Saturday, October 22, 2005
Well, D-U-H!
A top U.S. official for aid to Iraq has accused the Bush administration of rushing unprepared into the 2003 invasion because of pressures from President Bush's approaching reelection campaign.Beware what you say and do when the commissar is near.
Robin Raphel, the State Department's coordinator for Iraq assistance, said that the invasion's timing was driven by "clear political pressure," as well as by the need to quickly deploy the U.S. troops that had been amassed by the Iraq border.
Soon after the invasion, Raphel said, it became clear that U.S. officials "could not run a country we did not understand…. It was very much amateur hour."
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She said that key decisions from those days, including those to disband the Iraqi army and remove from government members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, were dictated by the neoconservative views held by hawkish senior administration officials and their Iraqi exile allies.
The decisions "were ideologically based," she said. "They were not based on analytical, historical understanding."
She said she believed officials with an ideological bent kept close watch on the others.
"There were political people round and about," she said. "One had to be careful."
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