"Delusional"

BBC - Iraq invasion plan 'delusional'

The commanders predicted that after the fighting was over there would be a two- to three-month "stabilisation" phase, followed by an 18- to 24-month "recovery" stage.

They projected that the US forces would be almost completely "re-deployed" out of Iraq at the end of the "transition" phase - within 45 months of invasion.

"Completely unrealistic assumptions about a post-Saddam Iraq permeate these war plans," NSA executive director Thomas Blanton said in a statement posted on the organisation's website.

One has to wonder just who it was that Franks was getting his information from. I do not personally have an in depth knowledge of the region, but one of my former professors, who has studied the region in depth, seemed to realize that deposing Hussein would lead to further instability in the region and possibly civil war. It would seem that experts on the region would have been consulted on the matter and at least the possibility of such an outcome would have been suggested. It would seem to me that only an ideologue who was totally sold on the universal goodness and applicability of democracy could have come up with that time line.