Status Updates From Blind Into Baghdad: America...

"A rational military planner who was told to stabilize Afghanistan after the Taliban was gone, and who was not told that we might soon be doing Iraq, would probably have put in three times the number of infantry, plus all the logistics support 'tail'....The result of that is they they did not have enough people to go in and stabilize the country, not enough people to make sure [al-Qaeda] didn't get out." - R. Clarke

(Written in 2004) "it is hard to find a counterterrorism specialist who thinks that the Iraq War has reduced rather than increased the threat to the United States. And here is the startling part. There is no evidence that the president and those closest to him ever talked systematically about the 'opportunity costs' and trade-offs in their decision to invade Iraq."

"Because detailed thought about the postwar situation meant facing costs and potential problems, and thus weakened the case for launching a "war of choice" (The Washington term for a war not waged in immediate self-defense), [planning] could be seen as an 'anti-war' undertaking."