We wrote the book on Iraq

It's a shame the "planners" who led us over this cliff didn't bother to read it (beware, it's a pdf).

As USA Today reports, well, today,

Since invading Iraq, Americans have discovered that the country is a military, political and cultural minefield. But it's a lesson they could have learned from a pocket-sized booklet published six decades ago by the U.S. government.

A Short Guide to Iraq was written to educate World War II servicemen about a place most of them had never heard of. It describes an Iraq familiar to soldiers there today: the heat, the oil, the religious and political factions, the talent for guerrilla war, the taboos against everything from making a pass at a woman to eating with your left hand.

The guide anticipates virtually every problem encountered by U.S. forces in the past 15 months, from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal to the increase in casualties since the fall of Baghdad.

But, of course, we have much more so-called bandwidth for planning these types of missions these days, don't we?

[Retired General] Keane, who served briefly as acting Army chief of staff after the invasion, agreed. Spreading his hands wide, he told the committee, "This represents the space for the intellectual capital that we expended to take the regime down."

And then drawing two fingers nearly together to reveal just a small gap, Keane added, "This represents the space for the intellectual capital to deal with it after. I mean, that was the reality of it."

In related news, who will be next, to join the "Coalition of the Let's Get the Hell Out of This Hole We're Digging," Moldavia?