One of the questions that constantly comes up in looking at the myriad snafus the Bush Administration has unleashed is this: incompetence or malice? (And yes, I know, "both" is a distinct possibility.) This story furnishes some powerful ammunition for the malice alternative.
[...]
"Then, just as we were barely into Afghanistan Rumsfeld came and told us to get ready for Iraq."
Scheid said he remembers everyone thinking, "My gosh, we're in the middle of Afghanistan, how can we possibly be doing two at one time? How can we pull this off? It's just going to be too much."
...
"The secretary of defense continued to push on us that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave," Scheid said. "We won't stay."
Scheid said the planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4," or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations like security, stability and reconstruction.
Even if the troops didn't stay, "at least we have to plan for it," Scheid said.
"I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," Scheid said. "We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today.
"He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war."
The Iraq clusterfuck is by design. Making a plan and not telling us would have been one thing. They're good at not telling us stuff anyway.
Knowing they needed a plan, but not making one so we wouldn't find out as part of a P.R. plan to lie us into an unnecessary war is positively criminal. Past criminal. I don't even have a word for it.
I'm beyond "get a rope". We need four ropes for each one of these criminal bastards. Four ropes attached to four Humvees going in four directions.
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