Here’s another must-read. It’s by Michael O’Hanlon in Policy Review, about the non-planning for the situation after the fall of Baghdad. We can and should have debates about whether we ever had enough troops to do what we needed to do after initial victory. I’d say it’s obvious that Shinseki was correct. Should we have gone to war under the circumstances then prevailing? Probably not. Given the lack of urgency with regard to Saddam’s WMDs (yes, this is hindsight, but so is all of this), we obviously should have waited. But even if we were concerned about WMDs and terrorists, it behooves any administration to plan very carefully for an occupation and to ensure that we have enough troops to keep order. Chaos breeds chaos. In any case, the administration doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt about this for one simple reason: they had no plan for occupying Iraq. Money quote from O’Hanlon:
Lest there be any doubt about the absence of a plan, one need only consult the Third Infantry Division’s after-action report, which reads: “Higher headquarters did not provide the Third Infantry Division (Mechanized) with a plan for Phase IV. As a result, Third Infantry Division transitioned into Phase IV in the absence of guidance.”
The rest is pro-Bush spin. David Adesnik has an excellent post about all this. I recommend it highly as an adjunct to the O’Hanlon essay.
MORE IMAGES: The NASA site is indeed a great one. Here’s a close-up of tsunami damage. I don’t mean to sound like Al Gore but this one is way cool as well.
The Dish 