NYT: Looting Is Derailing Detailed U.S. Plan to Restore Iraq

[mburbank]

Finally! And thank you, Apportioner, for sorting through and posting this stuff.

If I understand the multiple trickles of official information here (as opposed to some sort of acctual unified administration statement) that the task to which Garner was appointed, ie resturcturing Iraq under conditions that don't exist, was perfect for him. His firing is not a result of his failure. The failure lies in not planning for even the possability of the current conditions on the ground, a task Garner is NOT suited for, so Bremner gets the job.

I think the reason the watwer around this has been so muddy is it's pretty clearly Rumsfeld how actively discouraged people from even contingency planning. So Garner is given a very gentle version of the Bum's Rush and good soldier that he is probably won't tell the press that most of the info he got from Rummy was wrong.