Why? Because we haven't learned from our mistakes of the past.
We have a current version of the "Pentagon Papers".
Back in "Tricky Dick's" era we had the Washington Post suing the US Supreme to get the Pentagon Papers published. Now we have Judith Miller transcribing Chalabi's lies about Iraq and the "Tricky Dickless" Cheney, on different parts of the US main stream media, using the lies he paid Chalabi to say as substantiation of the Iraq war.
The article "Army Buried Study Faulting Iraq Planning" at click here details how the Rand Corporation wanted its known to the public, but big bro 43 quashed its publication. That is the same as in the Vietnam era, but then the 4th estate forced the truth to be known, whereas now our 4th estate is happy to acquiesce to big bro 43's dictates.
It states "The Army is accustomed to protecting classified information. But when it comes to the planning for the Iraq war, even an unclassified assessment can acquire the status of a state secret. That is what happened to a detailed study of the planning for postwar Iraq
prepared for the Army by the RAND Corporation, a federally financed center that conducts research for the military.
After 18 months of research, RAND submitted a report in the summer of 2005 called "Rebuilding Iraq." RAND researchers provided an unclassified version of the report along with a secret one, hoping that its publication would contribute to the public debate on how to prepare for future conflicts."
Any non-insane person would have considered the violence-strewn history of Iraq and avoided "Operation Iraqi Freedom" especially since our military is stretched
too thin!
"But the study's wide-ranging critique of the White House, the Defense Department and other government agencies was a concern for Army generals, and the Army has sought to keep the report under lock and key. A review of the lengthy report - a draft of which was obtained by The New York Times - shows that it identified problems with nearly every organization that had a role in planning the war. That assessment parallels the verdicts of numerous former officials and independent analysts."
Remember that The New York Times initially published the "Pentagon Papers".
"The study chided President Bush - and by implication Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who served as national security adviser when the war was planned - as having failed to resolve differences among rival agencies.
"Throughout the planning process, tensions between the Defense Department and the State Department were never mediated by the president or his staff."
Why was the wrong Department placed in charge of the occupation?
"The Defense Department led by Donald H. Rumsfeld was given the lead in overseeing the postwar period in Iraq despite its "lack of capacity for civilian reconstruction planning and execution."
The State Department led by Colin L. Powell produced a voluminous study on the future of Iraq that identified important issues but was of "uneven quality" and "did not constitute an actionable plan."
Gen. Tommy R. Franks, whose Central Command oversaw the military operation in Iraq, had a "fundamental misunderstanding" of what the military needed to do to
secure postwar Iraq".
Why was it quashed?
