A story in this morning's NY Times on how the U.S. Army buried a report critical of post-war planning in Iraq:
[The RAND Corporation] submitted a report in the summer of 2005 called “Rebuilding Iraq.” RAND researchers provided an unclassified version of the report along with a secret one, hoping that its publication would contribute to the public debate on how to prepare for future conflicts.
But the study's wide-ranging critique of the White House, the Defense Department and other government agencies was a concern for Army generals, and the Army has sought to keep the report under lock and key.
A review of the lengthy report — a draft of which was obtained by The New York Times — shows that it identified problems with nearly every organization that had a role in planning the war. That assessment parallels the verdicts of numerous former officials and independent analysts.
The report also states that the lack of planning had "the inadvertent effort of strengthening the insurgency" through lack of security and services, and of enabling the entry of al-Qaeda fighters into the country through borders left unpatrolled because of too few troops. But we knew this.
--Matthew Duss
