The little game I played here over the last week with Peter Pace's and Tommy Franks' version of the timeline for Iraq War planning seemed to mystify some commenters. Why is this news, they asked, that Pace was putting the start date for such planning as far back as spring of 2001? This excerpt from the news book Cobra II should clarify things a bit (hat tip: The Belgravia Dispatch):
In late May [of 2002], Bush sought to repair ties with Europe and promised a deliberate response to the terrorist threat, one that would not be purely military and would enlist the help of the U.S. allies. In a May 23 press conference in Berlin, Bush asserted that Iraq's WMD programs were a serious threat but that he had not prepared an invasion strategy. "I told the Chancellor that I have no war plans on my desk, which is the truth, and that we've got to use all means at our disposal to deal with Saddam Hussein." The president made a similar comment in Paris three days later. [Ed. note: See here too for a third example of the 'no attack plans on my desk' stump response. Clearly this was language the President had decided to go with purposefully, in other words, it was not a slip of the tongue at a single press conference].
[Tommy] Franks went further. In late May, a radio reporter asked him how many troops he would need for an invasion of Iraq. "That's a great question and one for which I don't have an answer because my boss has not yet asked me to put together a plan to do that," Franks said. "They have not asked me for these kinds of numbers. And I guess I would tell you, if there comes a time when my boss asks me that, that I'd rather provide those sorts of assessments to him. But thanks for your question.
The president's statement was true in only the most literal but trivial sense. Bush had ordered the development of a new CENTCOM war plan, repeately met with Franks to hear its details, offered his own views on the schedule for deploying troops and on the military's effort to couch the invasion as a liberation, and sent his vice president halfway around the world to secure allies for the war. And as for Franks, even the cleverest hair-splitting could not reconcile his remarks with the activity of CENTCOM during the previous six months. (Cobra II, p. 51-52)
The point, of course, is to note the jarring resonance between these denials, while Iraq war planning was speeding along, and the similar pooh-poohing of Iran war plans emanating from the same mouths this very week. As we say down yonder, deja voodoo.