Tommy Franks Was Right

Another one of the architects of the Iraq invasion has been making the rounds with the latest book full of excuses. Straight from the "where are the war architects" file comes Douglas Feith. If you know the narrative of how we got into the biggest foreign policy mess ever then Feith's name is a familiar one. He was most recently on the Diane Rehm Show this past Thursday. I've been trying not to hear any of the lame-ass garbage Feith has been pawning off to respected media outlets like 60 minutes but I gave in and listened to the whole one hour segment.

Surprisingly or maybe not Feith has been pushing the idea that the real blame for what went wrong lies with Colin Powell. What I gathered from the interview is that He thinks Powell should have done more to stop the civilian war planners from going ahead with the invasion. To further his point Feith basically stated to Rehm during the interview that if then Secretary of State Powell had a better plan he didn't let on. I come away with this summary. Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolofwitz and the other neocons used bizarro world logic to set off an ill-conceived and ill-planned invasion of Iraq. Colin Powell is to blame because it was up to him to stop them because they didn't know any better. There is a mountain of evidence out there that says they wouldn't have listened anyway.

Feith asserts that his account is based on the record and that's what gives his book real juice. Feith also boasts that the planning was a collaborative effort in which all points of view were entertained. You don't have to go any further than the pages of the book Fiasco by Tom Ricks to see how Feith's "on the record" account contrasts starkly with what actually happened. In the chapter of Fiasco titled "The Run Up", Ricks covers how the lack of attention to objective input from other sources soured the war planning. There were two very large scale and comprehensive reports created by dozens of security experts, military planners and Mideast scholars. Both of these studies where ignored by Feith's office. Ricks summarizes this phenomenon in his book:

"What is remarkable is that again and again during the crucial months before the invasion, such warnings from experts went unheeded-or even unwelcome. Almost no Middle Eastern experts inside the military were consulted on the war plan, in part because the plan was produced on a very close hold basis that involved few people , and even then only parts of it were shown to most of those involved."

Despite the non-attentiveness to the counsel of all of these experts Feith still defends one of the
biggest blunders of the occupation, disbanding the Iraqi army. He claims in his "on the record" version of events that military planners agreed with this decision. The historic facts recounted in Fiasco point to military experts stressing that the Iraqi army not be disbanded. In December of 2002 a report produced by military experts at the Pentagon (a third report in as many months) stated unequivocally the error of folding the Iraqi army after the invasion:

"...To tear apart the army in the war's aftermath could lead to the
destruction of one the only forces of unity within the society."

Feith's claim that the Iraqi army was already broken and had to be rebuilt clearly contradicted the advice being given at the time of the run upto the war. This is just one major example of the incompetent way Feith's office handled the planning and execution of the invasion and
subsequent occupation of Iraq. In the end it was the incompetence from key war planners like Feith that lead to the abysmal failures that have morphed into the never ending disaster that is the occupation of Iraq. General Tommy Franks is quoted in Fiasco as summing up Feith's level of competence with this morsel, "the dumbest fucking guy on the planet". I don't know if I'd go that far but he has a point.

Feith's book smells like pure revisionist crap if you ask me. The only good that may come out of his new book is that he plans to donate all the proceeds to charity. I think a charity that supports the families of fallen Iraq war veterans would be a good start.