To Be Provided

i havent yet seen all of the rove/gregory interview from hardball, but couldnt wait to make a few comments. heres the transcript. (C&L have an incomplete version of the vid, and are promising to fix it.)

first lets go to TheMemo:

GREGORY: As you well know, critics of this war have seized on what’s being called now the Downing Street Memo, based on meetings that Britain’s Chief of Intelligence had with American officials about the war. One issue that comes up in that memo and subsequent memos is British concerns about the fact that the White House in their view wasn’t adequately thinking about what happens after the regime falls.

ROVE: I'm glad you brought that up because I want to put that in context. First of all that is the British — a Brit making a comment about what he perceived to be U.S. policy. But remember the time frame, it is months and months and months before the balloon goes up in Iraq. And in those intervening months there was plenty of time planning for post-war efforts, vast amounts of planning.

im seeing this shit leak into the arguments and it drives me mad and i want to put a stop to it. NOW. krove is correct, thememos were months before the invasion, but he's wrong to say that post-war planning was done in the interim. lets go to the inestimable warren strobel at knight ridder back in october 04:

" In March 2003, days before the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, American war planners and intelligence officials met at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina to review the Bush administration's plans to oust Saddam Hussein and implant democracy in Iraq.

Near the end of his presentation, an Army lieutenant colonel who was giving a briefing showed a slide describing the Pentagon's plans for rebuilding Iraq after the war, known in the planners' parlance as Phase 4-C. He was uncomfortable with his material - and for good reason.

The slide said: "To Be Provided.""
[snip]

"We didn't go in with a plan. We went in with a theory," said a veteran State Department officer who was directly involved in Iraq policy.

i havent seen anyone quote this report when the egadmin pulls out their flimsy excuse and its been driving me mad.

or maybe im being unfair to karl. apparently there was lots of planning done. lets go back to strobel:

"A half-dozen intelligence reports also warned that American troops could face significant postwar resistance. This foot-high stack of material was distributed at White House meetings of Bush's top foreign policy advisers, but there's no evidence that anyone ever acted on it.
"It was disseminated. And ignored," said a former senior intelligence official."

or this:

"On March 17, 2003, two days before the war began, ground force commanders asked the Army War College for a copy of the handbook that had governed the U.S. occupation of postwar Germany, which began in 1945."

go read the rest and put a stop to this disgusting revisionism by krove and the kronies.

anyway, on a separate note, the following words fall out of krove's mouth (apparently in the following order according to the transcript):

"we will find these jihadists and the Al Qaeda most dangerous when they are at the moment of greatest danger for them."

i fear that the same will be true for the egadmin, and with all this talk of impeachment, isnt that time fast approaching? what on earth might they try once they realise that the 'moment of greatest danger for them' is approaching? i fear for the (global) republic. seriously, if they lie to war, what wont they do?

bastards.

here's david corn's take on the rove interview. and heres ron