t he p erils of o ptimism 291usable plan in fall 2002, concern mounted among senior military
offi cers at all levels. Eventually, rumblings about the insuffi ciency of
the preparation for a postwar occupation reached Bush’s ears. He
responded by formalizing the Pentagon’s authority over postwar
planning on January 20, 2003, while raising some specifi c concerns. For
example, the president realized that a humanitarian crisis in the wake of
the invasion, which might result if the fi ghting forced many Iraqis to
fl ee their homes, would both disrupt the return to stability and become
a public relations disaster for the United States. He insisted on adequate
preparations for emergency relief supplies. Otherwise the president
asked few questions and accepted vague answers to the ones he did
pose.
Having won the bureaucratic war, Rumsfeld fi nally woke up to the
fact that his department needed to be ready for what would happen the
day after Baghdad fell. He made it clear that the United States would
not embark on another Balkans-style operation but instead would
follow the Afghanistan model in which the Afghans had been left alone
to build their own country. In January 2003 he picked Douglas Feith,
who worked for Wolfowitz, to oversee the postwar planning process.
Rumsfeld and Feith then selected retired Lieutenant General Jay Garner
to head a temporary planning organization, the Office of Recon-
struction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), to prepare the civilian
side of a postwar occupation. (Having led an earlier relief eff ort among
the Kurds in 1991, Garner had some familiarity with Iraq.) Franks
assumed the military would exercise full authority in Iraq for several
months following the end of hostilities. Th is meant Garner and his
team, mostly former and current military personnel, should have suffi -
cient time to organize their work. An exercise conducted in late
February 2003 at Garner’s behest to identify potential problems and
clarify agencies’ responsibilities revealed a host of unanswered ques-
tions. But too little time remained to remedy the situation. Answers
would have to be cobbled together on the fl y. Concern over possible
postwar security problems did result in a decision, later confi rmed by
the president, that the Iraqi Army would be retained under non-Baathist
commanders to help preserve order.
Meanwhile, Rumsfeld and his senior civilian aides showed no greater
tolerance for questions about their postwar plan from within the