Bremer: WMD focus overshadowed insurgency

[sabra]

http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/national/index.ssf?/base/national-58/11375570474080.xml&storylist=national

Bremer: WMD focus overshadowed insurgency

The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. intelligence focus on Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction may have contributed to the Bush administration's failure to anticipate the insurgency that followed the U.S. invasion, former Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer said Tuesday.

"The fact that there would be some resistance was anticipated. What really caught us by surprise was its intensity," Bremer told a Manhattan audience, when questioned about why U.S. leaders mistakenly expected a friendlier reception in Iraq.

"I suppose an argument would be that the intelligence resources were almost entirely devoted to WMD and not to this question of the insurgency," he said.

The ex-diplomat, Iraq's occupation chief in 2003-2004, spoke as part of a promotional tour for his memoir of his 14 months in Baghdad, "My Year in Iraq."

[LynnTheDem]

1. When did post-invasion planning become the CIA's job?

Was it when bush IGNORED the US military's plans and needed someone else to blame?

Yeah, thought so.

[daleo]

2. The non-existent WMD took attention away from the unplanned for insurgency

That's a good excuse - the invisible dog ate my homework.

[salin]

11. it was soooo much of our focus that immediately after the invasion....

we rushed to secure known sites containing materials that could be used to make WMDS... oh, ya... we didn't had to secure the oil fields while the weapons materials stockpiles were left unguarded - able to be looted.

[Charlie Brown]

3. Bush's use of discredited intel left soldiers vulnerable & unequipped

"Support the troops," my ass.

[tmooses]

4. Sounds like he's admitting doubts of WMD's and the first priority

was to justify the invasion.

[FloridaPat]

5. I want to know how anyone expected it to be different than Afghanistan.

That was another fiasco. How could Iraq be different with the same idiots in charge.

[tabasco]

6. LMAO ! Pathetic and tragic incompetence.

This makes no sense at all. Does anyone buy these pitiful excuses??

[cliss]

8. Amazing, isn't it?

What a pathetic clown.

As if Paul Bremer didn't get enough out of this deal: I'm sure he walked away with a few billions of that missing money in Iraq.

NOW to boot, he wants to clear his name.

[anotherdrew]

7. BS - then why didn't they secure the probable WMD sites? or the explosives

these idiots can't even keep their stories straight.

[f-bush]

9. that's what happens when you lie about shit.....

....you incompetent rupuke assholes.

[acmavm]

10. This stuff he's coming up with is all ridiculous crap. Don't tell me that

if you kill thousands of people in an uncivilized slaughter dressed up with a name like 'Shock and Awe' that it wouldn't be a logical conclusion to expect the families of the dead to fight back? Especially since they hadn't done anything to anyone to deserve that punishment. And hey, a little thing like some foreigners coming in and taking over your country, that wouldn't piss a few people off?

Bremer is like bush**, he thinks he can just say anything, no matter how stupid, and it'll be declared gospel.