iraq: there really was no plan
 

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/tonyb...104989,00.html

i know quite what to say about this.
it seemed clear that this amounted to being true from the way in which things have played out in iraq..but it is another matter to KNOW that there really was no plan.
no plan.

so the bush administration was willing to commit the american military to this debacle not only on at the very best dubious grounds, but worse to do so without assuming the most basic responsibility toward the military, which was to have a fucking plan.

this is a most basic responsibility because it enables the military to enter a situation, do its thing--which is only possible if it has a clearly defined thing to do, yes?--and get out. a plan outlines the objectives, the route to those objectives--it provides a logic relative to which situations can be evaluated and remedies implemented---without a plan, what can a military apparatus actually do? how can it possibly be coherent if there is no logic and no set of procedures and so nothing that can be used for evaluation?

at the symbolic level, the bush administration's debacle in iraq has performed the theater of an illegitimate war--problems with premise recapitulate in problems of operational execution. it's like the zeitgeist takes over and expresses itself through such symmetries. but at the same time, given that the military is made up of actual human being whose lives are not just material for theater in the hegel mode....i would expect that the information raised in the above article would anger more than just those of us who opposed the war from its outset...i imagine it would anger anyone in the military, or who was in the military or who has family in the military--or anyone who imagines that it is the responsibility of a political regime that commits its military to an action to at least have a fucking plan...

and they say incompetence is not criminal.
surely there has to be a point beyond which that is not true.
how much more criminal an act of incompetence can there be than this?
think of the number of people who are dead on all sides because there is and was no plan.
think of what tactics like "the surge" mean in a context shaped by no plan.

no wonder there's chaos. how could there be anything other than chaos? and without a plan--without an operational logic--how could an apparatus distinguish chaos from its inverse in any event?

no. plan.

un-fucking-believable.

Though the scope and size is different, you'll note that in the past 50 years we have committed troops to all sorts of places which they should not be, and that the war in Iraq is still being funded by a Democrat-controlled congress.

Apparently no group with political power is willing to strip themselves of the ability to throw our troops into a war-like situation on a whim. Instead, they will blame whoever uses that ability without realizing that to be able to do so at all is contrary to our interests as a nation.

i know that one of the first things rumsfeld asked bremer after the war was "when are we leaving?" ... apparently he was not expecting to stay

The "non-plan" in Iraq, clearly was a concious abuse of the troops, beginning with Gen. Shinseki.
Where are all of the posters who once, unquestioningly supported these war criminals?

roachboy, "the troops" have been commanded by malevolent "monsters"....and the officers and carrer non-coms must know it, and it's impossible for me to respect them, because they know, and yet they remained silent. It's even difficult to respect the rank and file enlisted volunteers who allow themselves to be subjected to the abuse and indifference that they ignore or minimize when they "volunteer".

,,,,and why the fuck......are "the democrats" blamed for "not supporting the troops"?????

Bullshit! BULLSHIT-BULLSHIT-BULLSHIT!

There WAS a plan.

...

...

...

DOD needed to rotate MREs and T-rations. We had to start a war to consume them before they all expired. I had Chicken Chow Mein... three meals a day for a month!

(true story)

I propose the following extension to Shakran's law:

As any discussion of Bush Administration malfeasance continues, the odds of congressional Democrats being blamed for said malfeasance shall approach 1.

In this particular case, it happened in post #2, which is, in my estimation, a record.

"Democrats being blamed for said malfeasance" implies that I am absolving Bush/Republicans of blame, which I am not. They are ALL to blame, not just Bush, not just Republicans, and not just Democrats. ALL of them have gotten us into and left us in this war and countless other foreign countries in which we do not belong. We cannot and should not attempt to police the world.

I don't see you mention Bush in your post. Just the Dems. You can see where this might be confusing.

meanwhile, there's more:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...105307,00.html

i just want to highlight a paragraph from the above: rather than bold it in the above, i'll just copy it again:

if this system were self-correcting in any meaningful way, everyone who voted to authorize this farce would resign. everyone who had a hand in planning it would resign. new elections would be held. a significant debate would unfold within the states amongst the population about what course makes sense now in iraq--clearly nothing the bush people have tried is working because THERE WAS NO FUCKING PLAN.

i still find this to be amazing...no plan....amazing....

Self-correcting? What? It wasn't MY fault, it was.. someone.. else's..! I didn't KNOW there was no plan. I didn't ask, but I assumed they MUST have one, so it's not MY fault!

etc etc.. Sadly, politicians These Days™ have no sense of responsibility and will not resign unless they are cornered by angry mobs with torches and pitch-forks. Also, the public is too apathetic to bother paying attention to any real news that takes longer to digest than a 30 second campaign ad. We are aboard a sinking ship.

Don't worry, practice makes perfect, right? I'm sure the Iran invasion will turn out significantly less terribly, and after that we may even do decently when we invade North Korea. It's only a matter of time before the neo-cons and their ilk perfect their tactics.

Here is a link to Bush's plan.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/ir...y_nov2005.html

It seems to me that some people had an unrealistic expectation that our enemy would not respond and adapt to our strategy and tactics. We are fighting a real war against real enemies.

Can anyone cite an historical war that went in exact accordance to a plan laid out in advance?

Can anyone cite another historical war that was commenced in order to clean up Papa's mess from thirty years ago? Let's hope not.

Alexander The Great initiated his first war on behalf of his father.

I am not sure I got the point of your question, but many wars have been fought over generational issues.

I think the current war in Iraq is being fought because we did not finish the job during the first war. I also think if we leave Iraq now, we will fight there again in the future.

ace: let's not be ridiculous.
you know elmer fudd, yes?
what was his plan?
"i am hunting wabbits"
but at least in elmer fudd's case there were wabbits to be hunted.
they were built into the same cartoon.

in this case, the empty notion of "terrorists" is substituted for anything like a coherent plan for the post-war situation in iraq. if you read the "strategy" outlined by the white house, and assume that the category "terrorist" does not refer to anything in particular, you can see that there is no there there.

but this is not really about white house pr: this is about the concerns of the blair government from very early on in this debacle that there was, in fact, no plan.

that there are statements which purport to be plans means little---that there are individual plans seems actually symptomatic of the problem itself--if you read this quote from the article above, which i assume you overlooked:

so it would follow, ace, that there probably are any number of individual plans but there is no plan.
this goes well beyond the unpredictability of war in general.

please do not waste your time posting defenses of the bush people that amount to nothing more than the usual relativizing nonsense ("well, everyone did x... so what the bush people have done is hunky dory.")

1 word: Vietnam. Think about the situation where the people we're said to have been protecting don't want us there and we're in the middle of a civil war. We're not going to win in Iraq, just like we lost in Vietnam.

We'll probably pull out of Iraq in 2008 when Barak Obama, Johnny Edwards, Hillary Clinton, or Ron Paul wins.

That's right. Suck it, Tancredo.

So we're still on that 9/11 Iraq thing? Is this 2003?
This is the deceptive language of the Bush administration, and it's stupid. Iraq clearly had nothing to do with 9/11, and the only weak ass connection to terrorism is... wait for it... paying Palestinian suicide bombers! And guess what? They never got paid. Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism.

It seems people draw an unreasonable association between the 'war on terror' and the war in Iraq. We are in a civil war in Iraq, and we're trying to located and disable radical militants. Two separate causes. Two separate fuck-ups.

roachboy, all of this is interrelated and....at it's core, is the OSP:
<center><img src="http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/01/intelligence_540x1105.gif"></center>

GOOD GOD.

The Crimean War (grandma's mess actually, but I assume that still works)
The War of Polish Succession (depends on the relation to Peter I)
A whole bunch of Russo/Turkish wars


I can go through any number of other European wars with a father/son ruling combination, but the Russian ones are so neat and tidy because the autocratic nature of the governments lends itself so nicely to making the point.

The idea that the sole reason for the invasion of Iraq was the son's need to measure up to the father, or anything of the sort, is laughable.

If indeed this venture proves to be as big a failure as it seems now, then I think it will prove to be a systemic failure, not an individual one. There's more than enough blame to go around here.

Perhaps it boils down to how much detail you want. Assuming Elmer is a real hunter for a moment. He may tell his wife a non-hunter, that he is going hunting he gathers his stuff and leaves. If that was all, to a hunter, his plan to go hunting is no plan. But if Elmer actually talks to his hunter friends and gives the details of what he is hunting, what he going to use, times to be in certain locations, etc, etc., then they may or may not agree that he has a good plan, but he had a plan.

So I am not clear are you saying there was no plan or that the plan was not a good one?

So, they say "in fact, no plan", let's think about that...I thought about it and at best it is not a statement one could take literally. Given the size of our army in Iraq, you have to have a plan, or else how do you feed your army?

Did not overlook it. We won't really know about the details and real failing of the Bush plan until after the war and until after all the key players are out of office and retired. People who were not there really can't say much about the planning. All they know is what they were told.



I decide how I spend my time.

I understand why you chose not to directly repond to the point in my first post here. Basically you have no response. To simply say there is no plan ( or there are plans, I am not clear on your position after reading that you think there were individual plans but also take the position there was no plan) and it goes beyond the unpredictability of war is not a real response.

ace:
you haven't got a leg to stand on.

it seems that there are others in this community who are patient enough to indulge you in the particular style of conversation that you seem to prefer:
i am not one of those people.

like you, i choose how to spend my time.
this is one of those choices.

What is the point of this. You could have ignored me from the beginging. And now if you are going to ignore me why not do it, rather than telling me about it. I simply posted a link to the Bush plan and you folks change the subject and then go balistic. O.k., it is a free country.:shakehead:

Assuming Roachboy won't read this, I ask this question for my amusement (since I know Bush haters won't answer) or for anyone objectively interested in the OP.

What was the plan of the Allied forces after the invasion of Normandy? Was that mission successfully accomplished? How would you compare and contrast the invasion of Iraq to the invasion of Normandy in terms of planning after the invasions?

ace....if you want to be taken seriously...why don't you read the news reporting that roachboy and I have posted....my post details the State Dept. post Iraq invasion planning as early as in 2002...through it's rejection by "civilians in the pentagon"?

Then you might react to specific details in the news reporting....singling out passages or details that don't jive with earlier/later reports from the same....or other sources not influenced or owned by Fox/CNP/Bozell/Horowitz or the RNC.

We are all beholden to reporting from news or investigative journalists.... bolstered by quotes from whistleblowers and attributions of "officials who asked not to be named." Individual reporters.... like James Risen of the NY Times and Pincus of the WAPO build reputations for reliable reporting.

We learn from experience and by the playing out of reported incidents in "the fullness of time"....who reports reliably....and who shills...ala Judith Miller or John Solomon.

All of us only "know" what these journalists publish or televise....ace. When I read a post from you like the one I quote in this post.....with a "Bush had a plan" statement so conflicting with the reported record....with what we now know to be the highly probable account of the quashing by Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld of the actual expert PLAN....I have to agree with roachboy...about having better ways to spend time than going around and around here with you.

When you are willing to respond to opinons supported by the reported record....without relying almost solely on IBD editorials for your support....maybe you won't receive responses to your posts similar to roachboy's last one.....

I'll take a shot at it :)

ace....the "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" so-called "plan" that you linked to on the WH website was written in 2005 (not pre-invasion) in response to criticism that there was no plan... and is hardly a plan at all, but rather a glorified "statement of goals and objectives" ..written well after the fact.

From what I have read from numerous sources, there was no "phase IV" (after taking out Saddam) planning before the invasion.

Brigadier General Mark Scheid, chief of the Logistics War Plans Division after 9/11, and one of the people with primary responsibility for war planning...was interviewed last year and had this to say about pre-war planning for post Saddam Iraq:

The secretary of defense continued to push on us ... that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave," Scheid said. "We won't stay."

Scheid said the planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4," or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations like occupation.
Even if the troops didn't stay, "at least we have to plan for it," Scheid said.

"I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," Scheid said. "We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today.

"He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war."

...."In his own mind he thought we could go in and fight and take out the regime and come out. But a lot of us planners were having a real hard time with it because we were also thinking we can't do this. Once you tear up a country you have to stay and rebuild it. It was very challenging."

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/arc..._09/009469.php

From the National Security Archive:

he U.S. Central Command's war plan for invading Iraq postulated in August 2002 that the U.S. would have only 5,000 troops left in Iraq as of December 2006, according to the Command's PowerPoint briefing slides, which were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and are posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org).

The PowerPoint slides, prepared by CentCom planners for Gen. Tommy Franks under code name POLO STEP, for briefings during 2002 for President Bush, the NSC, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, the JCS, and Franks' commanders, refer to the "Phase IV" post-hostilities period as "UNKNOWN" and "months" in duration, but assume that U.S. forces would be almost completely "re-deployed" out of Iraq within 45 months of the invasion (i.e. December 2006).

"Completely unrealistic assumptions about a post-Saddam Iraq permeate these war plans," said National Security Archive Executive Director Thomas Blanton. "First, they assumed that a provisional government would be in place by 'D-Day', then that the Iraqis would stay in their garrisons and be reliable partners, and finally that the post-hostilities phase would be a matter of mere 'months'. All of these were delusions."
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB214/index.htm

To be provided:

In March 2003, days before the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, American war planners and intelligence officials met at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina to review the Bush administration's plans to oust Saddam Hussein and implant democracy in Iraq.

Near the end of his presentation, an Army lieutenant colonel who was giving a briefing showed a slide describing the Pentagon's plans for rebuilding Iraq after the war, known in the planners' parlance as Phase 4-C. He was uncomfortable with his material - and for good reason.

The slide said: "To Be Provided."
...
At the Pentagon, the director of the Joint Staff, Army Gen. George Casey, repeatedly pressed Gen. Tommy Franks, the head of the Central Command, for a "Phase 4," or postwar, plan, the senior defense official said.

"Casey was screaming, 'Where is our Phase 4 plan?' " the official said. It never arrived.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/staff/war...ory/16325.html

For the sake of arguement for the moment I will say that I agree there was no plan because the discussion won't get past that issue otherwise.

Given no "Phase 4 plan" I ask the question how does the current situation compare to past wars? I would simply suggest that sometimes in war you have to make decisions on the "fly". During war, you may be presented with an opportunity or challenge that you did not anticipate. I used Normandy as an example, what was our plan after that invasion? Basically it was - let's see which army can get to Berlin first.

Also, most reasonable people can understand that it would have been virtually impossible to have a plan for every possible condition we might face after taking Sadaam out of office. So again assuming there was no "phase 4 plan", does not mean things had to go as badly as they have gone in Iraq. In fact, initially things were not as bad as they are now. Ironically the best written and detailed plan could have lead to worse results. So the current situation may be more of an execution issue rather than a planning issue.

Lastly, like it is stated in your post not everyone in the Administration agreed with Powell and his - if you break it, you fix it philosophy. Invading and leaving is actually a plan. So again, it may not have been the plan you wanted or agreed with, but that is different than saying there was no plan.

ace...you have an absolute unique perspective on things that IMO borders on the absurd.

Even though there is no reasonable comparison to the D-Day invasion of France, of course there was a post Normandy occupation plan...a bit more detailed than "lets see which army gets to Berlin first" (wtf....do you really believe that?).

To start, "civil affairs" divisions of the Allied armies were dropped by parachute in the second wave of the assault at Normandy. These administrators—civil engineers, attorneys, investment bankers, military policemen, scientists and physicians, etc raced by jeep to town halls to take control of each village moments after it was liberated. They sealed roads, declared martial law, captured and guarded food supplies, etc. (just the highlights of the immediate occupation plans)

I was actually being a bit generous in describing the WH National Strategy for Victory in Iraq as a glorified "statement of goals and objectives" rather than a plan ..written well after the fact. It was in fact, a self-promoting PR piece with no specific actions identified to respond to any potential scenario other than "we will be greeted as liberators" and filled with bullshit platitudes that bore no resemblance to the truth (eg....page 5 - On the economic front... “Our restore, reform, build, strategy is achieving results.” On the political front... “Our Isolate, Engage, and Build strategy is working.” On the security front... “Our clear, hold, and build strategy is working.”)

I agree it is not possible to plan for every possible scenario. but there appears to have been no planning at all to prepare to respond any pre-war intel that did not conform with the WH pre-determined outcome...most particularly the intel identifying potential Baathist backlash, sectarian conflict and al Queda infiltration as well as the potential enormous problems in reconstructing the country's government and infrastructure.

THERE WAS NO PLAN (a plan requires actions steps as opposed to a more general strategy) and that was incompetence bordering on malfeasance on the part of DoD and ultimately the White House.

As ludicrous as the D-Day comparison, your suggestion that "the best written and detailed plan could have lead to worse results" is even more baseless.

You cant keep rewriting history without facts and you have no facts to support your contentions above.

You did it in the Gonzales discussion with your assertion that previous administrations likely broke the hiring laws for political gain, but it just wasnt "uncovered" ...and you are doing it again here.

Not that you probably care what I or others here think, but you lose more credibility each time you make up these wild scenarios to suit your agenda.

There was a really astounding story on the NPR show "This American Life" a few weeks back that addressed exactly this. The story asserted that across the board, the question of how to manage the occupation was brushed aside as somebody else's problem. Planners in both the White House and the Pentagon basically completely ignored the post "liberation" phase of the operation, because they couldn't adequately predict how it was going to go, and because it's the hard, glory-free part, and they were fixated on the invasion and capture of Saddam. They justified it by saying that the Red Cross or somebody would take care of that part.

There was a pre-invasion report done by a guy (I can't remember his name or rank now, sorry) that basically laid out EXACTLY what we're currently facing... and it was utterly ignored by all the planners. In fact, they took several actions that he specifically warned them not to do. Disbanding the Iraqi army, for instance.

So it's not just that there was no plan. It's that the effort to MAKE such a plan was deliberately and specifically resisted by those in charge.

When was the post occupation plan developed?

From your point of view my questions and comparison are absurd, I think I ask for more than just the anti-Bush talking points and many find that offensive. Whenever I ask for more, I get the "you are..." this or that line. This is what you folks sound like to me:

Anti-Bush person - Bush had no plan.
Me - I think Bush had a plan, here it is...
Anti-Bush person - You are out of touch with reality and you are a (fill-in the blank).
Me - What should the plan look like, in order for it to meet your standard?
Anti-bush person - My Goodness you are such an (fill-in the blank).
Me - What standard do you use to measure Bush's actions to past war-time Presidents?
Anti-Bush Person - You are totally off the subject and by the way you are such a (fill-in the blank).

I don't know if I am truly absurd, but I certainly have a unique ability to irritate anti-Bush folks in this forum. The nerve of me asking questions and challenging the talking points of anti-Bush folks.

Again when was the planning for this done in relationship to the invasion? It seemed to me that we had people during WWII who could think on their feet and develop plans based on circumstances presented.

Also most of this was done after the military secured various locations. In Iraq intially parts of the country were secured, later this security broke down. Initially, there were plans in place that allowed for the formation of an Iraqi government and constitution, people voted and participated like never before. Intitally thing appeared to be on the right track, then there was a breakdown. So was there a plan? I say yes.

You clearly state what you considered not a plan, so I ask what should a plan from the White House look like for the occupation after the invasion? How much detail? How much certainty should there have been, given the level of uncertainty in the country? Should the White House plan included times and dates for military potty breaks?

You use the word "appears". I suggested that we may not know the full extent of any planning or lack of planning until the key players are out of office and the war is over. Is that absurd? Why would my saying that make anti-Bush people go balistic?

On one hand we have a general who says there was no phase 4 plan, and that they intended to leave. and of course now we have many Americans saying we should leave, and that perhaps we should have known an occupation was not going to work.

On another hand we again have a general saying there was no phase 4 plan, and it seems at some point we could do that to infinity. We had a phase 4 plan but no phase 5 plan...etc...etc...etc.

On another hand we have a general (remember my bias for loyalty) who is making negative public statements against the head of the military at a time of war. My intial reaction to something like that will always be negative and one of distrust. My tendency will be to totally dismiss what he says, but in this thread I didn't.

Perhaps those points are absurd also, and if true I will wear the label with honor.

Now, the of making a historical comparision to a current event is "ludicrous", or are you saying I am "ludicrous"? Isn't more efficient just to show or explain why the comparison is "ludicrous"?
There is a basis. Perhaps you don't understand it. I will simply say there are people in the world who do a lot of planning and little of getting things done, and there are people who do a lot of getting things done and little planning. Which are you?


What contention(s) do you want support for?

My, my, the nerve of me to suggest such a thing.

I made up a wild scenario? I wasn't the one who introduced Emer Fudd into the discussion.:eek:

In DC's post #23, he includes quotes from General Scheid were the General states the Rumsfeld had no intention of occupying Iraq. At some point that changed, but if that was the original plan, how can you now say that the intel about how difficult an occupation would be was ignored? It seems Rumsfeld agreed and stated that the American people would not tolerate a long drawn out war based on an occupation. Remember Rumsfeld, the guy everyone wanted out as soon as possible. Perhaps he was the voice of reason. Perhaps a better question is - why did they change the original plan?

here's an interesting look at the iraq debacle.
ther argument is clear enough: what do you make of it?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2109546,00.html

Wow, Donald Rumsfeld seems totally unaware that there was any plan, Tony Blair says that Bush had no plan, Bush admits as much himself and says that Britain doesn't need to send troops and can "help out in some other way," but aceventura3 knows there was a plan and will fight everyone who says otherwise.

No wonder this fool keeps getting himself elected.

O.k. if you reasonably (any third party can be the judge of if it is reasonable) address this point I will never comment on "the plan" or lack of "the plan" again on this forum since I am so, so unreasonable and out of touch with reality on this issue.

In order to believe there was no plan, you would have to believe that Congress would commit billions of dollars in subsequent funding with no plan in place, in essence flushing the money and lives away. Is that what you believe and why would they do that?

....sigh.... the democrats tried to stop the plan to invade Iraq in the first place, then they tried to stop the supplemental funding for it....and they called the rationale for invading Iraq "a fraud" early, and often....but they didn't have the votes, and Bush had the "bully pulpit".....9/11.........9/11.......9/11.......9/11...

The Bush administration made sure that it would be a tough political fight...they still are....and they've actually reversed sentiment to an extent, with their bullshit propaganda....while the troops continue to die in Iraq:

(This is from just ten months ago:)
<b>The problem for democratic congressional leaders....they did resist, they did object, they did vote against the 2002 resolution and against the supplemental Iraq war funding appropriations....is that the Bush administration, with the cooperation of many partisan supporters and the sincere, gullible folks with misplaced patriotic sentiments and irrational fears that the partisans "played"....is that a common sense driven, "will of the majority", has still not coalesced around the five years old, consistent democratic opposition to all of the deception, wasted lives, wasted money.....</b>
Here is the speech on the senate floor by the senior democratic senator, against the first supplemental appropriations request to fund the Iraq war:

Can you give me a concise summation?

The members of Congress who voted for funding our military occupation of Iraq (or whatever you want to call it) did so realizing there... (was or was not a plan)... they did this because ...

..they are spineless cowards whose principles mean less to them than their hold on their positions of power. Standing up to Bush could have meant that some segment of the population would be angry with them, and they need to try to please everyone in order to remain in office so that they can hand out goodies to their friends and enjoy the cream.

The Democrats continuing to fund the war in Iraq should show everyone that they are exactly like the Republicans -- career politicians who tout principles but don't actually intend to live by them.

This doesn't mean, however, that there was any sort of real plan going into Iraq. It simply means that both major political parties are equally alright with flushing billions of dollars and thousands of lives down the drain.

I just want to make sure I have a clear understanding of the point being made in this thread:


*although we had thousands of military and civilian personel in the country doing something.

*although the Iraqi people managed to develop a constitution, hold elections and install elected officials.

*athough the US has trained thousands of Iraqi security forces.

*athough reconstruction efforts have lead to the completion of hundreds of projects.

*athough Sadaam was captured, tried, convicted and executed.

*although the US military has lead sucessful operations against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

*although there is a new currency in Iraq, a stock exchange, and thousands of new businesses started.

*although Congress has authorized spending billions in post invasion funding for or military and occupation in Iraq.

*although Congress confirmed Gen. Patraus who testified about his support of the "new plan" invovling the surge.

*etc.

*etc.

*etc. (I am sure the pattern is clear)

Does that kinda sum it up? As agreed I will have nothing more to say on this issue.

Having some results get produced does not imply that there was a plan from the beginning. Most of those things were ad-hocked into place, and many haven't achieved the goals they were intended for.

There's NO way to paint Iraq as anything but a quagmire, so your time might be better spent not saying anything more on this issue.

Because we had no plan beyond taking out Saddam, our invasion and occupation:

* strengthened Iran as a regional power with one less buffer
* created a breeding ground for al Queda where it didnt exist and a cause for terrorist wannabees around the world
* unleashed sectarian violence so that Iraqis, both sunni and shiia are killing each other at a rate far greater than Saddam did
* caused the greatest refugee crisis in the region in 50 years, with as many as 2 million Iraqis displaced from their homes in the last 5 years
* created a childrens health crisis as a result of the destruction of basic water and sewer infrastruture, followed by incompetent mismanagement of reconstruction aided by a new set of corrupt Iraqi officials
* allowed much if Iraq's treasures to be looted
* etc
* etc

This kinda sums it up.....much of it predicted in the pre-war intel that Bush chose to ignore.

In a rueful reflection on what might have been, an Iraqi government insider details in 500 pages the U.S. occupation's "shocking" mismanagement of his country - a performance so bad, he writes, that by 2007 Iraqis had "turned their backs on their would-be liberators."

"The corroded and corrupt state of Saddam was replaced by the corroded, inefficient, incompetent and corrupt state of the new order," Ali A. Allawi concludes in "The Occupation of Iraq," newly published by Yale University Press.

Allawi writes with authority as a member of that "new order," having served as Iraq's trade, defense and finance minister at various times since 2003. As a former academic, at Oxford University before the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, he also writes with unusual detachment.

The U.S.- and British-educated engineer and financier is the first senior Iraqi official to look back at book length on his country's four-year ordeal. It's an unsparing look at failures both American and Iraqi, an account in which the word "ignorance" crops up repeatedly.

First came the "monumental ignorance" of those in Washington pushing for war in 2002 without "the faintest idea" of Iraq's realities. "More perceptive people knew instinctively that the invasion of Iraq would open up the great fissures in Iraqi society," he writes.

What followed was the "rank amateurism and swaggering arrogance" of the occupation, under L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which took big steps with little consultation with Iraqis, steps Allawi and many others see as blunders:

* The Americans disbanded Iraq's army, which Allawi said could have helped quell a rising insurgency in 2003. Instead, hundreds of thousands of demobilized, angry men became a recruiting pool for the resistance.

* Purging tens of thousands of members of toppled President Saddam Hussein's Baath party - from government, school faculties and elsewhere - left Iraq short on experienced hands at a crucial time.

* An order consolidating decentralized bank accounts at the Finance Ministry bogged down operations of Iraq's many state-owned enterprises.

* The CPA's focus on private enterprise allowed the "commercial gangs" of Saddam's day to monopolize business.

* Its free-trade policy allowed looted Iraqi capital equipment to be spirited away across borders.

* The CPA perpetuated Saddam's fuel subsidies, selling gasoline at giveaway prices and draining the budget.

In his 2006 memoir of the occupation, Bremer wrote that senior U.S. generals wanted to recall elements of the old Iraqi army in 2003, but were rebuffed by the Bush administration. Bremer complained generally that his authority was undermined by Washington's "micromanagement."

Although Allawi, a cousin of Ayad Allawi, Iraq's prime minister in 2004, is a member of a secularist Shiite Muslim political grouping, his well-researched book betrays little partisanship.

On U.S. reconstruction failures - in electricity, health care and other areas documented by Washington's own auditors - Allawi writes that the Americans' "insipid retelling of 'success' stories" merely hid "the huge black hole that lay underneath."

For their part, U.S. officials have often largely blamed Iraq's explosive violence for the failures of reconstruction and poor governance.

The author has been instrumental since 2005 in publicizing extensive corruption within Iraq's "new order," including an $800-million Defense Ministry scandal. Under Saddam, he writes, the secret police kept would-be plunderers in check better than the U.S. occupiers have done.

As 2007 began, Allawi concludes, "America's only allies in Iraq were those who sought to manipulate the great power to their narrow advantage. It might have been otherwise."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040907K.shtml

Concise summary?

We did a bad thing, Lenny.

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?

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.

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.

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?

Nonsense. The positive results we've seen (and frankly, you're pointing to the needle in the haystack) are the result of determined, intelligent, and hard-working men and women doing the best they can given the environment they're forced to work in. But there's a huge difference between in-the-field ad-hockery and a planned out, thought out occupation strategy. As in: one works, and the other almost sort of halfway works while costing a vast number of unnecessarily lost lives.

Let's be reasonable. You think positive results in Iraq are like a needle in a haystack? Basically saying nothing positive has happened in Iraq since our occupation. Am I understanding your position clearly?

You keep doing that. Do you have amnesia? Or are you just trying to revise history to score points?

The Democratic party had no control at the time. Most democrats (I know, for you the exceptions are all that matter, but stay with me here) were screaming bloody murder about the invasion, its lack of planning, its lack of justification, and everything else about it. Who was in control of Congress at the time was... REPUBLICANS. No amount of screaming on the part of Democrats could cause ANYTHING, because they were the minority at the time, and the White House had congressional Republicans utterly pussy-whipped into lockstep agreement with their policies. Remember?

To now turn around and blame Democrats because the Congress of five years ago was utterly dominated by the President is simply revisionist and lame.

No. In fact, no fair or honest reading of that post could have you arrive at that conclusion.

There are positive things that have happened since our invasion. They're vastly outnumbered by the negative things that have happened. And there being positive things doesn't imply that there was ever a plan--this ratio of positive-to-negative is completely consistent with an occupation that is made up as it goes along.

I don't blame the Democrats because I think there was a plan. And you seem to dance around the point given your belief there was no plan.

Control or no control as a member of Congress they should voted based on what is best for the country. Everyone who believed there was no plan should have voted no to funding.

I agree thinks are screwed up in Iraq today and could not be much worse. But I did see positive results initially. My current belief is that we should bring our troops home because of our lack of will to finish the job. I think we need to re-group and prepare to fight there another day. If we fail to finish the job, in my opinion there is no doubt we will be back.

the apologia for the bush people seems based on an obvious confusion between having stated objectives and having a plan.
objectives that are strung together without anything like a coherent assessment of the context within which they were to be implemented are NOT A PLAN--they are nothing more than devices for providing the illusion of coherence. that these limited reactive objectives could be conflated with a plan IS the conservative talking point on iraq.
and what ace has been doing above is little more than rehearsing this talkingpoint over and over.
that he would project this onto everyone who opposes his sad defense of this incompetent administration is just bizarre.


somewhere along the line in this thread ace seems to have decided that the op somehow originated within the loyal american oppositions--but it didnt. the op references reticences on the part of the blair government over getting involved in the bushscapade in iraq precisely because there was no coherent overall plan.
that is, there was no serious analysis of the state of affairs over which saddam hussein presided and so no serious analysis of what the likely fault-lines would be after the fact--it is only plausible that the bush people would have been surprised by how things have transpired IF they had done no such prior analysis--which means then that there was not and could not have been a fucking plan.
the wolfowitz "Idea"--you know, that the american liberators would march across iraq on flower-strewn streets having successfully engineered a coup d'etat--and that afterwards everything would immediately return to some "normal" so that the Heroic Amuricans could simply march back out the way they marched in and everything would be Hunky Dory---this was so thoroughly rooted in delusion, so thoroughly divorced from ANY assessment of what saddam hussein's regime was and why it was as it was that it requires (still) an effort of considerable proportions to imagine that it was understood as plausible anywhere, by anyone, ever.
you could have read ANY account of saddam hussein's regime, plotted the bush-invasion and foreseen the outcomes and this from no particular viewpoint--no security clearance, no secret infotainment.

the amazing thing is that once the wolfowitz delerium was revealed to be nothing more or less than delerium--for which wolfowitz was punhsed by being made presidento of the world bank for a while---the americans found themselves without a particular PLAN and so have kind of drifted through a series of tautological objectives--stop the fighting in quadrant x, consider building some shit in quadrant y---all the while, simply by remaining in iraq and having no coherent idea of how to proceed, the americans came to be understood for what they were--colonial occupiers--and so became initially THE enemy and then--better still--a faction amongst others in a civil war.

a PLAN would have at the very least put the bush people in the position not not being ambushed by the implications of their action. it would have created the possibility that the americans could do something that is more than or different from being a faction amongst others in a civil bloody war.
but they dont have one and
a sequence of objectives is pure reactiveness, relies on no particular understanding of the context, assumes no particular coherent general goal. what the bushpeople have been doing is floating a sequence of particular tactical objectives as if tactics were strategy--but any idiot knows that this is not the case. hell, you cant even play chess well if you approach it as a series of tactical responses--and chess happens on a flat board--OF COURSE you cant fight a fucking war without a fucking strategy. that this bush-occupation has no strategy. the strategy was the wolfowitz delusion. when that turned out to be nothing at all, not even smoke, the strategy game was over.

the only thing i agree with ace about AT ALL, and this not even for the same reasons, is that congress obviously aborgated its oversight responsibilities in authorizing the use of military force.

every last person who concieved of this war, implemented it or approved it should resign. every last one of them.

a functional system of governance would not have allowed this debacle to happen at all. what is unfolding in iraq is a bloody, horrifying theater of the wholesale abdication of responsibility by the american governmental apparatus in the face of the hysteria that was the pathetic "war on terror"...

I don't disagree that Bush had broad general objectives for the occupation of Iraq. However, I think that is the role of the person on top - to give the general objectives. From those objectives I would expect subordinates at each level to have more and more specific plans. I think there is a natural top - down, down - up process to plan development. And that it is a process. I think the confusion on the left has to do with the fact that on some specific date there was no official document called "The Plan". I don't think there has ever been such a document for any war. Over 200,000 military people in Iraq, seemed to know what to do and when to do it. In my view, that suggests a plan.

I Blair is saying that he committed his nation to the occupation of Iraq with no plan, then he is an idiot (which I don't believe). At some point they had to have a discussion about what his military was responsible for, what they were going to do and what our military was responsible for and what we were going to do, if he is saying that did not happen but let his people die with no stated purpose, then I would wonder why.

So, to me it always comes back to - if you believe there was no plan you have to believe some things that don't add up.

The belief from many was that Saddam ruled through fear, and brutality. This actually became the second reasoning for invasion once the first one was tossed out(or was it the third...hmm....):

1) Tied to 9/11
2) WMD
3) Liberation

Yeah...it was #3, but anyway. Any reasonable and intelligent evaluation of the serious implications of an invasion would naturally take into account the aftermath of freeing a population from such tyrannical rule, and plan for maintaining order. Either you beat everyone into submission, thereby becoming that which you attempted to destroy, or you simply hope the population is so very pleased with what you have done for them that they share tea and make flower wreaths to bestow upon your brow.
It would seem we went with the second option, and it didn't quite turn out as planned. In short, "hoping" for an outcome in war is a rediculous, and irresponsible outlook not worthy of anyone who has experienced the uncontrolled realities of warfare. If indeed it turns out there was no actual detailed contingency plan for the well understood impact removing Saddam would have on Iraq,the deaths of thousands fall on the shoulders of those who failed to listen to the messengers.

I think you're raising some valid points in regard to the evidence of a plan. But keep in mind that what the responses are claiming is that doesn't rise to the level of a Plan...even if there were a series of little p plans.

Let's go back to the hunter analogy for how this might play out:
So you are arguing that a hunter will make a plan to shoot a deer.
Maybe he tells his wife, honey, I'm going to go hunt a deer and put it on the porch of our next door neighbor because they don't have any food to eat.

She says great. That's a plan.

He tells his hunter friends, hey, I'm going to hunt a deer and put it on the porch next door. I'm doing this Tuesday, I'm going to build a perch, I'm going to use a particular firearm, I'm going to get my tags, etc. A much more detailed plan.

Yet, it's still the same plan...still a plan of battle. Although more elaborated.

So he shoots a deer and puts in the next door neighbor's porch.
After a few hours, it starts to stink.

The hunter talks to a couple buddies...why is no one dressing the deer?
Maybe they don't know how.
The hunter sends someone over to clean up the deer.
And someone else comes over and butchers and packages the deer.

But the pieces of meat are still sitting on the porch.
And the family is still going hungry.
Are they stupid? There is meat right on the porch.

Everyone agrees, it was a good plan to find some meat, clean the meat, and package the meat. But someone finally gets a word in, hey, maybe they don't have a fridge to put the meat in. Maybe they don't have a stove to cook it.

A fridge is provided, a stove is built, but still the family starves.
Why?

Finally, the hunter's uncle steps out into the conversation.
Three months ago, I told you that the family was vegetarian.
I explained that I thought they wouldn't eat meat, no matter how hungry they became, because of the reasons underlying their vegetarianism.

So in the end, you had a plan, but no Plan. You had a plan to secure meat, but no Plan to secure the family would eat.

So for want of the context, the family starved.
Although you had a number of plans, all of them good even.


So when you make the claim that lots of people securing military objectives speaks to a plan, and on many levels a successful one...well, you are right.
But that doesn't mean there was a Plan. A plan of how to make this whole thing work more than at the military level.

And even the fact that they created a plan to make a functional government apparatus does not rise to the level of a complete plan of how to win the "hearts and minds of the people." Because they didn't really listen to the experts on what the hearts and minds of the people wanted or needed.

OR more accurately, that there were different segments of the population that had widely divergent notions of what they want.

So hopefully that will help you see the argument of a lack of a plan...that the statement allows for a military plan, and even a government plan, but most of those two big plans rise to the level of an occupation plan. whereas we need an assistance plan...which never was made.

Bush himself can not be a bush hater, and given the fact that he himself claimed that this war was not about nation building it seems that we ought to take that at face value.

Because the sad fact of the matter is that the anti war group, and a few war propenents, knew from the beginning that the only thing that had a chance of working out would be a nation-building plan. And we didn't want to fund that, we didn't want to support that. And war supporters and detractors can discuss among themselves the ethical/moral implications of their position.

It's legit to argue, hey I wanted to rebuild a nation.
And it's also legit to argue, hey, I don't want to be responsible for that.

But the fact remains that Bush said he wasn't interested in that, whereas it's becoming clear he was or at the very least should have been. And the argument is that his administration knew the public wouldn't go for that. Wasn't interested in being in position for a decade. So they didn't tell the public. And they tried to make secret plans, but left large agencies out of the loop to do so, with dire consequences--they didn't have the expertise of such large agencies.

And you might be fine with all this going on. But the cracks undermining our success are at least in part because everyone wasn't included in the planning loop. So that leaves us with the problem of: include everyone and get good planning but risk people resisting the idea of rebuilding a nation and derailing the whole process....or making up the best plan we can in secret and arguing we aren't going to rebuild a nation after all, and then go ahead and do it when the time demands it.

I prefer the first one: open, honest communication with the risk that opposing ideas might prevail.
Others prefer the second: secretive planning that demands insular communication risking the overall success in the larger picture because you don't get all the best minds on the same page.

And what you're seeing here is disagreement over which course of action is legitimate in a functional democracy.

I agree with you in the way you extended the Hunter Analogy to conclude the hunter had an incomplete overall plan and no real initial plan to convert the deer into something his neighbors could use. I enjoyed reading it too.

I also see how intelligence, (info from Uncle) was misused or ignored, however, the hunter spoke to his spouse about "the plan", she thought it was a good one - similar to the way Bush got input from Congress. Also the Hunter spoke to his other hunter friends about "The Plan" and they thought it was a good plan. The hunter had one piece of information indicating the plan was going to be ineffective, but many people would assume the family would eat the deer rather than starve, I know I would. But, the Hunter had others who failed to adequately confront him with the inadequacies of his plan. I would think it disingenuous if they were to later criticize the plan without taking some responsibility for their failure to challenge the plan, their failure to present an alternative plan, and the fact that they did nothing while the family starved. I would at least have some respect for the Hunter for attempting to help the family.

We also have the situation in your analogy where the Hunter attempts to modify his plan. Again, it proved inadequate given the circumstances. And again, I would give the Hunter credit for that.

Perhaps we are splitting hairs when it comes to defining whether there was a plan or that the plan was ineffective for the Iraq occupation. I take the position there was a plan and that the initial plan was ineffective in regards to the occupation.

I also take the position that like Bush, the Hunter reviewed his plan with others who failed to question his plan, take a stand against the plan, or present an alternative plan. Certainly in Bush's situation there were people who were against the use of military force against Iraq, but Bush did have authorization from Congress, the UN and other nations who supported our military efforts. I would argue that with the support Bush received the Iraq war became our war, and not "Bush's war". I also think Democrats are currently taking political advantage of an unpopular war. I am not making a moral judgment in my statement, I just think it is true.

I also take the position that like the Hunter, Bush attempted to modify his plan. Even with the realization that the family would starve rather than eat meat, the Hunters intent was genuine. I believe Bush's intent with the occupation of Iraq is genuine. I think Iraq is our global front in the war on terror, we need to stabilize the region, we need a strategic military location in the Middle East given Iran, we need a stable oil market, but I also believe Bush has a genuine interest in helping the Iraqi people realize the freedoms that can be realized in a democracy type government. I think we can have multiple goals and they not be in conflict.

1. i do not know what a "war on terror" is. no-one does. "terror" is not a state.
2. if the goal of the bush people is "stabilizing the region" then they are doing a piss poor job of it, not only in the context of iraq, but also in the larger scheme of things.

what amazes me---even in the present context--is that it appears that the cheney "plan" is to start yet another war. the dick waving relative to iran will not stop.

have a look:

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2127115,00.html

so here we have a classical chicken-egg problem.
the americans blunder their way toward chaos in iraq.
they find themselves a faction amongst factions in a conflict that repeats the logic of british colonial domination--group played against group--except that it appears that the americans are not as adept at this game as the uk once was.
the conflict spirals down and down. no end in sight. no coherent plan of action. no way out.
the bush people are taking an epic pounding in the bizarre-o world of "the polls" the floating barometers to public opinion and badly designed questions working in tandem to produce a consistent illusion of pseudo-democratic feedback ("the polls"---a funny double-edged word)
no way out but 18 months left before the american people are politically free again and engage in the heavily mediated exercise of that pseudo-freedom by selecting from amongst the jukebox options they are presented with at the time.
in conservativeland, accepting responsibility for one's actions is understood as something that the poor should do. those with power, if they are conservative, need not worry about such trivialities. so it follows that the bush administration has preferred over the past months to argue, when the opportunity presents itself, that the scenario in iraq is at least in part a result of iranian "meddling" and not of american idiocy.
for cheney, it appears tht iran is now what the "hitlero-trotskyite wrecker" was for stalinism--the floating principle of that-which-goes-wrong, which intervenes from Outside to fuck up and otherwise Perfect System.
so it follows for cheney, as for stalin, that the logical response is to declare war on that floating principle of that-which-goes-wrong rather than consider the possibility that iraq is the debacle that it is because of american actions: for cheney-style conservatives, it is unthinkable that the americans can fuck up so there is no point in trying to coherently address that possibility: instead, let's press the case for war against the principle of that-which-can-go-wrong. or iran.

this really is lunacy, folks.
the ONLY register in which this idea makes even the SLIGHTEST bit of sense is one wholly conditioned by the political misfortunes of the administration itself which would have to be collapsed into an assessment of the american situation as a whole, not only in iraq, but everywhere.
another war, the thinking must go, would galvanize support for teh bush people, end this scary sense of lame-duckness and enable to bush people--dick cheney in particular--to go out in a blaze of western-film Glory.

it is lunacy.
this administration really should be stopped.
that this political system provides no way to stop them is an index of the extent to which that system is broken--not what it claims it is, not functional, not beneficial--broken, outmoded, bankrupt. over.

but the idea of invading iran--or bombing iran--DOES smack of "planning" in the george w bush "see-what-you-want-to-see-and-nothing-else" mode.

"War on Terror"

I've been thinking about this recently. Maybe I'm thinking about rhetorical strategies and their implications in the real world because of roachboy's emphasis on analyzing them... We've had other wars on ideas. The war on drugs and war on poverty come to mind, but there is a significant difference there that I haven't explicitly thought about before. Those "wars" were meant from the beginning to be metaphorical - they were a kind of declaration of seriousness on our government's part.

Somehow the War on Terror seems to be presented in a more literal way. Not only are we using military troops in this one, but our President consistently portrays and speaks of himself as a wartime leader and talks about our nation being at way. On the other hand, it also seems like the administration is going to lengths to keep the general public from having to sacrifice much in this war, unlike other, more real wars. I can only interpret this as a sign that the "War on Terror" is not a metaphorical device, but it also is not an actual War. It's a rhetorical device which belies the very underpinnings of the Bush administration's philosophy on power.

The War on Terror marks an amorphous period that can only be declared open or closed by the government. One entity declares, defines, measures, and profits from this state - which seems to be intended to go on indefinitely. One thing that is interesting to me as I learn more about the writing of the Constitution and the debates that surrounded is that the role "Commander in Chief" was not intended to be a description that applied in any but exceptional circumstances. Hell, it wasn't settled that the US would even have a standing army for several terms. Think about how often and in how many circumstances Bush invokes his role as Commander in Chief as justification for authority or action...

In your view are we in a war with terrorist groups and organizations?

How would you describe the "war(s)" involving Native Americans and settlers of this country and later our organized government? Were these "wars"?

no.
there is no war on an abstraction.
and i am not at all clear about whether there can be war in any legal sense on a non-state entity, particularly one the status of which is somewhere between ambiguous and fictional.

i am quite sure that you do not want to go down this route if all your are looking for is some parallel any parallel to the bush administration's surreal "war on terror". repose the question if you want---i'm just giving you a way out, ace.

It is a question. Why would I need a way out? I have not made any argument relative to a connection with our "war on terror" and this nations war(s) or military and other violent conflicts with Native Americans. Whatever you are thinking about what I am thinking is speculation on your part. In my view it is a waste of time because a more efficient thing to do is to ask what I think.