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."
The "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," said the memo -- an assertion attributed to the then-chief of British intelligence, and denied by U.S. officials and by Blair at a news conference with Bush last week in Washington. Democrats in Congress led by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), however, have scheduled an unofficial hearing on the matter for Thursday….
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. And administration officials have acknowledged the mistake of dismantling the Iraqi army and canceling pensions to its veteran officers -- which many say hindered security, enhanced anti-U.S. feeling and aided what would later become a violent insurgency.
Testimony by then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, one of the chief architects of Iraq policy, before a House subcommittee on Feb. 28, 2003, just weeks before the invasion, illustrated the optimistic view the administration had of postwar Iraq. He said containment of Hussein the previous 12 years had cost "slightly over $30 billion," adding, "I can't imagine anyone here wanting to spend another $30 billion to be there for another 12 years." As of May, the Congressional Research Service estimated that Congress has approved $208 billion for the war in Iraq since 2003….
About 10 days later, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw wrote a memo to prepare Blair for a meeting in Crawford, Tex., on April 8. Straw said "the big question" about military action against Hussein was, "how there can be any certainty that the replacement regime will be any better," as "Iraq has no history of democracy."
Straw said the U.S. assessments "assumed regime change as a means of eliminating Iraq's WMD [weapons of mass destruction] threat. But none has satisfactorily answered how that regime change is to be secured. . . ."
The Blair government, unlike its U.S. counterparts, always doubted that coalition troops would be uniformly welcomed, and sought U.N. participation in the invasion in part to set the stage for an international occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, said British officials interviewed recently. London was aware that the State Department had studied how to deal with an invasion's aftermath. But the British government was "shocked," in the words of one official, "when we discovered that in the postwar period the Defense Department would still be running the show."
No justification. No plan. Two hundred billion dollars. 1600 dead Americans. Over ten thousand Americans wounded. And how are we doing on training them Iraqis to provide their own security?
REP. CURT WELDON, (R-PA): Well, Senator Biden and I and the six-member delegation I took with us to Iraq were concerned because the level of training of the Iraqi troops has been represented to the American people as being much more competent than it is today. Senator Biden and I probed this issue aggressively with our generals and they agree with us that you have to define what the level of training, in fact, is. And if you look at those troops that have a level one capability, which mean they can operate totally on their own without backup of U.S. support, it's not the size the numbers that are being reported back home here in America.
MR. RUSSERT: How many would you say it is?
REP. WELDON: I think it's around three divisions.
MR. RUSSERT: Which is?
REP. WELDON: Was it 80,000, Joe?
SEN. BIDEN: No, it's much less. It's three battalions.
REP. WELDON: Oh, three battalions.
SEN. BIDEN: Three battalions. You're talking about thousands, Tim. Not tens of thousands.
Not so good.
How we doing with that new Iraqi government?
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 12 - Iraq moved further toward a political stalemate today, as Shiite political leaders agreed on what they said was a compromise to include Sunni Arabs in the writing of this country's constitution, and Sunnis flatly rejected the offer.
Not so good.
The worst foreign policy blunder in the history of the United States. Worse than Vietnam. Worse than the War of 1812. Based on bullshit and carried out with appalling incompetence. And it's going to go on for years. Americans are going to be fighting and dying there for years. Bush's Iraq misadventure is going to be the second most expensive war Americans have ever fought.
And we can't even get a Congressional hearing on this fucker. The same Republican House that couldn't stop holding hearings for eight straight years while Clinton was in office. The same Republican House that was outraged about the White House travel office, about real estate deals, about interns, they're not that fussed about a bullshit war and disaster in its aftermath.
The American people are going to have to settle for an "unofficial" hearing.
Not just the worst president ever. The worst government ever.
What can I say, but magnificently written; logical and covered all the bases. I think we ought to gather up all the bulldozers and level Washington except for a very few in congress. Well done Ricky.
Posted by: mary | June 12, 2005 at 08:39 PM
Right on Mary!! And Ricky for President!!!
Posted by: cookie | June 12, 2005 at 08:57 PM