"NOBODY COULD'VE FORESEEN.."

That's a response one gets from BushBots about the Iraq Fiasco. As usual, it's completely false. Thanx to QuentinCompson, a commenter at Atrios' place, I have this statement made on Sept. 26, 2002, by Gen. Wesley Clark:

...once we move into the area, what we can expect is a complete breakdown of governmental authority. It is not only Saddam Hussein, but it is the people who, as you suggested, the henchmen and all the people who are complicit in that regime, who have illegally confiscated land, carried out his orders for executions and torture, and forced name changes and identity changes. Revenge will be exacted. We have already seen this in what happened in 1991 with the Shia rebellion in southern Iraq, when they thought we were coming to help them liberate Iraq. So we have to imagine a complete breakdown of order.

That will be accompanied no doubt by a breakdown in the distribution of services, water, food.

[snip]

So, in the immediate aftermath, there is going to be the possibility of a chaotic environment that is going to require a substantial American presence as well as a vast humanitarian governmental structure to meet the needs of the 23 million Iraqi people.