White House disputes U.S. lacked planning

The White House said on Sunday there was "significant" postwar planning for Iraq and disputed the characterization of a memo produced for British Prime Minister Tony Blair eight months before the invasion that expressed concerns about a long occupation.
The briefing paper concluded that the U.S. military was not preparing adequately for what the memo predicted would be a "protracted and costly" postwar occupation of Iraq, The Washington Post reported in Sunday's editions.

"We disagree with the characterization. There was significant postwar planning," David Almacy, a White House spokesman, said.

"More importantly, the memo in question was written eight months before the war began -- there was significant postwar planning in the time that elapsed," he said.

The memo showed that top British officials saw the Bush administration as inevitably deciding to go to war, but said "little thought" had been given to "the aftermath and how to shape it," the Post said.

Blair's staff produced the eight-page July 21, 2002, memo in preparation for the prime minister's meeting with his national security staff two days later at Downing Street.

"A postwar occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise," the memo said.

"As already made clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden," it said, according to the Post.

"Some things we prepared for did not happen, like large numbers of refugees needing humanitarian assistance," Almacy said. "And others we did not expect, such as large numbers of regime elements fleeing the battlefield only to return later."

The death toll continues to mount from a violent insurgency that has killed hundreds of American troops and Iraqi civilians. The United States, which led the invasion in March 2003, has said it will not pull out until Iraqi forces are trained to take over security for their country.

The report of the July 21 memo comes after the minutes of the subsequent Downing Street meeting were published by London's Sunday Times on May 1 and became known as the Downing Street memo.

The minutes said Britain's spy chief had concluded after a trip to Washington that "intelligence and facts were being fixed" to make the case for war in Iraq, an assertion that U.S. officials and Blair have denied.