Why, 14 months after the invasion, are we now getting the "Iraq plan?"

[MikeG]

Isn't this something they should have thought about beforehand?

[Spazito]

1. three words...Bad Poll Numbers

*

[Nevernose]

2. In the words of the immortal "Talking Heads":

STOP MAKING SENSE!

[MikeG]

8. SAME AS IT EVER WAS. SAME AS IT EVER WAS.

SAME AS IT EVER WAS. SAME AS IT EVER WAS. SAME AS IT EVER WAS. SAME AS IT EVER WAS. SAME AS IT EVER WAS. SAME AS IT EVER WAS. SAME AS IT EVER WAS. SAME AS IT EVER WAS. SAME AS IT EVER WAS. SAME AS IT EVER WAS. SAME AS IT EVER WAS. SAME AS IT EVER WAS. SAME AS IT EVER WAS. SAME AS IT EVER WAS. SAME AS IT EVER WAS. SAME AS IT EVER WAS. SAME AS IT EVER WAS.

[Cleita]

3. Silly question. Of course they didn't think about it beforehand.

Now they have a five point plan. ROTFLMAO.

[xray s]

4. what Iraq plan

I have yet to hear one. Just empty platitudes and cliches.

Bush is just a lazy CEO. In the business world he would be "just sorting the mail".

[MikeG]

6. That why it's in quotes.

[Ready4Change]

5. Someone asked about the plan, and they had to come up with something.

.

By the way, I'm really not being sarcastic.

[Solly Mack]

7. The boy blunder's so-called "5 points" were nothing new

The resident malaprop has said the same thing before, using other garbled words and mangled syntax.

His speech tonight was little more than a dog and pony show for the TB'ers. (true believers)

[sofa king]

9. Some of those poor officers must be spitting blood right now.

Our Cliffs Notes President comes to the effing War College, delivers a flat lecture about our "clear" Iraq strategy which contains no strategy, no tactics, no logistics.

Frankly, I sort of hope that this bullshit actually works somewhat. Because if it doesn't, plan B for Bush is to get drunk, impale his childhood best friend who saved his life on the battlefield, then spend days in seclusion in inconsolable grief. That gag might get us to the Indus River, I suppose.

[whistle]

10. Well, the original plan which was a secret to BushCo insiders....

...assumed capturing the hearts and minds of corrupt Iraqi leaders who would subjugate Iraqi citizens, turnover all weapons (not WMD's because Bush and his advisers knew those did not exist), open the oil spigots and payback the U.S. for the entire war in less that five years. Rumsfeld even thought he could create a vibrant tourism industry in Iraq within a decade, perhaps creating the Middle East version of Las Vegas. But alas, that plan was not to be. Good thing Bush kept it a secret. Now we have Plan B (the Plan to gullible Americans), which will unfold after the election. I remember Richard Nixon's secret plan to end the Vietnam War if America elected him president in 1968. That war would drag on for seven long years while Nixon sought peace with honor. It's Bushit!

Time for a change. Send Bush and the republicans packing in November.

[punpirate]

11. Around the time of the unofficial end...

... of the invasion, a reporter interviewed someone (whose name I cannot recall, sorry) who had impeccable credentials in reconstruction and rebuilding issues, had worked on such for much of his professional career, etc. Everyone familiar with the subject knew him.

He expressed amazement that no one in government had called to ask him about what to do in the aftermath of the invasion. When he asked around amongst people he knew at the White House, he was told, "that's already done--the President spent an hour on it."

There are some explanations for that, I believe--think of John Dilulio's comments about the "Mayberry Machiavellis" who always put politics before policy, and in fact, don't really know what policy-making is. The war was, first and foremost, for political advantage and personal aggrandizement. Planning for after the war would have been secondary to the primary political goal.

Second, as Seymour Hersh has suggested, the people at Defense and the White House did nothing (or more of the same) because they simply hoped bad news would go away. Things would get better if ignored.

Third, they believed Chalabi about Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, so there's the suggestion in that that they would also believe him about the rice and candy and rose petals, and people dancing in the streets. Therefore, they were completely unprepared for hostility, even after the extreme hostility visited upon the people during the invasion, and by the hostility of an occupying force which was culturally and technically untrained for work as an occupying force.

In short, they were damned egotistical about the reasons for the war in the first place, and just as arrogant about how things would go. Listening is a great skill, largely absent in the neo-cons in the White House and the Department of Defense.

Edit for syntax.

[Miss Authoritiva]

12. Lots of reasons.

(1) They did have a plan from Day 1 -- but nobody read it.

(2) Well, now that Barbara and Jenna Bush have graduated from college, they could be draft bait.

(3) The lease on Bremer's armored Humvee is about to expire.

(4) They were busy negotiating the movie rights with Mel Gibson.

(5) Timing is everything -- they were saving it for the run up to the Republican National Convention because it will make for a nice montage sequence.