No Post-War Plan for Iraq

The official Army historian of the Iraq campaign concludes that there was no post-war plan for Iraq (registration required).

"While there may have been 'plans' at the national level, and even within various agencies within the war zone, none of these 'plans' operationalized the problem beyond regime collapse" -- that is, laid out how U.S. forces would be moved and structured, Wilson writes in an essay that has been delivered at several academic conferences but not published. "There was no adequate operational plan for stability operations and support operations."

That this has become widely known among the public, and generally accepted as true, is without question. Too many different reports have come from too many people in and outside of the administration who have said the same thing, and the evidence is obvious. Nonetheless, there are defenders of this administration who insist that there has been no lack of planning or preparation, or that the consequences of the invasion were unforeseeable. But the credibility of the writer is hard to argue with, and he benefits from a more comprehensive view of the campaign than most. His full report is not available to the public (it was presented at Cornell University in October), but the article provides a good summary of it.