US failed to plan for post-war Iraq-report
Wed Jul 27, 2005 1:47 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An independent assessment of the tumult in Iraq led by two top former presidential advisers found the Bush administration had been unprepared for post-war Iraq and had underestimated the number of troops needed in a miscalculation that helped fuel the insurgency.

The report by a Council on Foreign Relations task force, released on Wednesday, concluded that the failure to prepare properly for the period after the war had given "early impetus for the insurgency" now gripping the country.

The task force was headed by two former national security advisers, Democrat Samuel "Sandy" Berger and Republican Brent Scowcroft, and presented a bipartisan critique of the Bush approach.

Scowcroft, national security adviser under President Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, had warned publicly of the risks of military action in Iraq in the run-up to the 2003 invasion.

"The critical miscalculation of Iraq war-planning was that the stabilization and reconstruction mission would require no more forces than the invasion itself," the panel reported.

"Pre-war inattention to post-war requirements -- or simply misjudgments about them -- left the United States ill-equipped to address public security, governance and economic demands in the immediate aftermath of the conflict, seriously undermining key U.S. foreign policy goals and giving early impetus to the insurgency," it said.

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