POSTWAR BLUES….A secret report prepared last month for the Pentagon gave the lowest possible grade to two aspects of the Iraq war: postwar planning and searching for WMD. Arthur Silber has the details, accompanied by some fair and balanced commentary.
The lousy postwar planning seems like simple arrogance and incompetence to me ? they figured they wouldn’t need it, so they ignored it ? but the lackadaisical nature of the WMD search is rather more puzzling. They surely took WMD seriously, so why the negligence? Was it that:
-
They were ? again ? incompetent?
-
They believed that WMD would be plentiful and easy to find, thus making extensive planning unnecessary?
-
They knew there was actually no WMD at all, so there was no reason to waste excess planning time on looking for it?
I genuinely don’t know which of these is most likely. It’s a real mystery.
