There are three people whose monumental lies, misconceptions, miscalculations, mis-prognostications about the war in Iraq have been shocking and will live—with my apologies to president Roosevelt—in infamy.
The saddest part is that these three people happen to be the three highest officials in the land charged with the sacred duty of keeping our country safe and with—as a last resort—waging an effective war when and if that safety is violated.
For a sampling of such dishonesty (935 of them), go to The Center for Public Integrity’s “Iraq: The War Card–False Pretenses.”
Today’s New York Times reports on another one of those monumental miscalculations by our leaders: how much they expected it would cost to rebuild Iraq
In “Official History Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders,” the Times reports the following exchange on the eve of the invasion between Donald Rumsfeld and Jay Garner, a retired lieutenant general, chief of what would be called called the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance:
The history records how Mr. Garner presented Mr. Rumsfeld with several rebuilding plans, including one that would include projects across Iraq.
“What do you think that’ll cost?” Mr. Rumsfeld asked of the more expansive plan.
“I think it’s going to cost billions of dollars,” Mr. Garner said.
“My friend,” Mr. Rumsfeld replied, “if you think we’re going to spend a billion dollars of our money over there, you are sadly mistaken.”
Well, according to the Times, an unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq, compiled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, reveals that by mid-2008, $117 billion had been spent on the reconstruction of Iraq, including some $50 billion in United States taxpayer money.
The eye-opening Times article, based on the report, describes but a few of the blunders out of “a catalog of revelations that show the chaotic and often poisonous atmosphere prevailing in the reconstruction effort.”
The article starts with the following lead paragraph:
BAGHDAD — An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.
And ends as follows:
At the end of his narrative, Mr. Bowen [the leader of the report, a Republican lawyer] chooses a line from “Great Expectations” by Dickens as the epitaph of the American-led attempt to rebuild Iraq: “We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us.”
What other revelations await the American people about a mistake called Iraq?
