The Devil In The Details.
WASHINGTON -- Planning for the Iraq war was hobbled by tensions between Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and military planners over the staying power of Saddam Hussein's regime, by leaks of highly classified war plans and by little attention to the war's aftermath, according to a new insider account.
A top intelligence analyst at the U.S. military's Central Command writes that demands from Rumsfeld and his aides for new versions of the war plan using fewer American troops wasted time and diverted attention from fleshing out a blueprint for the March 2003 invasion.
Civilians in Washington, convinced that Hussein's regime would topple easily, "injected numerous ideas into the dialogue, many of which were amateurish and unrealistic," wrote the analyst, Gregory Hooker.
Many of those ideas were discarded, but the conflicting approaches never were resolved before the invasion, he says.
---OHHHH REALLY..?---
Hooker's account was published this week by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The cover of the study identifies Hooker as CENTCOM's senior intelligence analyst for Iraq. He has done several stints in the country, including as a U.N. weapons inspector in the 1990s.
Hooker's account echoes other assessments of the run-up to the war, but it's one of the first on-the-record accounts by someone in his position as a military intelligence analyst, and comes amid renewed debate over Iraq's future.
Hooker adds some new details.
For example, he says some officers at Florida-based CENTCOM were so stunned by leaks of the classified war plans that they assumed they must have been part of a U.S. propaganda campaign to unsettle Hussein.
"To some planners, this theory seemed the only logical way to explain the seemingly outrageous and reckless revelations of classified material by senior officials," he wrote.
In fact, the leaks were apparently part of a battle among top policymakers in Washington over whether to invade Iraq with a relatively small force and lightening-quick maneuvers, or a larger, more traditional force.
A top intelligence analyst at the U.S. military's Central Command writes that demands from Rumsfeld and his aides for new versions of the war plan using fewer American troops wasted time and diverted attention from fleshing out a blueprint for the March 2003 invasion.
Civilians in Washington, convinced that Hussein's regime would topple easily, "injected numerous ideas into the dialogue, many of which were amateurish and unrealistic," wrote the analyst, Gregory Hooker.
Many of those ideas were discarded, but the conflicting approaches never were resolved before the invasion, he says.
---OHHHH REALLY..?---
Hooker's account was published this week by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The cover of the study identifies Hooker as CENTCOM's senior intelligence analyst for Iraq. He has done several stints in the country, including as a U.N. weapons inspector in the 1990s.
Hooker's account echoes other assessments of the run-up to the war, but it's one of the first on-the-record accounts by someone in his position as a military intelligence analyst, and comes amid renewed debate over Iraq's future.
Hooker adds some new details.
For example, he says some officers at Florida-based CENTCOM were so stunned by leaks of the classified war plans that they assumed they must have been part of a U.S. propaganda campaign to unsettle Hussein.
"To some planners, this theory seemed the only logical way to explain the seemingly outrageous and reckless revelations of classified material by senior officials," he wrote.
In fact, the leaks were apparently part of a battle among top policymakers in Washington over whether to invade Iraq with a relatively small force and lightening-quick maneuvers, or a larger, more traditional force.
posted by Christy at 2:49 PM
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