Fwd: [ NOLA_C3_Discussion] General: Rumsfeld killed post-war plan for Iraq

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Sep 9, 2006 9:13 PM

[NOLA_C3_Discussion] General: Rumsfeld killed post-war plan for Iraq

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" He Would Fire the Next Person That Said That "

By Kevin Drum

The Washington Monthly

 

Friday 08 September 2006

 

Today, via Orin Kerr, comes a remarkable interview with Brigadier

General Mark Scheid, chief of the Logistics War Plans Division after 9/11,

and one of the people with primary responsibility for war planning. Shortly

after the invasion of Afghanistan, he says, Donald Rumsfeld told his team to

start planning for war in Iraq, but not to bother planning for a long stay:

 

" The secretary of defense continued to push on us ... that everything we

write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going

to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave, " Scheid said. " We

won't stay. "

 

Scheid said the planners continued to try " to write what was called

Phase 4, " or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations

like occupation.

 

Even if the troops didn't stay, " at least we have to plan for it, "

Scheid said.

 

" I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next

person that said that, " Scheid said. " We would not do planning for Phase 4

operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk

about today.

 

" He said we will not do that because the American public will not back

us if they think we are going over there for a long war. "

 

... " In his own mind he thought we could go in and fight and take out the

regime and come out. But a lot of us planners were having a real hard time

with it because we were also thinking we can't do this. Once you tear up a

country you have to stay and rebuild it. It was very challenging. "

 

In a way, this is old news. As much as it beggars the imagination,

there's been plenty of evidence all along that Bush never took the idea of

rebuilding Iraq seriously. The plan was to remove Saddam from power, claim

victory, and get out.

 

However, this is the clearest evidence I've seen yet. The guy who was

actually in charge of logistics has now directly confirmed that Rumsfeld not

only didn't intend to rebuild Iraq in any serious way, but threatened to

fire anyone who wasted time on the idea. Needless to say, he wouldn't have

done this unless it reflected the wishes of the president.

 

And this also means that all of Bush's talk about democracy was nothing

but hot air. If you're serious about planting democracy after a war, you

don't plan to simply topple a government and then leave.

 

So: the lack of postwar planning wasn't merely the result of

incompetence. It was deliberate policy. There was never any intention of

rebuilding Iraq and there was never any intention of wasting time on

democracy promotion. That was merely a post hoc explanation after we failed

to find the promised WMD. Either that or BG Scheid is lying.

 

This is an astounding interview, all the more so for the apparently

resigned tone that Scheid brings to it. It belongs on the front page of the

New York Times, not the Hampton Roads Daily Press.

 

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POSTSCRIPT: An alternative explanation, based on Rumsfeld's admonition

that " the American public will not back us if they think we are going over

there for a long war, " is that Rumsfeld and Bush were planning to stay but

simply lied about it in order to build support for the war. However, based

on the rest of the interview with Scheid, as well as the other evidence that

there was no plan to stay and rebuild in any serious way, that explanation

seems unlikely. The bulk of the evidence continues to suggest that democracy

and rebuilding were simply not on Bush's radar.

 

 

 

Go to Original

 

Eustis Chief: Iraq Post-War Plan Muzzled

By Stephanie Heinatz

The Daily Press

 

Friday 08 September 2006

 

Army Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, an early planner of the war, tells about

challenges of invasion and rebuilding.

 

Fort Eustis - Months before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003,

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists from

developing plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the

Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.

 

In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said " he would fire the

next person " who talked about the need for a post-war plan.

 

Rumsfeld did replace Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff in

2003, after Shinseki told Congress that hundreds of thousands of troops

would be needed to secure post-war Iraq.

 

Scheid, who is also the commander of Fort Eustis in Newport News, made

his comments in an interview with the Daily Press. He retires in about three

weeks.

 

Scheid doesn't go so far as calling for Rumsfeld to resign. He's

listened as other retired generals have done so.

 

" Everybody has a right to their opinion, " he said. " But what good did it

do? "

 

Scheid's comments are further confirmation of the version of events

reported in " Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of

Iraq, " the book by New York Times reporter Michael R. Gordon and retired

Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor.

 

In 2001, Scheid was a colonel with the Central Command, the unit that

oversees U.S. military operations in the Mideast.

 

On Sept. 10, 2001, he was selected to be the chief of logistics war

plans.

 

On Sept. 11, 2001, he said, " life just went to hell. "

 

That day, Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of Central Command, told his

planners, including Scheid, to " get ready to go to war. "

 

A day or two later, Rumsfeld was " telling us we were going to war in

Afghanistan and to start building the war plan. We were going to go fast.

 

" Then, just as we were barely into Afghanistan ... Rumsfeld came and

told us to get ready for Iraq. "

 

Scheid said he remembers everyone thinking, " My gosh, we're in the

middle of Afghanistan, how can we possibly be doing two at one time? How can

we pull this off? It's just going to be too much. "

 

Planning was kept very hush-hush in those early days.

 

" There was only a handful of people, maybe five or six, that were

involved with that plan because it had to be kept very, very quiet. "

 

There was already an offensive plan in place for Iraq, Scheid said. And

in the beginning, the planners were just expanding on it.

 

" Whether we were going to execute it, we had no idea, " Scheid said.

 

Eventually other military agencies - like the transportation and Army

materiel commands - had to get involved.

 

They couldn't just " keep planning this in the dark, " Scheid said.

 

Planning continued to be a challenge.

 

" The secretary of defense continued to push on us ... that everything we

write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going

to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave, " Scheid said. " We

won't stay. "

 

Scheid said the planners continued to try " to write what was called

Phase 4, " or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations

like occupation.

 

Even if the troops didn't stay, " at least we have to plan for it, "

Scheid said.

 

" I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next

person that said that, " Scheid said. " We would not do planning for Phase 4

operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk

about today.

 

" He said we will not do that because the American public will not back

us if they think we are going over there for a long war. "

 

Why did Rumsfeld think that? Scheid doesn't know.

 

" But think back to those times. We had done Bosnia. We said we were

going into Bosnia and stop the fighting and come right out. And we stayed. "

 

Was Rumsfeld right or wrong?

 

Scheid said he doesn't know that either.

 

" In his own mind he thought we could go in and fight and take out the

regime and come out. But a lot of us planners were having a real hard time

with it because we were also thinking we can't do this. Once you tear up a

country you have to stay and rebuild it. It was very challenging. "

 

Even if the people who laid out the initial war plans had fleshed out

post-invasion missions, the fighting and insurgent attacks going on today

would have been hard to predict, Scheid said.

 

" We really thought that after the collapse of the regime we were going

to do all these humanitarian type things, " he said. " We thought this would

go pretty fast and we'd be able to get out of there. We really didn't

anticipate them to continue to fight the way they did or come back the way

they are.

 

" Now we're going more toward a civil war. We didn't see that coming. "

 

While Scheid, a soldier since 1977, spoke candidly about the days

leading up to the invasion of Iraq, he remains concerned about the American

public's view of the troops.

 

He's bothered by the nationwide divide over the war and fearful that

patriotism among citizens will continue to decline.

 

" We're really hurting right now, " he said.

 

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Daily Press researcher Tracy Sorensen contributed to this report.

 

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