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A PowerPoint presentation by miltary staff of the Pentagon given to the President and his cabinet at the White House in August 2002. An earlier version was presented to the President and his staff at Camp David in May 2002.
- Planners projected stable, pro-American and democratic Iraq, documents show
- National Security Archive publishes slides from military briefings
- Military planners made “completely unrealistic assumptions,” group says
- National Security Archive is independent research institute
WASHINGTON (CNN/AP) — Some of the planning by Gen. Tommy Franks and other top military officials before the 2003 invasion of Iraq envisioned that as few as 5,000 U.S. troops would remain in Iraq by December 2006, according to documents obtained by a private research organization.
Slides obtained by the National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act contain a PowerPoint presentation of what planners projected to be a stable, pro-American and democratic Iraq after the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
“Completely unrealistic assumptions about a post-Saddam Iraq permeate these war plans,” said National Security Archive Executive Director Thomas Blanton in a statement posted on the organization’s Web site along with copies of some charts used in the PowerPoint presentation. (Read the documents on the National Security Archive Web site)
“First, they assumed that a provisional government would be in place by ‘D-Day’, then that the Iraqis would stay in their garrisons and be reliable partners and, finally, that the post-hostilities phase would be a matter of mere ‘months’. All of these were delusions.” (Watch how the slides contradict the scenario presented publicly)
The organization said it initially requested documents related to the 2001-2003 planning sessions in 2004 and received them last month.
It said the posting “reproduces the documents as they were released by CentCom, together with additional items prepared by the National Security Archive” as well as a chronology of Iraq war planning based on secondary sources and commentary by archives staffers.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
