This seems to be a helluva week for confirming BushCo malfeasance that we on the left have been talking about for months or even years. President Bush's speech about moving some high-profile terrorists to Gitmo was also an admission that, yes, our government has been running secret CIA prisons.
Here's another body blow:
Long before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists to develop plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.
In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a post-war plan.
One of the questions that constantly comes up in looking at the myriad snafus the Bush Administration has unleashed is this: incompetence or malice? (And yes, I know, "both" is a distinct possibility.) This story furninshes some powerful ammunition for the malice alternative.
In 2001, Scheid was a colonel with the Central Command, the unit that oversees U.S. military operations in the Mideast.
On Sept. 10, 2001, he was selected to be the chief of logistics war plans.
On Sept. 11, he said, "life just went to hell."
That day, Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of Central Command, told his planners, including Scheid, to "get ready to go to war."
A day or two later, Rumsfeld was "telling us we were going to war in Afghanistan and to start building the war plan. We were going to go fast.
"Then, just as we were barely into Afghanistan Rumsfeld came and told us to get ready for Iraq."
Scheid said he remembers everyone thinking, "My gosh, we're in the middle of Afghanistan, how can we possibly be doing two at one time? How can we pull this off? It's just going to be too much."
...
"The secretary of defense continued to push on us that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave," Scheid said. "We won't stay."
Scheid said the planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4," or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations like security, stability and reconstruction.
Even if the troops didn't stay, "at least we have to plan for it," Scheid said.
"I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," Scheid said. "We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today.
"He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war."
There you have it -- unambiguous, indefensible madness. George Bush and everyone who supports him should be forced to confront this story and explain why the perpetrator of this disaster should not be fired -- at a minimum.