Pre-War Assumptions Led to Flawed Iraq Plan, U.S. Report Says

March 19, 2007
Pre-War Assumptions Led to Flawed Iraq Plan, U.S. Report Says

March 22 (Bloomberg) -- The Bush administration's rosy pre- war assumptions about the speed at which Iraq would stabilize led to poorly coordinated, haphazard planning for post-war reconstruction that's brought waste and inefficiency, according to a new report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq.

Pre-war planning that assumed a small reconstruction effort was so poor that Congress should consider passing legislation similar to a 1986 law that reorganized the military to better perform joint military operations, Inspector General Stuart Bowen said in the report.

"There was an assumption that the Iraqi infrastructure was in reasonably good shape. It wasn't," Bowen said in an interview yesterday. "There was an assumption that the Iraqi government would be able to pick up and sustain itself. That didn't happen. There was an assumption that the Iraqi oil and gas production would provide revenue sufficient to fund recovery. That also did not pan out."