TPMmuckraker | Talking Points Memo

Today's Must Read

By Spencer Ackerman - February 15, 2007, 8:32AM

It's not exactly a state secret that the Bush administration did a shoddy job of planning for postwar Iraq. But in today's New York Times, Michael Gordon shows just how bare Gen. Tommy Franks's cupboard was at U.S. Central Command:

When Gen. Tommy R. Franks and his top officers gathered in August 2002 to review an invasion plan for Iraq, it reflected a decidedly upbeat vision of what the country would look like four years after Saddam Hussein was ousted from power.A broadly representative Iraqi government would be in place. The Iraqi Army would be working to keep the peace. And the United States would have as few as 5,000 troops in the country.

Military slides obtained by the National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act outline the command’s PowerPoint projection of the stable, pro-American and democratic Iraq that was to be.

The general optimism and some details of General Franks’s planning session have been disclosed in the copious postwar literature. But the slides from the once classified briefing provide a firsthand look at how far the violent reality of Iraq today has deviated from assumptions that once laid the basis for an exercise in pre-emptive war.

Comments (47)

clay fink wrote on February 15, 2007 8:58 AM:

This is why Dick Cheney was against the FOIA from the very beginning, when he was Gerald Ford's chief of staff.

John wrote on February 15, 2007 9:15 AM:

Tommy Franks once described Doug Feith as one of the dumbest people on earth, but in more colorful language.

Given this PowerPoint presentation it appears that Franks should share Feith's position now as one of the two dumbest people on earth.

nffcnnr wrote on February 15, 2007 9:20 AM:

Well, everything was going great until the liberal media started reporting facts.

Farinata X wrote on February 15, 2007 9:28 AM:

They just made this up, when you wish upon a star style, without a scintilla of actual knowledge of what this country is really like. Total fantasyland.

Ron Byers wrote on February 15, 2007 9:30 AM:

Doug Feith reportedly told somebody that he viewed Saddam as Iraq's "central processor." The US would simply swap processors. He would pull out Saddam and insert Chalibi. Everything would be great as soon as we rebooted the country.

The comment proved that Feith didn't know anything about either Iraq or computer repair.

I think Feith's was a viewed widely shared by the Neo-Cons running Iraq policy.

bugcat wrote on February 15, 2007 9:33 AM:

Actually, I've a secret source inside the Pentagon who slipped me the ENTIRE post-war plan. Here it is:

taters wrote on February 15, 2007 10:01 AM:

Thanks Spencer, I have a hard time reading Gordon but when the story is linked by you, it makes it more palatable.

Remember this? ( via Seattle Times, by the WaPo originally )
GOP loyalty dictated who would rebuild Iraq
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran

The Washington Post

After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's Pentagon office before going to Baghdad.

To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in postconflict reconstruction. They did need, however, to be a member of the Republican Party.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003262370_iraqcpa17.html

And if any of you have not read Col. Pat Lang's excellent Drinking the Kool Aid, you owe it to yourself. And if you have, it's worth a revisit.

http://www.mepc.org/journal_vol11/0406_lang.asp

Minerva wrote on February 15, 2007 10:01 AM:

"Imperial Life in the Emerald City" makes a compelling case that Feith and friends deliberately sabbotaged planning so that there would be no choice but to install Chalabi and his cadre of exile clowns. Amazing stuff.

EddieUK wrote on February 15, 2007 10:07 AM:

I love the headline for this on the BBC News site, "Iraq invasion plan 'delusional'". See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6364507.stm

lower tiberius wrote on February 15, 2007 10:28 AM:

What are the chances of obtaining a copy of the PowerPoint presentation slides and disseminating it on the web? Is a copy avaiable for the general public?

Splicer.nyc wrote on February 15, 2007 10:31 AM:

No flying cars and meals in a pill? These Pentagon guys were not really thinking of the future at all.

ebw wrote on February 15, 2007 10:46 AM:

This type of shoddy planning would never have been considered had the U.S. had an intelligent president like Gore in office-- instead of the dim-witted Bush & his corrupt cabinet.

When will this co-dependent Congress and the sleepy-headed American people wake-up to the cold, hard reality that Bush is mentally unfit to be president?

An excellent assessment may be found:

by Dave Lindorff

"Co-Dependent Congress Must Wake Up: The President Needs a Straight-Jacket and a Padded Cell"

at http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/5512

Bush should be IMPEACHED immediately for he is a liar- a traitor- and, terrifyingly delusional!

JohnW wrote on February 15, 2007 10:53 AM:

I have a somewhat vague memory of reading some time back that Tommy Franks submitted a number of plans for the Iraq invasion before the Bush gang finally accepted one he submitted. I seem to remember the number of plans submitted was 3 or 4. Can anyone add to this?

JohnW wrote on February 15, 2007 10:55 AM:

By the way, all the posts here are aligned latest post at the end of the line instead of first in line, is this working right or is it my computer?

COLORADO BOB wrote on February 15, 2007 11:03 AM:

John W.
Every plan he submitted, Rummy would get out his blue pencil and mark it up with doubt about the numbers needed.

alex wrote on February 15, 2007 11:05 AM:

Wow. That's only slightly better than the cocktail napkin I thought this war was prepared on.

Page 8 bullet point: Provactive posture (I&W).

Page 7 bullet point: Phase IV Post-Hostilities - Unknown

Page 5 bullet point 4: Transition of CMO activities to international organizations, NGOs, Host nation.

Oh heck, go read the whole thing. The bullet pointing of a war.

JohnW wrote on February 15, 2007 11:06 AM:

Colorado

Yes, among other things, Rummy kept telling Franks to do it with less troops, or so I seem to remember.

carole wrote on February 15, 2007 11:08 AM:

Here's the URL for the slides at the National Sec Archives

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB214/index.htm

cervantes wrote on February 15, 2007 11:09 AM:

The entire power point is indeed available here, along with a lot of other goodies. A barrel of fun for military strategy junkies and DoD/White House Kremlinologists!

cervantes wrote on February 15, 2007 11:10 AM:

Woops, looks like the link didn't take for some reason. Here it is raw, cut and paste:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB214/index.htm

markg8 wrote on February 15, 2007 11:12 AM:

Powerpoint presentations. That's Rumsfeldian to it's core. According to Ricks in "Fiasco" the exhausted CENTCOM planning staff was given Phase IV (the occupation) at the end of July 2002. They'd just finished invading Afghanistan and writing two completely new invasion plans for Iraq. Franks set up a Phase IV operation under General Hawkins. These guys had little experience in nation building and little to no cooperation and encouragement from the rest of the Rummy's Pentagon. They wargamed it, they came up with different scenarios like the massive internal refugee problem that didn't materialize. They came up with nothing worthwhile. Feith and Wolfowitz didn't think it mattered.

gaspare wrote on February 15, 2007 11:13 AM:

Aligns perfectly with Bush being upset that the Iraqii people have not been more grateful about invading Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein from power.

Atleast when Saddam was in power you could go to the market and buy bread. Nowadays, you put your life into your own hands just going out to buy bread.

Planless and mindless. You reap what you sow. Bush invaded Iraq for dubious reasons, has repeatedly changed the rationale and is now, four years after the fact trying to clamp down on the fury of 25 million people.

agave wrote on February 15, 2007 11:18 AM:

By the way, all the posts here are aligned latest post at the end of the line instead of first in line, is this working right or is it my computer?

Posted by: JohnW

Odd.
Same here.

tdisante wrote on February 15, 2007 11:21 AM:

Let's not forget that in 2002 the Pentagon rejected the large post-war planning guide that the State Dept & many experts spent many months compiling prior to any invasion. Rumsfeld's Pentagon wanted all the glory and thought they would have it all under tight control, and that's why the State Dept is fairly reluctant to come to its aid in the past few weeks when an APB To Help from the military went out. The military now realizes it has been left holding its own bag. As Gen'l Pickett said about Gen'l Lee after the Civil War (and today's military will soon say about GWBush): "That man ruined my army."

grimly wrote on February 15, 2007 11:35 AM:

Well, maybe in 2002 they were projecting a mere 5000 troops present in 2007, but then how does one explain the construction of massive military bases once "victory" was prematurely declared? It seems to me that someone had more grandiose plans than this "plan" accounts for.

oldtree wrote on February 15, 2007 11:38 AM:

let's see here, Franks had rotten help and wasn't too smart about any aspect of the campaign.
and it was he that said Doug Feith is the "stupidest.......

looks like we have a lot of real smart folks working for us. or this was always their intention. have toads working jobs that people would ordinarily do.

rea wrote on February 15, 2007 11:44 AM:

Look at the powerpoint presentation linked above; note that it calls for an invasion force of 270,000--about 110,000 more than we actually used.

Jeremy wrote on February 15, 2007 11:44 AM:

The fact that Michael Gordon wrote this article shouldn't be lost on us.

If this Judith Miller understudy is writing such scathing words, it's a fair gamble the truth is oh so much worse.

CF wrote on February 15, 2007 11:45 AM:

JohnW:

Watch the Frontline episode titled, "Rumsfeld's War." It clearly spells out much of the planning process. Here is a link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/

along the right hand side of the page is a link to watch the episode online.

hilzoy wrote on February 15, 2007 11:50 AM:

For those of you who don't want to slog through the archive pdfs, I made some of the more amazing slides into jpgs and put them up on Obsidian Wings. (Click my name. I hope.)

bob wrote on February 15, 2007 11:52 AM:

Not to mention the fact that any general that stood out fo the pack and indicated the plan was a farce or needed more troops was fired.

GIGO, garbage in - garbage out. Rummy got what he wanted, a cluster fuck.

tomg wrote on February 15, 2007 12:03 PM:

you know, if you put this power point to music like say The Candy Man why wouldn't anybody believe it couldn't happen??

Mike wrote on February 15, 2007 1:07 PM:

Expect "serious" commentators proclaiming that "pessimistic" "anti-war" "far-left" "liberals" have "gotten what they wanted" (but are still "on the wrong side of the issue" and/or "out of the mainstream" of "thought").

DallasNE wrote on February 15, 2007 1:35 PM:

That may not be the only shoddy work at the Whitehouse. Over at Democraticunderground.com they have a Youtube that exposes the following.

"a reporter asks the White House Press Secretary about a deal that the Taliban has offered in FEBRUARY OF 2001 to hand over Osama to Saudi Arabia if sanctions are dropped and the White House reply was:

"Let me take that and get back to you on that."

Obviously, Ari didn't even know who "Osama" was. Just as obviously, Ari didn't get back with the press with that vital information.

So just what did Condi Rice tell Ari when he posed the question? (I presume he posed the question). We know she dropped the ball when confronted with "bin Laden determined to strike inside U.S.". Now we can assume that she was dropping the ball as early as February, 2001.

Dave Latchaw wrote on February 15, 2007 1:46 PM:

I always thought Franks had to be right about Feith on the "it takes one to know one" principle.

lestatdelc wrote on February 15, 2007 3:05 PM:

DallasNE

You have the URL for that YouTube clip?

DallasNE wrote on February 15, 2007 4:10 PM:

Youtube clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDvVZ2Gn-9g

Mark F. wrote on February 15, 2007 4:12 PM:

It was a faith-based invasion. Who needs planning when you have prayer?

johnd wrote on February 15, 2007 6:02 PM:

Cheneyco is way ahead of all of you guys. 5000 US troops? Even before Iraq went obviously south, the permanent US military presence being prepared for was huge. many, many bases way more than 5000 troops.

Hegemony over the mid-east is the goal. Iraq chaos is actually pretty good cover for the plan.

You can't have a pliant client puppet state with only 5000 troops and Saddam lite running Iraq (which was the goal), let alone SCRI

banana wrote on February 15, 2007 7:21 PM:

The best, of course, is the summary slide--

Phase 1: Invade Iraq
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: Profit!

Rick B wrote on February 16, 2007 11:40 AM:

I think I may have to defend Tommy Franks. When making a plan for an attack like this one, the strategic non-military assumptions would normally be provided by other agencies. I suspect that most of the assumptions that are suspicious came from the Pentagon's Office of Policy and Plans, whieh was led by Douglas Feith. They had to be approved by Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld.

Using those same guideline, Lt. Gen. Jay Garner had a very short time to plan to take over the after the initial battle was finished. Garner was going to pull the Iraqi Army back together and use it and the existing government of Iraq to take control of the nation so that we could get out quickly.

Then something happened, and suddenly Garner was replaced after six weeks by Jerry Bremer, whose offices were staffed by people vetted by the Heritage Foundation. I suspect that the Heritage Foudation conducted a takeover of the entire Iraqi governing mechanism at that time, so that all the prior plans the military had put together were thrown out the window.

Gen. Franks plans for the immediate invasion of Iraq worked reasonably well, in spite of numberout diplomatic failures (Turkey, for example) that were outside his capablity to deal with and in fact belonged to the civilian government of the U.S. Most of the real problems belong to the civilians, not to the military.

I'd really give a lot to know what the decision process was that resulted in the sudden replacement of Garner by Bremer. It seems to me that the quick initial military success gave the NeoCons and Heritage Foundation people the idea to turn Iraq into a laboratory for their Libertarian views. So they took the control away from the military and handed it to Bremer.

The result is that the military plans (which were based on unreal assumptions probably provided by Feith, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld and possibley Cheney) suddenly became the guideposts for the entire occupation.

That's my current opinion, anyway.

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Meanser wrote on September 28, 2007 1:08 PM: