Another Bush Cover-up of Incompetence

We have news of yet another attempted cover-up of incompetence by the Bush Administration. This time, the focus is on their lack of planning for the aftermath of the fall of Iraq to the initial American push. From Paul Kiel of TPM:

Back in the summer of 2005, just as journalists were toiling to produce the first books on what had gone so horribly wrong in Iraq, the Army was handed a thorough study by the RAND Corporation, its federally-financed research arm.

And it came, as one might expect, to some sharp conclusions. It faulted the President and Condoleezza Rice, Don Rumsfeld's Pentagon, Colin Powell's State Department, and Gen. Tommy Franks' Central Command for a variety of shortcomings, all essentially for their role in not adequately preparing for securing postwar Iraq. The report provided a strategy for how the Army and the government in general might avoid a similar plight the next time around (the short version: try preparing for the aftermath).

Unclassified versions of RAND reports are regularly made public, and the researchers had hoped a version of this report would be too. But, as The New York Times reports this morning, the Army wasn't happy with the product. So they buried it. The reason, an Army official explains, is that the report was just too gosh darn informative[.]

Of course, "informative" means "too enlightening on the subject of incompetence."

11 February 2008