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Originally Posted by hiredgun
I'm not entirely sure what to even do with this information. Furthermore, I'm astonished at the fact that a defense of the post-war planning is even happening here.
There have been entire books written on the ludicrous mishandling of the postwar planning. See: State of Denial; The Assassins' Gate; Imperial Life in the Emerald City.
What is the point of the apologia?
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To me there is a big difference between saying a plan did not work compared to saying there was no plan. To believe there was no plan suggests you have to believe some very extreme things to be true in order to support that view.
Some seem to suggest, based on the fact that there was no plan, that the positive results in Iraq were simply a matter of chance. I guess that means if we sent 200,000 chimps to Iraq, they could have possibly gotten the same results as our military since they were sent there with no plan.
When I look at the Iraq timeline, I clearly see positive results followed by a turn for the worse. Our enemy adapted and changed tactics in order to increase the level of chaos. This war is not a video game where you can develop a plan and a strategy at the begining based on a programed opponent who always responds the same way. It is impossible to plan a war for every contingency. Yes, things in Iraq took a turn for the worse, but that does not mean there was no plan.
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Originally Posted by ratbastid
Knee-jerk reactionism, I suspect. Anything negative about the administration triggers a whole slew of denials and justifications and "yeah-but"s and "it-was-Congress's-fault"s and "yeah-well-Clinton"s.
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Saying there was no plan is a talking point.
Democratic party leadership should be embarassed for voting to fund the war if there was no plan and that they did not ask to see it before allowing Bush to spend billions of dollars in Iraq. You call that point a knee-jerk reaction? If in fact there was no plan, wy didn't Congress play their role of checks and balances as outlined in the Constitution. To me there is nothing more serious, becuase it suggests that we could have a nut in the White House and Congress would not do anything. And you suggest that you don't see the importance of that?