Gordon Brown has leaked a sequel to the Downing St. memo questioning post-war planning:
A briefing paper prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers eight months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq concluded that the U.S. military was not preparing adequately for what the British memo predicted would be a “protracted and costly” postwar occupation of that country.
The eight-page memo, written in advance of a July 23, 2002, Downing Street meeting on Iraq, provides new insights into how senior British officials saw a Bush administration decision to go to war as inevitable, and realized more clearly than their American counterparts the potential for the post-invasion instability that continues to plague Iraq.
In its introduction, the memo “Iraq: Conditions for Military Action” notes that U.S. “military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace,” but adds that “little thought” has been given to, among other things, “the aftermath and how to shape it.”
Fair enough, the post-war planning sucked, and it sucked big-time. All in all, however, things will probably work out well in Iraq, and things are already improving in the neighborhood.
But you have to wonder whether Bush would have committed to the invasion if he had any idea who hard the nation-building was going to be, and why Blair went along with a plan with so many obvious warts. Is it just his compassionate nature?
Incidentally, this memo contradicts the Downing St. memo I on the question of the decision to invade. This one said it hadn’t been made yet:
WASHINGTON, June 12 – A memorandum written by Prime Minister Tony Blair’s cabinet office in late July 2002 explicitly states that the Bush administration had made “no political decisions” to invade Iraq, but that American military planning for the possibility was advanced. The memo also said American planning, in the eyes of Mr. Blair’s aides, was “virtually silent” on the problems of a postwar occupation.
Oops.
H/T John Cole