The Brains Thing
This is a must-read: The Brains Thing - Three years of watching Bush makes the point: Intelligence matters more than “character.” It mentions something I had forgotten about: the State Department’s Future of Iraq group, which was given $5 million before the Iraqi invasion to assess what would happen, and what would be needed, in a post-invasion Iraq. They predicted that we would need to be on guard against looting in the immediate aftermath of the invasion (we weren’t, and looting was rampant), that the Iraqis very well might not greet us with open arms, that the 400,000-strong Iraqi army should not be reduced in size until there were new jobs for the soldiers (instead we completely disbanded the Iraqi army), that we should be prepared for the complexities of the intertwining of religion and politics in Iraq, and that the infrastructure (water, electrical, etc.) was in far worse shape than the Pentagon was planning for. It’s obvious now that none of this advise was heeded, and reading “The Brains Thing” provides some insight as to why.
