Inconvenient truths about Iraq are conveniently locked away inside of a Pentagon vault

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http://www.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?z=12&a=330297

<snip>So it should come as no surprise that not long after Baghdad fell early in 2003, the Army's top commanders commissioned an After-Action Review of the planning and conduct of the invasion of Iraq and the post-war occupation and reconstruction effort. The Army hired the RAND Corp., a California-based research organization that's done this kind of work for the U.S. military and government for decades.

The study was envisioned as a seven-volume examination of the Army's role in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Suitable for public viewing?

What is a surprise is that nearly three years later, RAND's warts-and-all report on post-war reconstruction, which was completed after 18 months and presented to the Army in the summer of 2005, is still locked in Pentagon vaults.

RAND normally prepares a classified version of such reports for internal use by the Army's commanders and a public version that covers the high points of what was found and what was recommended for the media and academic researchers.

Both versions of the volume of the report titled "Rebuilding Iraq" are locked in the same vault, where they can do no good in educating officers or the American public to the realities that led to a near-catastrophic failure by both the military and civilians to plan for what would happen after we'd toppled Saddam Hussein's government and assumed control of a fractured, feuding nation of 25 million people.