Regards, C

James seems to want us to hold "Princes" to a different standard from commoners, again. They can't be nobles if they are employed by the electorate.

Regards, C

Pace also told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee that the Bush administration had put off much of the planning for the aftermath of the Iraq war -- launched on March 20 -- out of concern such planning would bring on the conflict.

"We did not want to have planning for the post war make the war inevitable. We did not want to do anything that would prejudge or somehow preordain that there was definitely going to be a war," he said.

Even then, I remember nearly shouting in my rage. I've been on a Joint Task Force staff. I've still got the unclassified training materials. And I know (and so does Pace) that Phase IV Post-Combat planning is _explicitly_ part of our duties. Nobody in uniform - not Pace, not the JCS staff, not Tommy Franks or anyone on his CENTCOM staff - nobody can just decide not to do it.

Interesting side note - you can't find regular news archives of that story online anymore. reuters doesn't even seem to have it. But you can see the whole context on other news sites like, disturbingly enough, in China. However, here's an old Knight-Ridder article that supports this.

In March 2003, days before the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, American war planners and intelligence officials met... to review the Bush administration's plans to oust Saddam Hussein and implant democracy in Iraq.

Near the end of his presentation, an Army lieutenant colonel who was giving a briefing showed a slide describing the Pentagon's plans for rebuilding Iraq after the war, known in the planners' parlance as Phase 4-C. He was uncomfortable with his material - and for good reason.

The slide said: "To Be Provided."
...
Longstanding Army doctrine calls for beginning reconstruction in freed areas of a country while fighting rages elsewhere. It also calls for a shift in military forces from combat troops to civil affairs, military police and the like.

"Unfortunately, this did not occur despite clear guidance to the contrary," Army Col. Paul F. Dicker wrote in an assessment.
...
Instead of providing a plan and enough troops to take control of Iraq, officials, advisers and consultants in and around the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office bet on Iraqi exiles such as Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, who assured them that Iraqis would welcome American troops as liberators.

Gen. John Keane, the vice chief of the Army staff during the war, said some defense officials believed the exiles' promises. "We did not see it (the insurgency) coming. And we were not properly prepared and organized to deal with it . . . . Many of us got seduced by the Iraqi exiles in terms of what the outcome would be," Keane told a House committee in July.

Rumsfeld's office "was utterly, arrogantly, ignorantly and negligently unprepared" for the aftermath of the war, said Larry Diamond, who was a political adviser in Baghdad from January to March of this year.

The article is long, but worth looking through. Numerous sources, including CIA, DIA, the State Dept's INR, as well as the Joint Staff itself repeatedly told senior officials abot the need for post-combat planning, but were ignored. And again, the military doesn't have the option of not doing this - it would have to be ordered not to do it. And according to numerous recent accounts, that's exactly what Rumsfeld did.

We badly underestimated the sectarian hostility in Iraq, to be sure. That’s hardly comparable to the intentional moral misdeeds of slavery.

Which brings up a philosophical question: Where exactly does one drawn the line between intentional moral misdeeds, and willful ignorance of the consequences of one's deeds?

Context for "not-planned-for-afermath" is explicitly laid out in new book "HUBRIS". Names dates, documents etc. . Read it and weep.

I'll need a little more context for that one.

Cernig: We badly underestimated the sectarian hostility in Iraq, to be sure. That’s hardly comparable to the intentional moral misdeeds of slavery.

James,
That's only valid if the underestimation was unintentional, or if competent planning & execution could have been expected to lessen the hostility (and tangentially, the deaths). But considering that senior military planners were explicitly directed _not_ to plan for the aftermath (in direct contradiction of the Joint Staff's explicit mission, I might add), there is a case to be made for this administration's criminal culpability in any "excess" Iraqi deaths.

While that still doesn't equate to the evil of slavery, it is beginning to get "comparable"...

Just to the, you know, dead Iraqis.

Geesh, talk about academic detachment. What's next, thrill killing?

Cernig: We badly underestimated the sectarian hostility in Iraq, to be sure. That's hardly comparable to the intentional moral misdeeds of slavery.

JJ: In the grand scheme of things, yes. We fight wars to enhance our own security. So far, it doesn't look like we've accomplished that and we've opened the bottle which previously contained the genie of nasty sectarian violence. The fight's not yet over, though, and it may well prove to have been worth the cost when all's said and done.

the war in Iraq was not primarily undertaken to make the lives of the Iraqi people better. It was justified, first and foremost, on [American] national security grounds.

Your point is then, James, that the only relevant variable is American lives potentially saved because of the war and whether 30.000 or 600.000 or a couple of million Iraqis die is irrelevant, yes?

Way to sanitize the historical record.