Again and again and again I ask: Incompetent or deliberate?

They knew full well what the result of toppling Saddam would be -- and they did it anyway.

Bob Geiger:

Which makes the report issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee before the Memorial Day holiday even more interesting because Prewar Intelligence Assessments About Postwar Iraq (PDF) shows not only that Shinseki was right about troop levels, but also -- as if more evidence is needed -- that the Bush administration ignored critical pre-war intelligence in their rush to invade Iraq.

The report, which the previous Republican Congress successfully kept from being produced for two years, shows that months before the Iraq invasion, the White House knew from U.S. intelligence agencies that a civil war would likely erupt after Saddam's ouster, that al-Qaeda would quickly move to exploit the American occupation and that Osama bin Laden's organization would actually gain strength globally due to Bush's action.

"Prior to sending troops to Iraq, the Bush Administration promoted the terrorist nexus between Iraq and al-Qa'ida (and the attacks of 9/11) as a central part of its case to the American people that Iraq posed an imminent threat that only military action could extinguish, despite the Intelligence Community's view that Iraq and al-Qa'ida viewed each other with suspicion and were not operationally linked," said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) in the report.

"What the Administration also kept from the American people were the sobering intelligence assessments it received at the time warning that the post-war transition could allow al-Qa'ida to establish the presence in Iraq and opportunity to strike at American it did not have prior to the invasion."

The report reinforced Shinseki's original contention -- which further bolsters the image of a Bush White House that wanted to do the war their way regardless of expert opinion -- that up to 400,000 troops might be required to "keep the peace" after the initial invasion due to a severely damaged national infrastructure and the virtual certainty of sectarian violence.

"Sunni Arabs would face possible loss of their longstanding privileged position while Shia would seek power commensurate with their majority status," says the report. "Kurds could try to take advantage of Saddam's departure by seizing some of the large northern oilfields, a move that would elicit forceful responses from Sunni Arabs. Score-settling would occur throughout Iraq between those associated with Saddam's regime and those who have suffered most under it."

The report also pointed out that with such an overwhelming U.S. focus on maintaining the Iraq occupation, Osama bin Laden and Company would be allowed to flourish and operate with greater ease in other countries, saying that the White House should expect "…many countries -- including some US allies -- to slacken efforts to hunt down al-Qa'ida and its associates within their borders."

And now that the Congress is in Democratic hands and once again back to the business of actually performing their Constitutional oversight role, the Intelligence Committee's report makes very clear that George W. Bush got ample warning that an Iraq invasion would require far greater military might than they had planned and that the action itself would embolden the terrorists -- as the GOP has so often accused those now against the war of doing.

So the Bush Administration had ample information about what the aftermath of the Iraq War would be -- and they did it anyway.

At this point, we have to ask why. Was it simply a matter of George W. Bush's neurosis and issues with his fathers, exacerbated by Dick Cheney and PNAC's lust for empire and damn the torpedoes? Or was it more sinister -- a calculated effort to ENHANCE, rather than fight, terrorists in order to keep the U.S. population afraid so that they would not protest at losing their freedoms -- and perhaps even the entire U.S. Constitution in the name of "feeling safe"? When you look at the acceptance of the unitary executive theory from top to bottom in this Administration, and you look at the secret prisons, and secret wiretapping and surveillance programs, and the proclamations of "I'm the Decider", and way the Republican candidates whose only chance at ascending to power are to continue the Bush/Cheney foreign policy of fearmongering and empire continue to play to Americans' fears, it's hard to come to the conclusion that this was simple incompetence.

It's looking increasingly as if we've been had by a would-be dictatorship. The question now is this: What will these would-be dictators do to retain power? They have already willfully ignored information about one impending terrorist attack and allowed it to play out because it was to their advantage. It's not unreasonable to think they'll do it again.