Iraq viewed through rosy hues in 2002

As the debate rages in Australia and the US about the Iraq War, any timetable for a withdrawal of troops, how everyone got into the mess in the first place and who might be seen as "deserting" the war-torn country, today the NY Times reveals how the whole exercise was viewed back in 2002:

"When Gen. Tommy R. Franks and his top officers gathered in August 2002 to review an invasion plan for Iraq, it reflected a decidedly upbeat vision of what the country would look like four years after Saddam Hussein was ousted from power.

A broadly representative Iraqi government would be in place. The Iraqi Army would be working to keep the peace. And the United States would have as few as 5,000 troops in the country.

Military slides obtained by the National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act outline the command’s PowerPoint projection of the stable, pro-American and democratic Iraq that was to be.

The general optimism and some details of General Franks’s planning session have been disclosed in the copious postwar literature. But the slides from the once classified briefing provide a firsthand look at how far the violent reality of Iraq today has deviated from assumptions that once laid the basis for an exercise in pre-emptive war."

Questions direct to PM Howard about the rosy assessment and what he knew about it should make for interesting answers. Just watch the PM duck and weave!

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