Iraq invasion plan 'delusional'

BBC News has it right. They have reviewed the recently declassified Centcom plan for the invasion of Iraq and have found that it has very little connection to the reality on the ground in that country.

The US invasion plan for Iraq envisaged that only 5,000 US troops would remain in Iraq by December 2006, declassified Central Command documents show.

The material also shows that the US military projected a stable, pro-US and democratic Iraq by that time. [Snip]

The documents - in the form of PowerPoint slides - were prepared by [actually for] the now-retired Gen Tommy Franks and other top commanders at the time.

The documents were presented at a briefing in August 2002 - less than a year before the US invasion of Iraq in April 2003.

They projected that the US forces would be almost completely "re-deployed" out of Iraq at the end of the "transition" phase - within 45 months of invasion.

"Completely unrealistic assumptions about a post-Saddam Iraq permeate these war plans," [No surprise here. But it is nice to see that the plans confirm the FUBAR that actually occurred. That is, the plans were totally delusional. Should I point out that General Tommy Franks, then Centcom Commander and directly responsible for the abortion called the invasion of Iraq, got "The Medal of Freedom" from Bush for this derelictin of duty? The MoF was used to buy his silence, as it was for Bremer and Tenet. ] NSA executive director Thomas Blanton said in a statement posted on the organisation's website.

"First, they assumed that a provisional government would be in place by 'D-Day', then that the Iraqis would stay in their garrisons and be reliable partners, and finally that the post-hostilities phase would be a matter of mere months'," Mr Blanton said.

It's not like a whole bunch of informed people didn't tell the Bush administration that the plan was unrealistic.

Can you say, Dear Reader, the term Groupthink?