March 11, 2003: Reconstruction Agency Chief Admits ‘We Started Very Slowly’

General Jay Garner, the head of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA—see January 2003), admits to reporters, “We started very slowly” in preparing for handling the reconstruction of post-Saddam Iraq. [Roberts, 2008, pp. 126]
Garner Knew Problems Would Arise - Garner will later say: “When I went to see [Defense Secretary] Rumsfeld at the end of January [2003], I said, OK, I’ll do this for the next few months for you. I said, you know, Let me tell you something, Mr. Secretary. George Marshall started in 1942 working on a 1945 problem. You’re starting in February working on what’s probably a March or April problem. And he said, I know, but we have to do the best with the time that we have. So that kind of frames everything.”
'Never Recovered' - Sir Jeremy Greenstock, currently Britain’s special representative to Iraq, will add: “The administration of Iraq never recovered [from the failure to plan]. It was a vacuum in security that became irremediable, at least until the surge of 2007. And to that extent, four years were not only wasted but allowed to take on the most terrible cost because of that lack of planning, lack of resources put in on the ground. And I see that lack of planning as residing in the responsibility of the Pentagon, which had taken charge, the office of the secretary of defense, with the authority of the vice president and the president, obviously, standing over that department of government.” [Vanity Fair, 2/2009]