"The National Intelligence Council, at the CIA, ran a two day exercise on postwar Iraq. The Office of the Secretary of Defense forbade Pentagon representatives to attend."
The humanitarian groups asking to meet with someone from Defense were told, "The President has already spent an hour on the humanitarian issues".
I'm sure this has been posted before, but in light of this topic becoming more apparent in the media, I thought I would post it today.
The common sense and steady reasoning of James Fallows is comforting in my current heartsick state. He does bring a certain historical perspective to George's big mess. It's worthwhile even if you just read the first and last few paragraphs.
< Here is the hardest question: How could the Administration have thought that it was safe to proceed in blithe indifference to the warnings of nearly everyone with operational experience in modern military occupations? Saying that the Administration considered this a truly urgent "war of necessity" doesn't explain the indifference. Even if it feared that Iraq might give terrorists fearsome weapons at any moment, it could still have thought more carefully about the day after the war. World War II was a war of absolute necessity, and the United States still found time for detailed occupation planning.
The President must have known that however bright the scenarios, the reality of Iraq eighteen months after the war would affect his re-election. The political risk was enormous and obvious. Administration officials must have believed not only that the war was necessary but also that a successful occupation would not require any more forethought than they gave it.
It will be years before we fully understand how intelligent people convinced themselves of this. My guess is that three factors will be important parts of the explanation.>
And in a nut shell, Fallows lists the three factors as:
-Rumsfeld's "panache" and inability to deal with uncertainties.
-A Republican inability to consider challenges to their arguments, and an underlying fear of and antagonism for liberal points of view that they consider to be remnants of 60's liberal excess.
-George's quest for greatness overshadowed by an inability to understand the importance of details.
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2004/01/index.htmSadly, yet predictably, we are going to need a lot more than panache, a big picture, and an absence of doubt to get out of this disaster.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
