There's no shortage of liberal hawk/conservative commentators happy to complain about the lack of planning on Iraq without condemning the war or the administration, the further to the right the more blame is passed onto the State Department, the closer to the Pentagon the more State efforts are referred to as "more an academic seminar than a plan". These complaints are similar to complaints on the intelligence establishment's WMD assessments - ignoring the political redactions and interference in analysis. Like the intelligence community's actual analysis - which was heavily qualified and differed greatly from the assertive public statements on Iraq's capabilities - there was a great deal of complex planning in the State Department going back to the Iraq Regime Change bill in the late 90s, and war drafting going back to October of 2001. The problem was not a lack of planning but that the administration scrapped the plans in deference to the Pentagon and the Friends of Chalabi Committee.
:: posted by buermann @ 2005-08-18 11:40:29 CST |
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