They're Planners. They Plan

In 1919, the US Army put together the most current version of its "Red Plan" - contingency plans for an invasion.

From our ally, Great Britain. Via Canada.

The plan called, among other things, for the military evacuation of the Dakotas and the rest of the upper Great Plains.

The military has a huge number of officers, per capita. Many of them are involved in planning wars.

Some of the plans are deadly serious: the plans for defending West Germany during the Cold War were as huge and involved as they are now obsolete.

Other plans are purely contingencies; what would we do in the unlikely event we had to launch a war in some out-of-the-way, thoroughly implausible place where we'd never find ourselves in action in a million years? Like say, Grenada, or Panama, or Afghanistan?

Other plans are purely intellectual exercises - things for planners to plan to stay in practice for planning real plans.

Other plans are national policy. For example, during the tail end of my liberal life - 20 or so years ago - I attended a "Nuclear Freeze" meeting. A breathless-looking older woman solemnly intoned "I've heard the US might have plans on file to use our nukes for a first strike!"

No Farging Schneikies, I thought. No kidding. And if you dig far enough through the files, you'll find plans to shoot the missiles at incoming asteroids, and flying saucers, and probaby a few files on invading the Netherlands or repelling an invasion from Mexico. Wake up and die right, you moron! I wasn't much longer for the liberal world.

Today, lefty pundits large and small have their panties in a bind over the Bush Administation's "admission" that they started planning the invasion of Iraq before 9/11.

No kidding. They inherited it from the previous resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue!

It turns out that former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's so-called bombshell revelation that the Bush administration had a "secret plan" to depose Saddam Hussein before 9/11 wasn't such a secret after all.

In fact, not only did plans for "regime change" in Iraq NOT originate with the Bush White House, the "sinister plot" was actually ratified by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton a full three years before President Bush came to Washington.

According to Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, "The 1998 Iraqi Liberation Act was passed by an unanimous Senate and a near-unanimous House," after which Mr. Clinton certified it as the law of the land with his signature.

Leftyblogger Atrios notes:

The official, who asked not to be identified, was present in the same National Security Council meetings as O'Neill immediately after Bush's inauguration in January and February of 2001.

"The president told his Pentagon officials to explore the military options, including use of ground forces," the official told ABCNEWS. "That went beyond the Clinton administration's halfhearted attempts to overthrow Hussein without force."

Really?

But then this...

In January 1999, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright even appointed a special representative for transition in Iraq, Frank Ricciardone, who reportedly had "a mandate to coordinate opposition to Saddam."

Said Albright at the time: "He will be assisted by a team that will include both a military and a political adviser with extensive on-the-ground experience in the region.

...would have to have never happened, right?

Jeff Fecke says:

So...Paul O'Neill was telling the truth then?

Oh wait, no...Insty says it was all Bill Clinton! Clinton was actually planning a preemptive strike against Iraq! Of course, he didn't follow through on it because...

Because...

He was all talk?

Just a guess.

Watch as the Democrats continue to try to have their babaganoush ("Bush planned to invade all along!") and eat it too ("Look! Clinton wasn't completely feckless and worthless at foreign policy!").

Posted by Mitch at January 14, 2004 04:55 AM