harry hope

From The Boston Globe, 8/10/03:
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/222/nation/CIA_warned_administration_of_postwar_guerrilla_peril+.shtml

CIA warned administration of postwar guerrilla peril

Officials defend rebuilding plan

By Bryan Bender, Globe Correspondent, 8/10/2003

WASHINGTON -

In February, the CIA gave a formal briefing to the National Security
Council, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Vice
President **** Cheney, and President Bush himself:

''A quick military victory in Iraq will likely be followed by armed
resistance from remnants of the Ba'ath Party and Fedayeen Saddam
irregulars.''

The administration seemed unmoved.

In the weeks leading up to the Iraq war, top Bush administration
officials made glowing predictions that Iraqis would welcome US troops
with open arms, while behind the scenes they did little to prepare for
a guerrilla war.

''My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators,'' Cheney
said on NBC's ''Meet the Press'' on March 16.

''I've talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself,
had them to the White House.''

''I imagine they will be welcomed,'' Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D.
Wolfowitz, a key architect of the White House's Iraq strategy, said in
an interview April 3, two weeks into the war, with CBS's ''60 Minutes
II.''

''I think there's every reason to think that huge numbers of the Iraqi
population are going to welcome these people ... provided we don't
overstay our welcome, provided we mean what we say about handing
things back over to the Iraqis,'' Wolfowitz said.

The February report was not the only warning Bush received that a
guerrilla war was in the offing.

According to US intelligence officials who compiled or contributed to
the reports, and provided excerpts to the Globe, on multiple occasions
in the months before the war the CIA and the Defense Intelligence
Agency warned that fighting would probably continue after the formal
war.

The assessments went so far as to suggest that guerrilla tactics could
frustrate reconstruction efforts.

But intelligence officials, former military officers, and national
security specialists say the administration instead clung to the
optimistic predictions of the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group
headed by Ahmed Chalabi, who left Iraq in 1958.

Chalabi, who is now a member of Iraq's US-backed Governing Council, is
a close Rumsfeld and Cheney ally who had the ears of top
administration officials in the months before the war.

__________________________________________________ _____

The warnings were ignored and, as a result, our troops are being
killed and maimed.

Harry

blackwater

Of course it was 'unmoved'. You see, it DIDN'T MATTER
whether there were gonna be Saddamites and imported
rad-islamics ... the task of removing Hussein was the
#1 priority and piddly issues couldn't stand in the way.

Fortunately, Iraqis are leading the coalition to more
and more of the Saddamite hold-ons. They may not love
us, but they *hate* the Saddamites.