A memorandum written by Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet office in late July 2002 explicitly states that the Bush administration had made "no political decisions" to invade Iraq, but that American military planning for the possibility was advanced. The memo also said American planning, in the eyes of Mr. Blair's aides, was "virtually silent" on the problems of a postwar occupation.
"A postwar occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise," warned the memorandum, prepared July 21 for a meeting with Mr. Blair a few days later. It also appeared to take as a given the presence of illicit weapons in Iraq - an assumption that later proved almost entirely wrong - and warned that merely removing Saddam Hussein from power would not guarantee that those weapons could be secured.
Seems fairly straight forward. And, if kosher, seems to refute the interpretation favored by the left in this country concerning the Downing Street Memo (note I said it refuted the interpretation of the memo, not the memo itself).
Military planning probably was advanced. In fact a plan to invade Iraq had probably existed in mulitiple forms since Desert Storm in '91. After all we actually believed, back then, that the UN would live up to its word if Iraq didn't live up to its word.
As for the postwar planning ... it seems to have a good handle on that as well, doesn't it? There wasn't any significant postwar planning as we've all noted many times. And that particular negative (or failure if you prefer) acts as a positive in the credibility department for this particular memo.
Now, if no one finds the memo reproducable in MS Word, we should all be able to put this Downing Street Memo business behind us.
I’m not sure that it constitutes a failure of the DEFENSE department to avoid making nation-building plans. It seems to me a fairer statement of the charge—true or not—is that the administration in total was not far advanced in such planning in 2002.
Even there, I’m not entirely sure drawing up elaborate plans for a cart would have been justified before actually taking possession of a particular horse.
Recall that most on the left and many on the right of the administration were predicting/recommending that Iraq would only be conquered after a month’s long sequence of saturation bombing which would reduce the entire infrastructure to rubble and cripple most of the workforce-age (subject to military levy) males. If that scenario (Call it CASE CHOMSKY) had played out the reconstruction effort would require something quite different than if the Iraqi Republican guards threw down their weapons, reached out to the approaching coalition forces, called forth their wives and children, and all had clasped hands in a newly combined chorus to sing Kumbayah. (Call this, CASE CHILABI).
The Bush team seems to me have put most of it’s chips on CASE KOFI, in which after the main forces of the army are disarmed, the top layers of Iraqi bureaucracies are re-staffed, and most water, sewer, and electrical generation controls are in the hands of the coalition, the US can declare "the end of major combat operations" and hand the whole nation-building mess off to the UN, or possibly the Canadians—who are, after all, competent at such things, proud of their abilities, and at least more trustworthy and transparent than most of the rest of the Middle East.
Bush, Powell and Rice trusted "the UN" with this portion of the operation because they more-or-less trusted and respected one particular UN official, High Commissioner Sergio Vieira de Mello. SVdM had conducted operations in Lebanon, Cambodia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor—not all with great success by US standards, mind you, but not wholly disasterously, either. There are, I believe, several records of White House meetings with SVdM in 2002—I infer what few and intentionally-left-vague plans were developed for post-war Iraq were developed at those meetings.
The UN moved into Iraq, refused US military protection, suffered (as predicted) an attack, lost SVdM, and retreated forever. Plan-B, or CASE CANADA was complicated by the horrible "friendly-fire" loss of a Canadian force to US mistake-attack—and the perceived coverup afterwards. The Canadians understandably were not anxious to do their nation-building tricks in a demonstrably unsafe (from TWO directions) Iraq.
Bush, Powell, Rice and man-on-the-scene Paul Bremer suddenly had to re-think designs for harness, bit, bridle, horsewhip, traces, blinkers, sleighbells, fringe-on-top, and all.
If you’ll recall, by the way, the administration explicitely stated that it did not want to make lengthy and elaborate plans for the post-war operation because they felt they did not have a good enough understanding of conditions on the ground, that deep plans would be pointless, and we would be doing everything we could to involve native Iraqis in everything possible.
They explicitely said that, more than once, including in testimony before Congress months before the invasion began. They did have plans that ran for several pages, but they were all pretty broad: get power working, get water and sewers working, set up a provisional government, etc. But it was a closed society and we were necessarily limited. Ask yourself what specific plans could have been made—and then ask yourself how much you’re engaging in hindsight by saying that it’s "obvious" that this or that should have been done.
