Reconstruction disaster

Thursday, Feb. 14, 2008 | 2:07 a.m.

A 2005 federal report that panned the Bush administration’s plans for rebuilding postwar Iraq was suppressed by the U.S. Army, even though the report was supposed to be made public.

The report, “Rebuilding Iraq,” was prepared for the Army by the RAND Corp., a policy research and analysis institute. RAND’s military research routinely is intended for public dissemination unless it contains information that should remain classified.

And, as noted this week by The New York Times, which obtained a copy of the so far unpublished report, Army regulations stipulate that its officials are not allowed to censor or withhold analyses that criticize the Army.

This report definitely was critical. According to the Times, researchers noted problems with all the federal agencies involved in the Iraq reconstruction, saying they lacked a clear plan of action and routinely failed to work together.

“There was never an attempt to develop a single national plan that integrated humanitarian assistance, reconstruction, governance, infrastructure development and postwar security,” the researchers wrote.

Strategies and guidance on how to proceed with reconstruction didn’t emerge “until shortly before major combat operations commenced,” the report said. Researchers recommended that in the future military strategists include potential postwar needs and measures in prewar plans.

In other words, the Bush administration should have had an idea of what the end of the war would look like and what postwar Iraq would need, and it didn’t. Bush woefully underestimated the effort that would be needed, the report says.

The RAND report was released in summer 2005, at the same time that Bush was declaring successes in Iraq and pushing back against mounting criticism of the war. One civilian Army official told the Times that the RAND report wasn’t withheld because of its timing, but because it took “a broader perspective” than “desired or chartered by the Army.”

However, another Pentagon official told the Times that the report was withheld because “the Army leaders who were involved did not want to take the chance of increasing the friction with (then-Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld.”

The RAND Corp. is paid to give the kind of unvarnished and objective critique that, in this case, showed just what a stunning failure the Bush administration’s war plan has been. Americans are paying for the Iraq war with their lives and their money, and this report never should have been kept from them.