1999 War Games Foresaw Problems in Iraq

It turns out the military href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_WAR_GAMES?SITE=1010WINS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT">ran
war games in 1999, trying to anticipate what might happen if
we invaded Iraq.  First of all, they anticipated that 400,000
troops would be needed.  Then, they concluded that even with
that many troops, serious problems could be anticipated.
 Problems like what we are seeing now.



Why would the Clinton administration undertake such an exercise?
 I wonder if href="http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm">this
letter from PNAC to President Clinton had anything to do with
it:

January 26, 1998



The Honorable William J. Clinton

President of the United States

Washington, DC



Dear Mr. President:



We are writing you because we are convinced that current American
policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a
threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the
end of the Cold War.  In your upcoming State of the Union
Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course
for meeting this threat.  We urge you to seize that
opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the
interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the
world.  That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of
Saddam Hussein’s regime from power.  We stand ready
to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor...



...We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your
Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing
Saddam's regime from power... 



Elliott Abrams    Richard L.
Armitage    William J. Bennett

Jeffrey Bergner    John
Bolton    Paula Dobriansky

Francis Fukuyama    Robert
Kagan    Zalmay Khalilzad

William Kristol    Richard
Perle    Peter W. Rodman

Donald Rumsfeld    William Schneider,
Jr.    Vin Weber

Paul Wolfowitz    R. James
Woolsey    Robert B. Zoellick

HT to href="http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/11/1999-us-govt-war-games-predicted.html">Americanblog
and The
Fulcrum (Charles2 linked to something else on
Americablog, which drew my attention to the War Games article), and to
whoever it was that blogged about the PNAC-Clinton letter recently, in
some other context.  Unfortunately, I can't remember where I
saw it, to give the person credit.



Anyway, this makes me wonder even more, if the Bush administration was
planning the invasion even before they were elected. It would help
explain why the very first meeting of Bush's National Security Council
discussed the " href="http://trots.blogspot.com/2005/05/question-what-is-this-and-why-is-it.html">Political-Military
Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq Crisis" less than two weeks after
the Inauguration in 2001, eight months before 9/11.

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