New report - post invasion planning sucked

[Damocles]

I agree that it is important to note how these various failures occured to hopefully learn from going forward.

Actually I was simply making a joke on what we all know. It is clear that, militarily, this has got to be the worst-run 'war' we have ever involved ourselves in. It, IMO, eclipses even Viet Nam. Not surprisingly so because Rummy stunk that one up too.

One area that I found interesting as I had not paid all that much attention before was the battle between the DoD and the State Department. You had the DoD who worked with Iraqi exiles and wanted them to be brought into the new Iraqi government. And you had the State Department who did not want any Iraqi exiles involved and only Iraqi internals. State's feelings were the Exiles would not be reviewed as legitimate by the internals.

One result of this decision was we ended up not being without a functioning group ready to help lead an interim government and led to our occupation led by Bremer instead of Iraqi's.

The largest blunder (after actually starting the mess to begin with), IMO, was disbanding the Army. It was a colossal mistake that we have been trying to overcome since the moment it happened.

 

[Onceler]

"It is clear that, militarily, this has got to be the worst-run 'war' we have ever involved ourselves in"

Okay, it's clear to you & me. But what are the details of that? What did we do along the way that we could have done differently, and how did it come about that we were able to embark on such a grandiose venture with almost no post-Saddam planning whatsoever?

You brought up disbanding the Iraq army; that's an easy one. There were so many other mis-steps along the way, starting with the initial planning. You make think all of that is "obvious", but I doubt that even someone like yourself who watches this stuff all of the time could list all of it in a comprehensive way.

It's a cop-out to just say "it's obvious; we botched it. Let's move on." That doesn't help anyone.

 

[Damocles]

"It is clear that, militarily, this has got to be the worst-run 'war' we have ever involved ourselves in"

Okay, it's clear to you & me. But what are the details of that? What did we do along the way that we could have done differently, and how did it come about that we were able to embark on such a grandiose venture with almost no post-Saddam planning whatsoever?

You brought up disbanding the Iraq army; that's an easy one. There were so many other mis-steps along the way, starting with the initial planning. You make think all of that is "obvious", but I doubt that even someone like yourself who watches this stuff all of the time could list all of it in a comprehensive way.

It's a cop-out to just say "it's obvious; we botched it. Let's move on." That doesn't help anyone.

My post was a joke on the title. You guys are all getting bent over nothing.

Now can we begin to talk about details as Cawacko and I have, or do you really want to weigh in on how we should spend money to find out that this war was run poorly and ignoring HOW it was run poorly after a sad joke playing on the title?

 

[uscitizen]

Shovels didn't cost us over a trillion & so much loss of life. That's really trivializing it.

And, like I said, there is nothing that's cohesive out there. There are bits & pieces; bringing them together into a more comprehensive view of what happened isn't a waste of time.

Yepper we want this to go down in history accurately so we are not stupit enough to do this again. But somehow I doubt that we will learn anything from it if history and empirical evidence is any guide.

 

[Socrtease]

"New report - post invasion planning sucked"

How much money did we spend for this jewel from Captain Obvious Says?

Someone actually WROTE a report. That is what gets me. Some pentagon guys couldn't just come together and say for the cameras, "THis was clusterfuckery at its finest."? Move on.

 

[Onceler]

Why is the idea of "documentation" so radical to a few here?

 

[Damocles]

Someone actually WROTE a report. That is what gets me. Some pentagon guys couldn't just come together and say for the cameras, "THis was clusterfuckery at its finest."? Move on.

I don't mind a report showing where the suckage started, exactly where the suckage is, and how do we prevent future suckage. Maybe even adding a little, how we can make the suckage less right now.

But if all it says is, "The planning sucked" then it was a fricking waste of money in the highest order.

 

[Cypress]

Why is the idea of "documentation" so radical to a few here?

I don't know. Maybe Bush fans just want this swept under the rug. How many times have we heard "this is old news, let's move on", when revelations of Bush's war lies crop up?

This report is supposedly over 700 pages long. I doubt it just says "Bush blew it". It's probably the most comprehensive evaluation, and "lessons learned" study of this fiasco.