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Remember when the DOD had plans to strike Zarqawi, and the Bush White House refused to approve them? The WSJ's Scott Paltrow reconstructs the decision today. NBC had already reported back in March that the White House had nixed the DoD's plans to strike Zarqawi, but at that point, the White House was still denying it [and Kevin Drum and Dan Drezner among others, picked up on it]. Now, the White House is no longer denying its fatal misjudgment:
As the toll of mayhem inspired by terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi mounts in Iraq, some former officials and military officers increasingly wonder whether the Bush administration made a mistake months before the start of the war by stopping the military from attacking his camp in the northeastern part of that country.
The Pentagon drew up detailed plans in June 2002, giving the administration a series of options for a military strike on the camp Mr. Zarqawi was running then in remote northeastern Iraq, according to generals who were involved directly in planning the attack and several former White House staffers. They said the camp, near the town of Khurmal, was known to contain Mr. Zarqawi and his supporters as well as al Qaeda fighters, all of whom had fled from Afghanistan. Intelligence indicated the camp was training recruits and making poisons for attacks against the West.
. . .
But the raid on Mr. Zarqawi didn't take place. Months passed with no approval of the plan from the White House, until word came down just weeks before the March 19, 2003, start of the Iraq war that Mr. Bush had rejected any strike on the camp until after an official outbreak of hostilities with Iraq. Ultimately, the camp was hit just after the invasion of Iraq began.
. . .
Administration officials say the attack was set aside for a variety of reasons, including uncertain intelligence reports on Mr. Zarqawi's whereabouts and the difficulties of hitting him within a large complex."Because there was never any real-time, actionable intelligence that placed Zarqawi at Khurmal, action taken against the facility would have been ineffective," said Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for the NSC. "It was more effective to deal with the facility as part of the broader strategy, and in fact, the facility was destroyed early in the war." . . .
Some former officials said the intelligence on Mr. Zarqawi's whereabouts was sound. In addition, retired Gen. John M. Keane, the U.S. Army's vice chief of staff when the strike was considered, said that because the camp was isolated in the thinly populated, mountainous borderlands of northeastern Iraq, the risk of collateral damage was minimal. . . .
Gen. Keane characterized the camp "as one of the best targets we ever had," and questioned the decision not to attack it. . .
Why is this story coming out now? Because the fearmongerer in chief Cheney ordered a review of Zarqawi that points out how criminally incompetent his White House has been:
Questions about whether the U.S. missed an opportunity to take out Mr. Zarqawi have been enhanced recently by a CIA report on Mr. Zarqawi, commissioned by Vice President Dick Cheney. Individuals who have been briefed on the report's contents say it specifically cites evidence that Mr. Zarqawi was in the camp during those prewar months. They said the CIA's conclusion was based in part on a review of electronic intercepts, which show that Mr. Zarqawi was using a satellite telephone to discuss matters relating to the camp, and that the intercepts indicated the probability that the calls were being made from inside the camp.
Kind of makes you angry, doesn't it? Those who are supporting the White House because of the war on terror are deluded, or egregiously misinformed. Look at the facts. Look at the record of failure. Look at those beheaded in Iraq. Look at the insurgency the White House never planned for. Look at the fifty killed Iraqi security recruits laid out in rows in the desert yesterday. Look at the raiding of the Al Qaqaa facility and the missing 380 tons of very high explosives, and the administration pressuring Iraq not to report it to the IAEA for fear of elections-season embarrassment. Look at Abu Ghraib. Look at Rumsfeld letting Osama getting away at Tora Bora. Look at their deceit and falling for Chalabi's lies and giving US intelligence to Tehran. Look at North Korea getting a half dozen nuclear weapons and Iran fast on that path. In profoundly serious ways, the Bush administration has betrayed the US's national security interests and failed to provide the competence and means and intellectual honesty to achieve success in both the US war on terrorism and the war in Iraq, from too few troops to a failure to honestly evaluate the nature of the problem.
[thx to SE.]
Update: Belgravia Dispatch's newly engaged Greg Djerejian is desperately rationalizing why he's voting against his gut instinct - that the Bush administration is 'criminally negligent' in its conduct of the Iraq post-war. A true sign of the increasing desperation of his reasoning in the face of the evidence. And as he points out, an increasingly isolated position as well: "It's Kerry Endorsement Season! Wow, it's getting lonely out there! WaPo. TNR. Drezner. Chafetz. Adesnik. Andrew, likely soon?" He forgot, the Des Moines Register. And the New Yorker [apparently -- its first presidential endorsement in history].