In 2003 someone told me about an event at the US Naval Postgraduate School that had revealed some shocking information. They said a former government official gave a speech about extensive planning and analysis done by the Pentagon following the 1990-1991 Iraq war to assess the risks of a US-led invasion. The speaker, apparently, had spent some years in Iraq and up until 1999 was working with a team that tried to gain an accurate picture of what would be required to secure the region. I remember hearing (paraphrased) “All of it was thrown out, completely destroyed, when Bush came into power in 2001. Bush’s staff wanted nothing to do with, no information left behind. All of our hard work on the ground, our research and planning, unbelievably, was simply tossed out.”

Clarke, Hart, Gingrich and others’ recount how their warnings about national security risks were dismissed gave credence to the story. Otherwise I was not sure what to make of the story. It was also interesting to read a few passing remarks (but no real reports on the fact) that Cheney’s partner quit the bi-partisan Hart-Rudman Comission when she did not like what was hearing. I mean it just seems ironic that Bush’s reaction to the Hart Rudman Comission was to task Cheney’s husband with a new review. The outcome was sadly predictable. Bush himself said that terrorist threats were “not immediate” (remember, this is in the summer of 2001) and suggested that Mr. Cheney would have to setup a new task-force to review the conclusions. Note that Cheney’s task force never met, perhaps because he was more occupied with re-writing the energy policy with regard to emissions and de-regulation of oil companies:

Bush administration officials told former Sens. Gary Hart, D-Colo., and Warren Rudman, R-N.H., that they preferred instead to put aside the recommendations issued in the January report by the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century. Instead, the White House announced in May that it would have Vice President Dick Cheney study the potential problem of domestic terrorism — which the bipartisan group had already spent two and a half years studying — while assigning responsibility for dealing with the issue to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, headed by former Bush campaign manager Joe Allbaugh.

The Hart-Rudman Commission had specifically recommended that the issue of terrorism was such a threat it needed far more than FEMA’s attention.

Before the White House decided to go in its own direction, Congress seemed to be taking the commission’s suggestions seriously, according to Hart and Rudman. “Frankly, the White House shut it down,” Hart says. “The president said ‘Please wait, we’re going to turn this over to the vice president. We believe FEMA is competent to coordinate this effort.’ And so Congress moved on to other things, like tax cuts and the issue of the day.”

The administration’s distrust of anything outside the cabal is now even more stark and disturbing. The military criticism of Rumsfeld seems to be that he cruelly dismisses anyone or anything that he disagrees with. The same appears to be true of Cheney and his wife, as well as Rice:

Privately, as the strategy took form in spring and summer, the Bush team expressed disdain for the counterterrorist policies it had inherited from President Bill Clinton. Speaking of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, a colleague said that “what she characterized as the Clinton administration approach was ’empty rhetoric that made us look feckless.'”

Something seems terribly strange about this comment now. What can be more empty than completely dismissing the bi-partisan comission reports, intelligence and military professionals, while appointing a Bush campaign manager to come up with a new security strategy? A former campain manager! Rhetoric indeed.

Ultimately the facts appear to have been tossed out and replaced with a faith-based premise focused on pride and prestige. Bush fell right into the emperor-has-no-clothes policy without question because he “doesn’t do details“:

Bush is the detached CEO, a man who got his position thanks to a lifetime of privilege; Johnson was a hands-on CEO who got the job after having worked his way up from the very bottom of the political world. Bush doesn’t do details; Johnson pored over the aerial maps of Vietnam, hoping that he could pick a bombing target that would turn the tide of the war.

Bush doesn’t go to funerals for our dead soldiers. Until last week, his administration had refused to release photos of the flag-draped caskets coming back to the United States. (The Pentagon caved as a result of a Freedom of Information Act suit.) When it comes to the second Iraq war, Bush displays no doubt, no anguish. And therein lies the key: It is that quality that made Johnson, for all his faults and failings, a great president. It’s the same quality that exposes Bush as the wrong president at the wrong time, fighting the wrong war in the wrong place.

Right, so there’s the background, which brings me back to my friend’s amazing story of an insider who bemoaned how the Bush administration should have known better but they insisted that all the pre-2001 Pentagon data on Iraq be tossed.

Now, perhaps, you can imagine my surprise when I read the news today that a FOIA release at an “independent archive” of George Washington University proves that the US military was in fact peforming war games in 1999 to assess the viability of US invasion of Iraq. And sure enough they came to a number of conclusions that the Bush administration threw out when they came to office. Unfortunately for the US, these military experts and facts were ignored:

“The conventional wisdom is the U.S. mistake in Iraq was not enough troops,” said Thomas Blanton, the archive’s director. “But the Desert Crossing war game in 1999 suggests we would have ended up with a failed state even with 400,000 troops on the ground.”

There are currently about 144,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, down from a peak of about 160,000 in January.

That’s some pretty damning evidence that Rumsfeld is incompetant. Even Perle is now able to acknowledge they made a mistake, although he tries to blame the “disloyal” members of the Bush administration for the failure:

Richard N. Perle, the former Pentagon advisor regarded as the intellectual godfather of the Iraq war, now believes he should not have backed the U.S.-led invasion, and he holds President Bush responsible for failing to make timely decisions to stem the rising violence, according to excerpts from a magazine interview.

[…]

He continued: “At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible….

“I don’t think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty.”

Contrary to Perle’s theory of whom to blame, however, the report revealed by the FOIA does not say the war would be easier if the administration officials were more “loyal”. If anything it suggests that being loyal to false hope is about as sensible as loyalty to the captain of the Titanic who believed that sailing through icebergs would be easy:

_”A change in regimes does not guarantee stability,” the 1999 seminar briefings said. “A number of factors including aggressive neighbors, fragmentation along religious and/or ethnic lines, and chaos created by rival forces bidding for power could adversely affect regional stability.”

_”Even when civil order is restored and borders are secured, the replacement regime could be problematic — especially if perceived as weak, a puppet, or out-of-step with prevailing regional governments.”

_”Iran’s anti-Americanism could be enflamed by a U.S.-led intervention in Iraq,” the briefings read. “The influx of U.S. and other western forces into Iraq would exacerbate worries in Tehran, as would the installation of a pro-western government in Baghdad.”

_”The debate on post-Saddam Iraq also reveals the paucity of information about the potential and capabilities of the external Iraqi opposition groups. The lack of intelligence concerning their roles hampers U.S. policy development.”

_”Also, some participants believe that no Arab government will welcome the kind of lengthy U.S. presence that would be required to install and sustain a democratic government.”

_”A long-term, large-scale military intervention may be at odds with many coalition partners.”

Would this have ever come to light without the independent archive? It just goes to show that the right people knew, the right information (the difficulty of success) was available, regardless of people’s loyalty to Bush. Bi-partisan groups tried to warn the US and influence its security policy, but the Bush administration categorically ignored facts presented by anyone outside their closest internal circles. I don’t buy that there was any kind of real dissent that led anywhere other than dismissal of the dissenters. What were the words of the Titanic captain who believed his ship was unsinkable? “Stay the course…”?

I remember a time when park benches in London were exactly that, benches. What I mean is that a controversy once brewed in GB over people sleeping on public benches and I read in the papers (long ago) that armrests were to be installed to end the issue. I do not know if this reaction is the source of all armrests on long bench-like seating areas, but armrests certainly do seem to be more common now (airports, movie-theaters) than in older seating areas (e.g. Cathedral pews). Are people more worried today about personal space than in the past?

From where I sit, armrests are an interesting type of behavior regulation. I wonder if it self-imposed (we need some way to divide spaces evenly for us, especially as weight/size averages grow, and/or want someone to keep us from lying down) or whether it is a result of some kind of offensive use or abuse that we wish to be stopped (homeless taking up residence on the benches and claiming it as permanently theirs). Movable armrests would be a good idea to solve the former problem. I suppose the reason movable armrests are not more common, however, is because the cost justification for the armrests has more to do with the latter problem. Wonder if anyone has researched the history of armrests…

From an opposite perspective, since public benches have off-peak access during the night, perhaps they should be intentionally designed and maintained to be a form of homeless accomodation. Otherwise, as this report points out, the armrests might just end up forcing the homeless to sleep somewhere even less palatable to the regulators:

“Sure it says (the city) is unfriendly to homeless,” said Andy Baines, a formerly homeless 36-year-old who is working hard at the Winston-Salem Rescue Mission to get his life right. “But you know what? There’s always somewhere else to go. We’ll find another place. It might be a couch, an abandoned building or an abandoned car.

The term “abandoned” gives a hint to the nature of the problem. The armrests raise the stakes of what is to be considered abandoned enough to be suitable for a nap. In airports, apparently the base of the seats with armrests has become the preferred spot. So instead of napping on the bench, people put their bags on the seats and sleep just below them, which seems like an unnecessary and unfortunate consequence of behavior regulation.

The BBC suggests Japan has a “new” problem:

“Being a fake priest is big business in Japan – I’ve done a TV commercial for one company,” [Mark Kelly] added. “In Sapporo, there are five agencies employing about 20 fake priests. In a city like Tokyo, there must be hundreds.”

The fake Western priests are employed at Western-style weddings to give a performance and add to the atmosphere. These are not legal ceremonies – the couples also have to make a trip to the local registrar.

“In the past almost all weddings in Japan were Shinto, but in the last few years Western-style weddings have appeared and become very popular,” said one Japanese priest.

It is important for the bride and groom to have a proper wedding, and they are not getting it from these foreign priests. “People like the dress, the kiss and the image. Japanese Christians make up only 1% of the country, but now about 90% of weddings are in the Christian style.”

Without trying to be too controversial about this, who really gets to decide whether someone is a real priest, and what constitutes a real/proper wedding? The infrastructure and regulations seem to always be under some kind of challenge as denominations fracture and feud. As a famous anthropologist once said, “marriage is as relative as time has zones”. After all, how different is this than the infamous Vegas weddings and (Elvis) priests?

The Alternet Blogs include a post with blistering condemnations by decorated US military experts:

Uber-decorated Major General John R.S. Batiste, who retired last year “on principle,” delivers a bruising, point-by-point indictment of Sect. of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld (video right).

This is the passage that stuck with me… and will perhaps stick with some international legal expert:

[Donald Rumsfeld] violated fundamental principles of war… set the conditions for Abu Ghraib and other atrocities that further ignited the insurgency…

There are some stark warnings from Batiste about the risk and reality of unaccountable leadership:

Donald Rumsfeld is not a competent wartime leader. He knows everything, except “how to win.” He surrounds himself with like-minded and compliant subordinates who do not grasp the importance of the principles of war, the complexities of Iraq, or the human dimension of warfare. Secretary Rumsfeld ignored 12 years of U.S. Central Command deliberate planning and strategy, dismissed honest dissent, and browbeat subordinates to build “his plan,” which did not address the hard work to crush the insurgency, secure a post-Saddam Iraq, build the peace, and set Iraq up for self-reliance. He refused to acknowledge and even ignored the potential for the insurgency, which was an absolute certainty. Bottom line, his plan allowed the insurgency to take root and metastasize to where it is today.

General Paul Eaton also expresses frustration with Rumsfeld’s habit of ignoring reality:

The President charged Secretary Rumsfeld to prosecute this war, a man who has proven himself incompetent strategically, operationally, and tactically. Mr. Rumsfeld came into his position with an extraordinary arrogance, and an agenda — to turn the military into a lighter, more lethal armed force. In fact, Rumsfeld’s vision is a force designed to meet a Warsaw Pact type force more effectively.

We are not fighting the Warsaw Pact. We are fighting an insurgency, a distributed low-tech, high-concept war that demands greater numbers of ground forces, not fewer. Mr. Rumsfeld won’t acknowledge this fact and has failed to adapt to the current situation. He has tried and continues to fight this war on the cheap.

And yet, like he did with Brown in Katrina, the aloof and indifferent Bush cheers Rumsfeld along…

Democrats and Republicans alike have called for Rumsfeld’s resignation, arguing he has mishandled the war in Iraq, where more than 2,800 members of the U.S. military have died since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. Cheney has faced sharp criticism for his hardline views and is viewed favorably by only about a third of Americans in polls. Bush said that “both men are doing fantastic jobs.”