It is not that incompetent Rummie sent too few troops or "presidential medal" Bremer disbanded the army and completely dropped the ball.. "civilian crews were not ushered in swiftly enough". So now Bush wants to create a civilian department that does the same job that his trusted advisors didn't let the State Department do.
Bush Says U.S. Was Slow to Stabilize Postwar Iraq
"You know, one of the lessons we learned from our experience in Iraq is that while military personnel can be rapidly deployed anywhere in the world, the same is not true of U.S. government civilians,... For that reason, Bush said, his administration is proposing to spend millions more to create an "active response corps"..
"This new corps will be on call -- ready to get programs running on the ground in days and weeks, instead of months and years"..
How Bush ignored 10 months of work by experts and to Iraq without a post war plan
Two of the best articles about how post war Iraq ended up in the current mess tell the story of the State Dept.'s 10 months plan for post war and it's complete dismissal by Bush, Rumsfeld & Co.(below)
Update [2005-5-22 2:9:4 by lawnorder]: links to
Blind Into Baghdad - Fallows and
Blueprint for a Mess from a mirror site (the original ones charge for old content, and the freebie links I put below are getting overwhelmed with traffic
Bush's admission hidden in plain sight
Conveniently titled Bush Says Patience Is Needed... in most MSM the adamission did not get much notice. Fortunately an LA Times Staff Writter missed the WH memo on how to title his column and we got to hear more about it.
Post war messy? Blame it on "them"
Bush Says U.S. Was Slow to Stabilize Postwar Iraq
The problematic nature of rebuilding Iraq -- which has been marred by a sense of disorganization and allegations of mishandled funds -- has been widely acknowledged by foreign policy analysts and some administration officials.
But Bush, who once famously declared that he was stumped when a reporter asked if he had made any mistakes during his tenure, rarely concedes missteps. Despite accusations from Democrats and other critics at home and abroad that the administration has bungled the rebuilding, he has been a steadfast defender of U.S. actions in Iraq.
Wednesday's remarks appeared to indicate a shift in tone by a president whose legacy rests, in large part, on a successful reconstruction effort.
State Department II, because State Department one is paralized under Condi
"This new corps will be on call -- ready to get programs running on the ground in days and weeks, instead of months and years," Bush said, noting that his 2006 budget proposal calls for more money to be spent on the newly created Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization, an arm of the State Department that will oversee the response teams.
So the Office of Special Plans, officially created to plan post war stability didn't do it's job ?
Growing scrutiny
Bush's remarks come amid growing scrutiny of the U.S.-led rebuilding efforts in the months after the 2003 ouster of Hussein.
This month, the government began a criminal investigation into suspected embezzlement by U.S. officials who had failed to account for about $100 million designated for reconstruction projects.
Iraqis complain that basic necessities, such as electricity and water, are not in ready supply. Critics say the United States failed to adequately prepare for the insurgency that has resulted in thousands of Iraqi and American casualties.. And now we even have this: Newspaper calls for independent Iraq war inquiry
The Future of Iraq that wasn't meant to be
Those 2 long articles summarized below are VERY worth reading, but here's a quick excerpt
Blind into Baghdad
In late October of 2001, while the U.S. military was conducting its [war on] Afghanistan, the State Department had quietly begun its planning for the aftermath of a "transition" in Iraq.. Thus was born the Future of Iraq project... ..what the project created was impressive. The final report consisted of thirteen volumes.. plus a one-volume summary and overview. ... the need to plan carefully for the handling and demobilization of Iraq's very sizable military [was mentioned prominently]... [but the report seemed] to imply a long, difficult U.S. commitment in Iraq.. and thus weakened the case for launching a "war of choice"... [Also the main] argument for building up what Rumsfeld considered a wastefully large force is that it would be even more useful after Baghdad fell than during actual combat.
Needless to say, Rumsfeld and the war advocates boycotted the report and it's experts
Blueprint for a Mess: "The Future of Iraq Project did draw up detailed reports, which were eventually released to Congress last month and made available to reporters for The New York Times. The 13 volumes, according to The Times, warned that ''the period immediately after regime change might offer . . . criminals the opportunity to engage in acts of killing, plunder and looting.''
But the Defense Department, which came to oversee postwar planning, would pay little heed to the work of the Future of Iraq Project. Gen. Jay Garner, the retired Army officer who was later given the job of leading the reconstruction of Iraq, says he was instructed by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to ignore the Future of Iraq Project.
Garner has said that he asked for Warrick [the former director of the Future of Ira Projecty] to be added to his staff and that he was turned down by his superiors. Judith Yaphe, a former C.I.A. analyst and a leading expert on Iraqi history, says that Warrick was ''blacklisted'' by the Pentagon. ''He did not support their vision,'' she told me.
And what was this vision?
Yaphe's answer is unhesitant: ''Ahmad Chalabi.'' But it went further than that: ''The Pentagon didn't want to touch anything connected to the Department of State.''"