# Pentagon Office of Special Plans (OSP): What's the Deal?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [July 22, 2003, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084 "2003-07-22T03:25:20Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2003, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/41 "2003-08-28T16:32:56Z")
> [@](#):
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> military officials this July decided the office (OSP) should revert to its original name, the **Northern Gulf Affairs Office**. A Pentagon spokesman confirmed the report, saying the restored name of the regional policy office was a better and more accurate description of its role and responsibilities.
[The Pentagon PR Machine At Work\_](http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8725)
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### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2003, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/42 "2003-09-21T16:29:33Z")
> [@](#):
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> **[What Went Wrong In Iraq?](http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/07/iraq/printable571971.shtml)**
>
> Laith Kubba, worked with 200 professional Iraqi exiles for a year to devise a State Department plan to rebuild Iraq ahead of the invasion. **He says their plan was shelved when the Defense Department took control of reconstruction away from the State Department just before the war started.**
>
> Kubba says he cannot believe the plans he and his fellow exiles devised were ignored. “I’m just puzzled,” he says. The Iraqis expected the United States to take charge and have a plan when they arrived, but with the first week “they realized that there is nobody in charge,” he says.
>
> Instead of moving in immediately and taking control, the United States stood by while government offices were systematically trashed.
>
> Kubba says, “We had all the ministries that had all the records on everybody and by seizing those ministries we would have had the keys to running Iraq. We should have kept and called upon all the people in the bureaucracies to report back to work from day one because those people are accustomed to order."
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### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [September 25, 2003, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/43 "2003-09-25T18:14:48Z")
> [@](#):
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> \*\*[War Plans Ignored Worn Infrastructure\*\*](http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61044-2003Sep24?language=printer)
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> U.S. officials insist that in the months before the Iraq war, the signs of trouble were impossible to see. “This was a closed-off, Stalinist society,” one U.S. official here said. “We knew there were repairs that were needed, but we had no idea just how bad things were.”
>
> But some Iraqi and American specialists contend the warnings were apparent. The U.N. Development Program – which oversaw the importation of electrical parts under the oil-for-food program – produced extensive reports detailing problems in the power sector. One public U.N. document issued last year noted that Iraq’s generating units were “technically and economically obsolete,” resulting in a 2,500-megawatt nationwide power shortage and lengthy blackouts.
>
> **Estimates from Iraqi exiles participating in a State Department planning program for a post-Hussein government suggested that power-sector repairs would cost as much as $18 billion. Yet the Bush administration’s initial reconstruction plan called for devoting just $230 million of a $680 million Bechtel contract to electricity system repairs**. “The telltale signs were there,” said the American electrical engineer. “But either because of sheer carelessness or because the [U.S.] government didn’t want to reveal how expensive it would be, there was massive under-planning.”
>
> - © 2003 The Washington Post Company
> By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
> Washington Post Foreign Service
> Thursday, September 25, 2003; Page A01\*
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### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [September 29, 2003, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/44 "2003-09-29T14:43:56Z")
[quote]
\*\*[Agency Belittles Information Given by Iraq Defectors\*\*](http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/29/international/middleeast/29DEFE.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=)
An internal assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that most of the information provided by Iraqi defectors who were made available by the Iraqi National Congress was of little or no value, according to federal officials briefed on the arrangement.
In addition, several Iraqi defectors introduced to American intelligence agents by the exile organization and its leader, **Ahmad Chalabi** , invented or exaggerated their credentials as people with direct knowledge of the Iraqi government and its suspected unconventional weapons program, the officials said.
But several federal officials said the arrangement had wasted more than $1 million in taxpayers’ money and had prompted them to question the credibility of Mr. Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress. Both have enjoyed powerful backing from civilian officials at the Pentagon and are playing a significant role in the provisional government in Baghdad.
The officials also said the Defense Intelligence Agency had been generally skeptical of the defectors from the start, on the ground that they were motivated more by the money and the desire to stir up sentiment against Saddam Hussein than by a desire to provide accurate information.
In a stance that angered the dissidents and some Pentagon officials, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency had long been skeptical of the information from defectors that Mr. Chalabi’s organization had brought out of Iraq.
[quote]
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### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [October 9, 2003, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/45 "2003-10-09T13:21:23Z")
> [@](#):
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> \*\*[‘Frontline’ Explores U.S. Winning War, Losing Peace \*\*](http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A899-2003Oct8?language=printer)
>
> _By Richard Leiby
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Thursday, October 9, 2003; Page C07_
>
> “Truth, War and Consequences” paints administration officials as dissemblers as well as arrogant conquerors who paid no heed to warnings about the collapse of security after the Iraq war.
>
> In Smith’s telling, a **secretive unit in the Pentagon** slanted the intelligence on Hussein’s alleged weapons of destruction, relying on less-than-objective reports from **[Ahmed Chalabi](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3326581#post3326581)**’s exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, which has been agitating to overthrow Hussein’s government for more than a decade.
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> \*\* It turns out there was a pile of postwar reconstruction planning documents, drawn up by State Department working groups composed of 240 Iraqi exiles\*\*. To the frustration of those who participated, the plans were shelved.
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> Retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, who ran the first reconstruction administration deployed by President Bush, tells “Frontline” that he wanted to use the plans but that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered them scrapped. “I think that it was a mistake,” Garner says.
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### Author:  [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)
#### Post date: [October 9, 2003, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/46 "2003-10-09T13:42:37Z")
Make up your mind, sport. In your latest post you indict the Defense Department for _not_ listening to a bunch of Iraqi exiles. In your immediately preceding post you indict the Defense Department for _listening_ to a bunch of Iraqi exiles.
Do you have some sort of coherent point here?
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### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [October 9, 2003, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/47 "2003-10-09T14:06:00Z")
The point is that this where the exaggerated and very spun intel came from.
That both the DoD/OSP and the State Dept each used Iraqi exiles for their planning is only a superficial similarity.
Not all Iraqi exiles are equal. Not all iraqi exiles are Chalabi. Chalabi’s is not very trustworthy. Not all Iraqi exiles have taken million of US taxpayer’s dollars w/o being able to account for tem, (despite having an advanced degree in mathematics and having run banks). Not all Iraqi exiles have lived outside of Iraq for the most of their life. Not all Iraqi exiles lack a following in Iraq. Not all Iraqi exiles are seen as crooks throughout the ME. Some have more “street cred” than others. Not all Iraqi exiles have fed faulty info to the USG.
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### Author:  [@toadspittle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toadspittle)
#### Post date: [October 9, 2003, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/48 "2003-10-09T20:11:35Z")
SimonX–even though there really isn’t a debate here, thanks for gathering all these links about the OSP. It’s been a very helpful service.
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### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [October 9, 2003, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/49 "2003-10-09T20:38:43Z")
I’m patiently waiting for rebuttal.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [October 9, 2003, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/50 "2003-10-09T20:42:20Z")
Posted by **toadspittle:**
> [@](#):
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> SimonX–even though there really isn’t a debate here, thanks for gathering all these links about the OSP.
Good point. **Why** isn’t there a debate here? We have a lot of “conservatives” of various kinds posting in the GD forum. At least some of those conservatives are neocon warhawks and/or pro-administration. Why is nobody standing up to defend the OSP? Is this just too far beyond the pale, even for them?
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### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2003, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/51 "2003-10-13T13:39:06Z")
> [@](#):
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> \*\*[inter view w/ Perle\*\*](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/interviews/perle.html)
> [Question]
> _Not long after Sept. 11, Wolfowitz asked one of his deputies, Doug Feith, to set up a operation inside the Pentagon that’s become known or was called then the Office of Special Plans. What was it?_
>
> [Perle:]
> **I think the Office of Special Plans emerged some months later. It was in fact the organization within the policy side of the Defense Department that was responsible for planning with respect to the war. … You could have called it the Iraq war-planning group. But it made more sense under the circumstances to call it by an anodyne name.**
>
> [Question:]
> _So the Office of Special Plans was responsible, at the Defense Department, for overall postwar planning and war planning?_
>
> [Perle:]
> **It was responsible for war planning. They made recommendations on postwar planning. They were responsible insofar as they could gain broader approval for what they were doing. They were coming up with ideas. They were drafting policy proposals. Some of them got approved through the inter-agency process; others didn’t.**
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### Author:  [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2003, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/52 "2003-10-13T14:56:47Z")
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> They were responsible insofar as they could gain broader approval for what they were doing. They were coming up with ideas. They were drafting policy proposals. Some of them got approved through the inter-agency process; **others didn’t**.
I wonder if anyone’s put together an OSP “bloopers” video ? 😃
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### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2003, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/53 "2003-12-08T02:11:17Z")
> [@](#):
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> \*\*[Exclusive: Cheney and the ‘Raw’ Intelligence\*\*](http://www.msnbc.com/news/1002223.asp?cp1=1)
>
> June 2002 memo written by INC lobbyist Entifadh Qunbar to a U.S. Senate committee lists John Hannah, a senior national-security aide on Cheney’s staff, as one of two “U.S. governmental recipients” for reports generated by an intelligence program being run by the INC and which was then being funded by the State Department. Under the program, “defectors, reports and raw intelligence are cultivated and analyzed”; the info was then reported to, among others, “appropriate governmental, non-governmental and international agencies.” The memo not only describes Cheney aide Hannah as a “principal point of contact” for the program, it even provides his direct White House telephone number. The only other U.S. official named as directly receiving the INC intel is William Luti, a former military adviser to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who, after working on Cheney’s staff early in the Bush administration, shifted to the Pentagon, where he oversaw a secretive Iraq war-planning unit called the **Office of Special Plans**.
FYI
In my capacity as a GOP Team Leader I’ve written several news outlets and asked them to provide more coverage of the OSP.
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### Author:  [@Beagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beagle)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2003, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/54 "2003-12-08T03:51:35Z")
> [@](#):
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> Are they beneficial to the interests of the US or just to the interests of neo-con hawks?
“interests of the neo-con hawks” I’m not even sure what that means.
The “topic” is namecalling?
For one thing, there is already considerable dispute over OSP. Your own cites suggest bipartisan criticism. I think I read that OSP has been ‘renamed’ in response. Are we all supposed to be shocked that intelligence could be wrong or fed to us by interested parties?
The “lack” of news coverage is belied by how many sources you pulled together. Also, this has been debated before.
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### Author:  [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2003, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/55 "2003-12-08T04:47:41Z")
**Beagle** , did you happen to notice _when_ this thread was started?
**SimonX** ’s latest find points to a hitherto unknown information channel between the INC, the OSP, and the VP, who was instrumental in getting us involved in this “damn fool war.”
“This”, being new, has _not_ been debated before.
If it stands up, it’ll certainly make the white house’s plan to blame the cia for bad intelligence a lot tougher to carry out.
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### Author:  [@Roland\_Saul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roland_Saul)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2003, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/56 "2003-12-08T05:09:52Z")
The sad part is that nobody is shocked to find that there have been obscene manipulations of the American psyche. The ones that are currently reaping billions in profits at the direct expense of the American economy and the lives of wholly innocent Iraqi citizens lied like rugs at the perfect time. I shudder to think that the most powerful population in the world has become so tainted and corrupt that they would allow this to happen.
Two sovereign nations were devastated, thousands upon thousands of innocent lives were lost, the perpetrators of 9/11 are yet unproven and undoubtedly still at large.
The credibility of American Intelligence agencies in general are deservedly in the toilet. The perps of the largest stock frauds in world history are extremely well connected to the White House and remain at large and totally uncharged.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, while corporations are scurrying to set up Asian operations at the expense of American jobs, halth care is in total meltdown, poverty is rising amongst the lower 95% of the population with the 10% of the money, and overseas the international aid groups are abandoning the previous shining example of American “freedom” due to utter chaos and a militaristic reversion to tribal feudalism.
Generations of children in the Middle East will reap the benefits of the exclusively American toxic munitions littering the landscape. Apparently the hundreds of thousands of birth defects in that country (directly attributed by ANY reasonable scientific examinationto the use of DU) is not as newsworthy as the Terminator being elected governor of California.
No surprises here, you got the oil, a few thousand Iraqis died for it, and the only odd thing is that there are still some rats left onboard the pro-war ship. It’s only a matter of time, the official liberation line is falling apart like the useless drivel it is, but luckily for some the US has unilaterally declared it’s military administration immune to any international war-crimes judgement.
Don’t worry, just another treaty or two broken, but you know, once the administration has fallen afoul of the Geneva convention treaties just don’t mean that much anymore, right?
The “democracy” in Iraq has been postponed indefinitely until the occupiers can find anough puppets to fill a ballot, Chalabi being a great example thereof…convicted swindler, international fugitive, and lying toadie to American hegemony.
A shining example of American-style freedom and democracy, is Chalabi. Excellent choice, and one that illustrates the intent of American military domination more than mere words ever could.
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### Author:  [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2003, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/57 "2003-12-08T05:11:29Z")
Some interesting things in that new link:
> [@](#):
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> DEFENSE SOURCES say that several weeks ago, Pentagon policymakers were asked to approve an order that would formally expand the mission of the survey group to include counterterrorism-intelligence collection. But some Defense officials complain that top Pentagon brass has been slow to approve the order. Administration officials confirm the survey group’s main mission remains hunting WMD, but say local commanders can temporarily shift team members to counterterrorism in emergencies.
>
> Some Pentagon cynics think the Bush administration may not want to publicly alter the survey group’s mission, since it might be seen as an admission that the WMD hunt was fruitless. A Defense official conceded that few U.S. intelligence analysts now believe the survey group is ever likely to find any significant Iraqi WMD stockpiles
Can’t do anything to try to reduce the attacks on the civilian and military personnel, because that’d mean admitting that the WMD stuff was bullshit. Tangled web, indeed.
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### Author:  [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2003, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/58 "2003-12-08T05:40:38Z")
Whaddya know, this story may have legs. Andy Card appears to be in damage-control mode:
> [@](#):
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> President Bush chief of staff dismissed as “a moot point” any lingering question about whether Bush relied on faulty intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.
> Andy Card also rejected charges from fellow Republican Newt Gingrich that the administration’s postwar policies went “off a cliff” after an impressive invasion that deposed Saddam Hussein government.
[here](http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=536&e=3&u=/ap/20031208/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_iraq)
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### Author:  [@Beagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beagle)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2003, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/59 "2003-12-08T20:26:56Z")
Interesting, that [WMD](http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/12/07/wirq07.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/12/07/ixnewstop.html) stories persist, yet have been “debunked.”
> [@](#):
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> In an exclusive interview with the Telegraph, Col al-Dabbagh said that he believed he was the source of the British Government’s controversial claim, published in September last year in the intelligence dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam could launch WMD within 45 minutes.
>
> “I am the one responsible for providing this information,” said the colonel, who is now working as an adviser to Iraq’s Governing Council.
>
> He also insisted that the information contained in the dossier relating to Saddam’s battlefield WMD capability was correct. “It is 100 per cent accurate,” he said after reading the relevant passage.
>
> The devices, which were known by Iraqi officers as “the secret weapon”, were made in Iraq and designed to be launched by hand-held rocket-propelled grenades. They could also have been launched sooner than the 45-minutes claimed in the dossier.
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> “Forget 45 minutes,” said Col al-Dabbagh “we could have fired these within half-an-hour.”
>
> Local commanders were told that they could use the weapons only on the personal orders of Saddam. “We were told that when the war came we would only have a short time to use everything we had to defend ourselves, including the secret weapon,” he said.
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> The only reason that these weapons were not used, said Col al-Dabbagh, was because the bulk of the Iraqi army did not want to fight for Saddam. “The West should thank God that the Iraqi army decided not to fight,” he said.
>
> “If the army had fought for Saddam Hussein and used these weapons there would have been terrible consequences.”
>
> Col al-Dabbagh, who was recalled to Baghdad to work at Iraq’s air defence headquarters during the war itself, believes that the WMD have been hidden at secret locations by the Fedayeen and are still in Iraq. “Only when Saddam is caught will people talk about these weapons,” he said.
I hope they have chem suits handy in Iraq. He’s a heck of a bald-faced liar, or telling the truth.
Now it’s fix Iraq or let it fail as a state. Syria and Iran will pick over the bones of the carcass if we leave now. The world can’t afford that.
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### Author:  [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2003, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pentagon-office-of-special-plans-osp-whats-the-deal/190084/60 "2003-12-08T21:34:34Z")
What Mr Dabbagh has to say sounds very interesting and it is certainly new evidence that we will want to look at.
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