Misconception 6

Did the Administration fail to develop plans for post-war Iraq?

• IN FACT:  Post-war planning was the focus of a massive amount of work by various government agencies.

The Administration's planning dealt with war preparations, war fighting, and postwar reconstruction. Interagency teams discussed how to enlist foreign support for regime change-including how to arrange access, basing, and overflight rights for military operations. Other teams worked to ensure Iraq's food supplies in the event the World Food Program could not operate in a war zone. Officials analyzed how to deal with terrorist detainees, enemy prisoners of war, and regime leaders charged with atrocities. CENTCOM was responsible for developing operational plans for postconflict security and civil-military operations. The State Department was responsible for soliciting ideas on political and economic reconstruction from scores of Iraqi expatriates, an activity known as the Future of Iraq Project.

The planning documents written by officials in Washington were, as a rule, general, conceptual, strategic, and short. They were referred to as policy plans. Steve Hadley and the Deputies Committee orchestrated this Washington work, coordinating input from an elaborate set of interagency groups. In contrast, the operational plans were voluminous and minutely detailed-the kind of documents that matched the tail numbers of cargo aircraft with specific containers of supplies. These operational plans were drafted by military officers at CENTCOM in Florida who reported to General Franks, who in turn received guidance from Rumsfeld (either directly or through General Myers). . . .

The sensible questions to raise about the Administration's prewar work are these: In all the planning efforts, did the government fail to anticipate major problems that would emerge? Did it have good plans for the problems that it anticipated and encountered? Did it implement its plans well?

The answers are not simple. Some serious problems were anticipated: sectarian violence, a power vacuum, severe disorder. Some other serious problems-including large numbers of refugees pouring across Iraq's borders, mass hunger, and environmental disasters-were averted, in large part because of Franks's war plans, which focused on speed in order to diminish their likelihood.

But the crippling disorder we call the insurgency was not anticipated with any precision, by either intelligence analysts or policy officials. Whether by plan or improvisation, the Baathists-in cooperation with the jihadists-managed to organize, recruit, and finance a highly damaging quasi-military campaign. Across the board, Administration officials thought that postwar reconstruction would take place post-that is, after-the war. That turned out to be a major error. (pp. 274-6)

Related Documents:

Selected documents on post-war planning for Iraq