POST-WAR PLANNING

Wonder why things haven't gone well in Iraq?

U.K. memo said to question postwar plan
Jun 12, 6:48 AM EDT
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_POSTWAR?SITE=AZTUS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A staff paper prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair eight months before the invasion of Iraq concluded that U.S. military officials were not planning adequately for a postwar occupation, The Washington Post reported.
"A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise," authorities of the briefing memo wrote, according to the Post. "As already made clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."
The eight-page memo was written in advance of a July 23, 2002, meeting at Blair's Downing Street offices, the Post said in Sunday editions.
It said the memo and other internal British government documents were originally obtained by Michael Smith of the London Sunday Times and that excerpts made available to Post were confirmed as authentic by British sources who sought anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.
The Post said the introduction to the memo - "Iraq: Conditions for Military Action" - said U.S. "military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace," but that "little thought" has been given to, among other things, "the aftermath and how to shape it."

But wait, there's more:

The CPA was built from a staff of mainly young backers of the Bush administration who volunteered for what they believed would be the major event of their lives. They arrived in Iraq with a missionary's zeal. Many observers think the CPA's hard work was undercut by its employees' lack of experience, a focus on Washington's needs over Iraq's, and the lack of a plan for rebuilding the country. And Bremer's dismissal of the Iraqi army created a security vacuum that guerrillas soon filled. When the insurgency kicked in last summer, the CPA was knocked off balance. "We were just fighting fires. There was no Plan B," Fatfat said. "We didn't have time to plan things. We created a vacuum and it attracted people to fill it. It created the insurgency." The entity that became the CPA was itself formed in haste, in November 2002, just a few months before the war. The State Department's Iraq experts were deliberately left at home in favor of more politically reliable Bush appointees given temporary Pentagon jobs. AP, 6/20/04