Iraq War Plan Assumed Only 5,000 U.S. Troops Still There by December 2006

Iraq War Plan Assumed Only 5,000 U.S. Troops Still There by December 2006: "The U.S. Central Command's war plan for invading Iraq postulated in August 2002 that the U.S. would have only 5,000 troops left in Iraq as of December 2006, according to the Command's PowerPoint briefing slides, which were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and are posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org).

The PowerPoint slides, prepared by CentCom planners for Gen. Tommy Franks under code name POLO STEP, for briefings during 2002 for President Bush, the NSC, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, the JCS, and Franks' commanders, refer to the 'Phase IV' post-hostilities period as 'UNKNOWN' and 'months' in duration, but assume that U.S. forces would be almost completely 're-deployed' out of Iraq within 45 months of the invasion (i.e. December 2006).

'Completely unrealistic assumptions about a post-Saddam Iraq permeate these war plans,' said National Security Archive Executive Director Thomas Blanton. 'First, they assumed that a provisional government would be in place by 'D-Day', then that the Iraqis would stay in their garrisons and be reliable partners, and finally that the post-hostilities phase would be a matter of mere 'months'. All of these were delusions.'

...

POLO STEP was a coded compartment created during the Clinton administration to encompass covert Iraq and counter-terrorism plans and activities. In the mid-1990s, the compartment specifically included the targeting of Osama bin Laden. Following the September 11 attacks, CentCom, among other military and national security components, used the designation to cover planning for the war in Iraq. (Note 1)"

(Via The National Security Archives.)