Both secret and unclassified versions of "Rebuilding Iraq" were turned over to the Pentagon in mid-2005 after 18 months of research, according to the [New York] Times, which said the unclassified version was intended to further public debate on how to prepare for future conflicts.The Army, however, would not release either version and also limited circulation of the secret study within the Pentagon.
U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) today sent the following letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, calling on him to immediately release an unclassified study of the postwar planning for Iraq prepared by the RAND Corporation in 2005. According to press accounts, the Army suppressed the RAND study after it concluded that the Bush Administration failed to address the enormity of Iraq's reconstruction challenges.
All this raises the question: If the Army is trying to bury this study, and if the Times thinks the study is important enough to place above the fold on Page One, and if the legal obstacles that made publication of the Pentagon Papers a dicey call back in 1971 are a nonissue this time out, then why won't the Times reprint the most important excerpts, as it did with the Pentagon Papers? Or, at the very least, post excerpts on its Web site?
Excerpts from the study:
"U.S. military intervention and occupation in the Muslim world" [is] "at best inadequate, at worst counter-productive, and, on the whole, infeasible."[...]
"Violent extremism in the Muslim world is the gravest national security threat the United States faces," said David C. Gompert, the report's lead author and a senior fellow at Rand. "Because this threat is likely to persist and could grow, it is important to understand the United States is currently not capable of adequately addressing the challenge."
[...]
[It] would be a profound mistake to conclude from [the troop increase] that all the United States needs is more military force to defeat Islamist insurgencies.” […] "One need only contemplate the precarious condition of Pakistan to realize the limitations of U.S. military power and the peril of relying upon it."
[...]
It says massive military interventions against insurgencies usually fail.
[...]
Looking at some 90 conflicts since World War II, the report concludes that establishing "representative, competent and honest" local government is the way to go.
Good Lord, when did we ever try that?
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