Iraq: White House ignored Study of State Department

posted by ewing2001 on Saturday October 18, @03:40PM

State Dept. Study Foresaw Trouble Now Plaguing Iraq

Update: Former White House official: Bush decided in March 2002 to go to war (Seymour Hersh 10/27)
Update: Colin Powell on USD Study, Greg Thielmann and other topics.

NY Times -October 18

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 — 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.

Beginning in April 2002, the State Department project assembled more than 200 Iraqi lawyers, engineers, business people and other experts into 17 working groups to study topics ranging from creating a new justice system to reorganizing the military to revamping the economy.

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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, although the Pentagon said they took the findings into account. The work is now being relied on heavily as occupation forces struggle to impose stability in Iraq...

Transcript (excerpt): U.S. Sec. of State Colin Powell on 'FOX News Sunday'

Foxnews -Sunday, October 19, 2003

TONY SNOW, FOX NEWS: ...Secretary Powell, there's a report in today's New York Times that a 13-volume State Department report called "The Future of Iraq Project" anticipated a number of the problems that allies are now facing in trying to reconstruct Iraq and that many of the recommendations were ignored by the Pentagon in putting together a war plan.

Is that story true or false?

POWELL: Well, there was a study done under State Department leadership called "The Future of Iraq." It was an extensive piece of work. And when General Garner was appointed by Secretary Rumsfeld to head ORHA, as it was called, ORHA, all of that information was made available to General Garner, and it's still available to the Pentagon and to others involved in reconstruction.

What parts of it were used or not used, you'd have to ask the Pentagon and those who've been working on it. But we have a number of the people who participated in the work now working with Ambassador Bremer. There are a number of people from the State Department who are very familiar with that work, are now in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq working with Ambassador Bremer.

SNOW: Do you believe it is accurate, however, that some of the recommendations, had they been examined more closely and carried out into effect, would have made life easier for the allies in rebuilding Iraq?

POWELL: Well, I couldn't comment on that, Tony, without knowing what specific recommendations the authors of the article were talking about. And, you know, in any study, not every recommendation is accepted.

But it was a quality piece of work that was made available to General Garner for his use and the use of those involved in the reconstruction efforts.

SNOW: One of the recommendations was that the United States not demobilize the entire Iraqi military but instead try to keep many of those in the military employed on the theory that it's better to have them on your side than possibly giving them some cause to go back to the other side.

Also, today in the New York Times, Ilad Alawi, who is the head of the provisional Iraqi Governing Authority, says the same thing, that it is time for allies to go back and rehire, at least to the mid-officer level, all those old Iraqi soldiers and get them working.

Do you think that's a good idea?

POWELL: There are a couple of issues here. To some extent, the Iraqi army demobilized itself. It didn't stand and fight as much as we thought it would. In Gulf War I, back in '91, when I was chairman, we took 80,000 prisoners. In this conflict, there are only about 7,000 prisoners. To some extent, the army melted away as an organized force.

And then when Ambassador Bremer began his work, he thought it was important to make sure that we had totally de-Baathified the institutions, to include the Iraqi army. And now we are rebuilding an Iraqi army under Ambassador Bremer's leadership and under the leadership of General Abizaid and the other commanders in Baghdad -- General Sanchez.

And so, I will leave it up to them as to the best way to reconstitute that army and what part of the old structure do you want to use, what individuals are you now comfortable with putting in positions of leadership in a new army.

The first battalion has graduated, and many more will follow in fairly rapid order, as well as the creation of a new police force.

SNOW: Secretary, there is continuing controversy about the justification used for the war. I'm going to ask you once again about Greg Thielmann, a former State Department employee, who has said that the testimony you presented to the United States Security Council exaggerated intelligence on a host of issues, ranging from aluminum tubes with possible nuclear use to the range and capability of missiles within Iraq.

I know you have answered the question before, but I want to get your response to the repeated charges of Greg Thielmann.

POWELL: Well, Mr. Thielmann has his opinion. But what I presented on the 5th of February to the United Nations wasn't something I pulled out of the air, and it wasn't something given to me by a group of political mentors. I sat for days with the Central Intelligence Agency, with the actual analysts, as well as the top leadership of the CIA -- George Tenet, John McLaughlin, the deputy director of Central Intelligence -- and we went over every single word in my presentation and every single exhibit.

And what I presented represented the best judgment of the intelligence community. Nothing was juiced; nothing was exaggerated. It was what they believed, and they stood firmly behind that presentation, and they do to this day.

And as Dr. Kay goes about his work -- he's in charge of our effort to exploit all of the documents and view all of the sites that we have discovered in Iraq -- we will see more information coming forward.

And he has validated some of the information we presented already, with respect to the fact that there were programs kept intact by Saddam Hussein for chemical, biological and even nuclear development, when circumstances permitted, to go even further than they had been able to go under the presence of inspectors and sanctions.

SNOW: So you expect to...

POWELL: So I think the case is still out...

SNOW: I'm sorry. Go ahead.

POWELL: I stand by the presentation because it was a presentation that was put together by the intelligence community, and it represented the best judgment of the intelligence community, not the best judgment of any political leaders.

SNOW: Do you expect to be vindicated by David Kay?

POWELL: Yes.

SNOW: Let's turn to Ted Kennedy, the senator from Massachusetts. He had some fairly scalding comments this week about the president. We're going to play them, and I want to get your reaction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

U.S. SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY (D-MA): Week after week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie after lie. The president's war has been revealed as mindless, needless, senseless, reckless. The American people all know this. Our allies know it. Our soldiers know it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: Secretary, your response?

POWELL: I totally disagree with Senator Kennedy. The president did not lie week after week after week, and the American people know better. The American people know better and are demonstrating they know better by their support for the president's policies.

And I don't think it's accurate to say our allies feel that as well. There are 32 nations standing alongside us in Iraq now. I don't think they'd be standing alongside us if they didn't think they were doing the right thing, if they didn't think that this was a noble cause that got rid of a horrible regime, a horrible dictator who had gassed people in the past, and we didn't want to take the chance he would gas them, expose them to biological weapons or, given the chance, reconstitute his nuclear weapons program. He never lost that intent.

And so, I disagree with the senator. And I think that we should be proud of what our young men and women have done, are doing in the Gulf now, in Baghdad now, throughout Iraq now.

And such comments, it seems to me, don't support us in that effort to support them and to rally the international community.

We got a unanimous U.N. resolution this week. There were some nations who had reservations about that resolution but nevertheless voted for it. And we now have the entire international community aligned with our policy of gradually but as fast as we can, nevertheless in a gradual way, restoring sovereignty to the people of Iraq and coming home as fast as we can.

But we're going to do it right. And when we have done it right, Iraq will be a better country, living in peace with its neighbors. No one will have to have any future debates about weapons of mass destruction, because it will be a government elected by the people who have no such interest in threatening its neighbors or developing such weapons of mass destruction or creating mass graves or being a source of instability throughout the region and a possible source of such weapons of mass destruction for terrorists to acquire.

SNOW: One of your predecessors, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, was speaking this week with the French media, and she made the following comment. She said of the president, "Bush and the people working for him have a foreign policy that is not good for America, not good for the world." She says it's too much the United States versus the world. Your response?

POWELL: Well, I disagree with her. The United States pulled together a unanimous resolution in the U.N. this week. President Bush is here at the APEC meeting, having excellent meetings with his counterparts, a fine visit with our Japanese friends. You saw the images coming from Manila in the Philippines yesterday. You have seen him meet today with the prime minister of Thailand and with the president of China. All of these are solid relationships that we have.

And I disagree with Secretary Albright, who I believe is in France on a book tour.

SNOW: Do statements of that sort undermine the president?

POWELL: Well, you know, it's a free country. People are entitled to their opinion. And people are entitled to their opinion, and we take praise when it comes, and we take abuse when it comes. It's part of being in public life. It's part of our very, very dynamic political system.

SNOW: Mr. Secretary, you mentioned the United Nations Security Council vote. Do you expect that to produce any additional funds for Iraqi reconstruction? And more to the point, how much extra money do we need to do the job right?

POWELL: We'll take as much money as we can get. And I think the resolution will encourage some countries to give who might not have had a basis to give before the resolution was passed.

The Stovepipe

By Seymour M. Hersh -Issue of 2003-10-27

NewYorker

...Kenneth Pollack, a former National Security Council expert on Iraq, whose book “The Threatening Storm” generally supported the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein, told me that what the Bush people did was “dismantle the existing filtering process that for fifty years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information. They created stovepipes to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership. Their position is that the professional bureaucracy is deliberately and maliciously keeping information from them.

“They always had information to back up their public claims, but it was often very bad information,” Pollack continued. “They were forcing the intelligence community to defend its good information and good analysis so aggressively that the intelligence analysts didn’t have the time or the energy to go after the bad information.”

The Administration eventually got its way, a former C.I.A. official said. “The analysts at the C.I.A. were beaten down defending their assessments. And they blame George Tenet”—the C.I.A. director—“for not protecting them. I’ve never seen a government like this.”

...By early March, 2002, a former White House official told me, it was understood by many in the White House that the President had decided, in his own mind, to go to war. The undeclared decision had a devastating impact on the continuing struggle against terrorism. The Bush Administration took many intelligence operations that had been aimed at Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups around the world and redirected them to the Persian Gulf. Linguists and special operatives were abruptly reassigned, and several ongoing anti-terrorism intelligence programs were curtailed.

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