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The “Decider-In-Chief?” Hardly.
February 11, 2008
During his time in office, President Bush has gone to great efforts to convince the American people — for better or worse — that he’s s strong decision maker. Don’t believe us? Take a listen. [Think Progress] [Audio, :02] [Audio, :03]
Turns out, though, that he can’t even do that right. A study conducted by the RAND corporation — a group that receives financial funding to conduct military research — has found that President Bush — and by implication Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who served as national security adviser when the war was planned — failed to resolve differences among rival agencies leading up to the Iraq war. [New York Times]
How did each agency fail in the planning stages? Take a look.
Defense Department: Led by Donald H. Rumsfeld, the DoD was given the lead in overseeing the postwar period in Iraq despite its “lack of capacity for civilian reconstruction planning and execution.”
State Department: Led by Colin L. Powell, State produced a voluminous study on the future of Iraq that identified important issues but was of “uneven quality” and “did not constitute an actionable plan.”
Central Command: Under Gen. Tommy R. Franks, who oversaw the military operation in Iraq, CENTCOM had a “fundamental misunderstanding” of what the military needed to do to secure postwar Iraq.
The report also highlights the general lack of coordination between the different departments: “There was never an attempt to develop a single national plan that integrated humanitarian assistance, reconstruction, governance, infrastructure development and postwar security.”
Not surprising, the Army did its best to suppress the report, which was part of a larger, seven-volume study on lessons learned from the war.
We’ll let you put two and two together on this one: The report was submitted at a time when the Bush administration was trying to rebut building criticism of the war in Iraq by stressing the progress the president said was being made.
So… what exactly has he been deciding?
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