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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (108238)	7/27/2003 8:47:49 AM
From: Rascal	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Career civil servants who had helped plan U.S. peacekeeping operations in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo said it was imperative to maintain a military force large enough to stamp out challenges to its authority right away. Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, then-Army chief of staff, thought several hundred thousand soldiers would be needed. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz rebutted him sharply and publicly. "It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army," Wolfowitz told the House Budget Committee on Feb. 27. "Hard to imagine." Powell and his top aides thought it made sense to allow the Pentagon to control the immediate postwar phase, when security would be the dominant issue. Still, they expected to contribute ideas and staffing to the political side of reconstruction -- they even budgeted for an embassy to become the central U.S. institution in Iraq within a few weeks of Hussein's anticipated defeat. But as the Defense Department put together its occupation plans, the State Department felt doors closing. 'So Much Tension' The circle of civilian Pentagon officials given the task of planning the occupation was small. From its early work, it all but excluded officials at State and even some from the Pentagon, including officers of the Joint Staff. "The problems came about when the office of the secretary of defense wouldn't let anybody else play -- or play only if you beat your way into the game," a State Department official said. "There was so much tension, so much ego involved." .... Wolfowitz turned not to the roster of career specialists in the State Department's Near Eastern Affairs bureau, but to a political appointee in the bureau: Elizabeth Cheney, coordinator of a Middle East democracy project and daughter of the vice president; she recruited a State Department colleague who had worked for the International Republican Institute. While responsibility for developing an occupation plan resided with Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith -- along with the National Security Council -- a small defense policy shop called the Office of Special Plans was given a key role in developing policy guidance for on-the-ground operations. Its staff was hand-picked by William Luti, a former aide to Cheney and Newt Gingrich who headed the Pentagon's Middle East and South Asia policy office; they worked in a warren of offices on the Pentagon's first floor. The office held its work so closely that even members of Garner's office did not realize its role until February, a month after Garner was appointed. That month, 30 people showed up at a meeting called to share the Special Plans work with Garner's office and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There, the Special Plans staff handed out spreadsheets on four dozen issues, all policy recommendations for key decisions: war crimes prosecution, the elimination of the Baath Party, oil sector maintenance, ministry organization, media strategy and "rewards, incentives and immunity" for former Baath supporters. Once a policy was approved by the defense secretary's office and the interagency principals, it would become the operating guidance for the U.S. Central Command, whose troops would occupy Iraq. To the outsiders at the meeting, it looked like a fait accompli. "We had had no input into the Special Plans office," said one reconstruction official who was there. ..... But Chalabi continued to work closely with Feith and others at the Pentagon, staying in touch by satellite telephone from Iran and northern Iraq. Officials at the National Security Council and the State Department were stunned to learn in early April that U.S. military authorities had flown Chalabi and 700 hurriedly assembled fighters into southern Iraq. The vice president concurred in the decision to airlift him. Feith said it was strictly a decision made on military grounds by U.S. Central Command, but his Pentagon critics believe that he and Wolfowitz were trying to boost Chalabi's political prospects Rascal @notthebrightestbulbsinthestring.com washingtonpost.com.