the FEMA BILLION dollar debacle. The Bozos currently leading the country off a cliff are unquestionably a group of major fu*kups.

(Information taken from pages 106-07 of COBRA II)

[Jigarotta]

1. World Bank guy now had some opposition.

but we won't hear much of That now, will we.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. It's like a Marx Brothers Movie, only not so funny.

[KeepItReal]

3. Wolfowitz *is* a brain fart

Chickenhawk punk wouldn't know what to do with an M-16 if you chambered a round, pointed it at Bin Laden, handed it to him and said "Pull the trigger"

I can't stand Neocons.

[Swamp Rat]

4. "only CIA vetted Iraqis be allowed to enter Hungry?"

So everyone else gets a full meal? :D