Funny I dont remember hearing this

The government admitted yesterday that it had failed to foresee the scale of potential insurgency in Iraq and that the invasion had left a "strategic vacuum" in the country.

The admissions were made in the government's official response to a highly critical Commons defence committee report on the handling of post-war operations in Iraq.

However, the Ministry of Defence gave no indication about when British troops might withdraw, restating its commitment to "continue until the job is done". It added: "We will remain in Iraq for as long as the Iraqi government judges that our forces are required to provide security and assist in the development of the Iraqi security forces".

Iraq's prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, said yesterday that his government wanted to see a speedy withdrawal of US troops. Speaking alongside the US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is visiting the country, Mr Jaafari said the time had come to plan a coordinated transition from American to Iraqi military control.

"We do not want to be surprised by a withdrawal that is not in connection with our Iraqi timing," he said.

John Reid, the defence secretary, last month outlined a plan in which Britain would cut the number of its troops in Iraq from 8,500 to 3,000 by the middle of next year.

The Ministry of Defence admitted that "while some planning took place to deal with the likely disaffection following the invasion of Iraq, an insurgency on the scale that subsequently followed was not foreseen."


My comment is this .... if the MoD is caught off guard by the level of insurgency attacks in Iraq, lets extrapolate that idea ..... why would anyone inside the military complex in the US be able to expect anything better?