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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rick McDougall who wrote (29859)	10/9/2003 9:11:55 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Frontline: Truth, War and Consequences pbs.org [*** This program is on many local PBS stations right now] As the Bush administration faces continuing questions about its failure to secure peace in Iraq, FRONTLINE kicks off its new fall season with an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at what some government officials say is the underlying cause of America's current problems in Iraq: the pre-war political infighting among the Pentagon, State Department, and White House that hampered U.S. efforts to plan for an orderly, post-war transition. Did America rush into a war for which it was unprepared? And could the current volatility in Iraq have been prevented? In "Truth, War and Consequences," airing Thursday, October 9, (check local listings), FRONTLINE takes viewers behind the scenes of a fierce internal debate between the State Department and the Pentagon over the shape of Iraq after the war. It was a debate, some officials and observers say, that bogged down America's pre-war planning and distracted officials from the crucial business of post-war reconstruction. The 90-minute documentary features interviews with key government officials and military leaders who admit to being unprepared for the lawlessness and devastation-both physical and economic-that greeted them upon their arrival in Baghdad. "We weren't planning for the kind of situation we found," says Paul Bremer, the chief civilian administrator overseeing Iraq's reconstruction. "I think it is clear that when we got here we did not realize how devastated the economy was." The economic devastation was only exacerbated by the war's aftermath, which included constant power outages, food and gasoline shortages and the much-reported looting. Retired Army Gen. Jay Garner, the first American administrator to oversee the interim Iraqi administration and reconstruction, recalls arriving in Baghdad to find that seventeen of Baghdad's 23 ministry buildings-buildings that Garner planned to use in his reconstruction efforts-had been "deconstructed," stripped bare right down to their wiring, plumbing and insulation. "I knew there would be looting," Garner says. "But I didn't think the looting would have the impact it would have [on reconstruction efforts]." At the heart of the divisive administrative debate, insiders say, was the desire by the civilians in the Department of Defense to back Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella organization of Iraqi exiles headed by Ahmed Chalabi. "There's been a debilitating and I think wasteful and damaging quarrel over Ahmed Chalabi," says Richard Perle, former chairman of the Defense Policy Board. "No one was proposing that he be anointed, but simply that he would be useful to us if he emerged in a leadership position. That would be highly desirable...from the point of view of the future of Iraq." FRONTLINE also investigates the role of a secretive intelligence operation at the Pentagon-known as the Office of Special Plans-charged with quietly looking for evidence that would link Al Qaeda to Iraq. Through interviews with Pentagon officials, FRONTLINE exposes how that operation compromised the quality of the intelligence provided to President Bush. "The failure, thus far, to find evidence of weapons of mass destruction raises troubling questions about what else the Bush administration may have misunderstood or misjudged as it planned for the war and the occupation," says FRONTLINE producer and correspondent Martin Smith. "The architects of the war are now scrambling to address a largely unforeseen crisis and to design a politically and militarily safe exit strategy."