Comments on: Iraq War Planning Was Not Stellar

By: egrubs

egrubs — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 00:46:26 +0000

Quote from Men in Black:

Zed (smiling): “Gentlemen, congratulations. You’re everything we’ve come to expect from years of government training.”

By: Sam

Sam — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 21:07:52 +0000

Its good to have documentation that the Bush administration people really, really didn’t know what they were getting into. I mean, its one thing to deduce it from current events, but its another to have the pie in the sky drawings they used during the planning phase. This is what happens when its amateur hour at the Defense Dept.

By: Shaun Mullen

Shaun Mullen — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 15:09:34 +0000

In this case, using the word planning is a misnomer.

The PowerPoint slides merely add more flesh to what has been reported in detial in “Cobra II,” “Fiasco” and other in-depth accounts of the run-up to the war.

Franks was a Rumsfeld sycophant and shouted down the Pentagon’s best planners when they strenuously objected to the rosy scenarios that he wanted to send up the line from CENTCOM to the Pentagon and on to the White House. The “optimism” the top brass expressed was as empty as the pre-war “intelligence” was inaccurate.

Franks’ role in the grand charade has been overshadowed by Rumsfeld’s, but his betrayal of the principles of sound military planning was obscene and men and women died for his sins.