NY Times: Army Buried Study Faulting Iraq Planning

Michael Gordon reports that the RAND Corporation submitted a study in the summer of 2005 critical of and identifying problems with every organization or leader involved in the reconstruction of Iraq. The report was buried by the Army.

Asked why the report has not been published, Timothy Muchmore, a civilian Army official, said... “After carefully reviewing the findings and recommendations of the thorough RAND assessment, the Army determined that the analysts had in some cases taken a broader perspective on the early planning and operational phases of Operation Iraqi Freedom than desired or chartered by the Army... Some of the RAND findings and recommendations were determined to be outside the purview of the Army and therefore of limited value in informing Army policies, programs and priorities.”

In other words, the report was too detail-oriented to be of any use to the government. We don't want details. It just needed to state that all was well in the rabbit hole. Anything other than that could undermine the propaganda.

Could it also be due to the fact that the study was critical of George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and Gen. Tommy Franks?

One serious problem the study described was the Bush administration’s assumption that the reconstruction requirements would be minimal. There was also little incentive to challenge that assumption, the report said.
“Building public support for any pre-emptive or preventative war is inherently challenging, since by definition, action is being taken before the threat has fully manifested itself,” it said. “Any serious discussion of the costs and challenges of reconstruction might undermine efforts to build that support.”
Another problem described was a general lack of coordination. “There was never an attempt to develop a single national plan that integrated humanitarian assistance, reconstruction, governance, infrastructure development and postwar security,” the study said.

Lack of coordination? On only has to look at Hurricane Katrina and the FEMA fiasco to know that "lack of coordination" is the Bush administration's middle name. Besides, it's hard work to coordinate the running of a country when all coordination recources are being used for voter supression, firing US attorneys, rendition, torture, rigged elections and caging lists, not to mention the coordination of hiding the truth in any study done or report published (or not published) from the American public.