Yahoo! News - State Dept. Study Foresaw Trouble Now Plaguing Iraq: "A yearlong State Department study predicted many of the problems that have plagued the American-led occupation of Iraq, according to internal State Department documents and interviews with administration and Congressional officials.
...Their findings included a much more dire assessment of Iraq's dilapidated electrical and water systems than many Pentagon officials assumed. They warned of a society so brutalized by Saddam Hussein's rule that many Iraqis might react coolly to Americans' notion of quickly rebuilding civil society.
Several officials said that many of the findings in the $5 million study were ignored by Pentagon officials until recently
...The man overseeing the planning, Tom Warrick, a State Department official, so impressed aides to Jay Garner, a retired Army lieutenant general heading the military's reconstruction office, that they recruited Mr. Warrick to join their team.
George Ward, an aide to General Garner, said the reconstruction office wanted to use Mr. Warrick's knowledge because "we had few experts on Iraq on the staff."
But top Pentagon officials blocked Mr. Warrick's appointment, and much of the project's work was shelved, State Department officials said. Mr. Warrick declined to be interviewed for this article. "

This revelation is further reason for the "officials" at the top of the Pentagon to be sacked. If they had any honor they would have resigned by now, so they should be removed immediately.

Why? They have wilfully invaded another country on false pretenses, spent the best part of $150 Billion, killed thousands of Iraqi's and hundreds of Americans, and completely destroyed the civil society of Iraq.

This is not a small mistake. This is catastrophic. This Iraq adventure is a failure that has few parallels in history, yet the Bush administration has the gall to claim that it did everything correctly.

Now we find that they actually knew in advance about all the problems that they now face, and deliberately chose not to prepare for them. These holier-than-thou "officials" then repeatedly claimed they couldn't have known about and so couldn't have planned for them. This story demonstrates that is not true and they need to be held to account.
- posted by geoff @ #