Early Iraq war plan: only 5,000 troops to remain there by Dec. '06

Snip from an announcement published at George Washington University's National Security Archive website:

The U.S. Central Command's war plan for invading Iraq postulated in August 2002 that the U.S. would have only 5,000 troops left in Iraq as of December 2006, according to the Command's PowerPoint briefing slides, which were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and are posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive.

The PowerPoint slides, prepared by CentCom planners for Gen. Tommy Franks under code name POLO STEP, for briefings during 2002 for President Bush, the NSC, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, the JCS, and Franks' commanders, refer to the "Phase IV" post-hostilities period as "UNKNOWN" and "months" in duration, but assume that U.S. forces would be almost completely "re-deployed" out of Iraq within 45 months of the invasion (i.e. December 2006).

"Completely unrealistic assumptions about a post-Saddam Iraq permeate these war plans," said National Security Archive Executive Director Thomas Blanton. "First, they assumed that a provisional government would be in place by 'D-Day', then that the Iraqis would stay in their garrisons and be reliable partners, and finally that the post-hostilities phase would be a matter of mere 'months'. All of these were delusions."

Link to home page for the newly released CentCom PowerPoint slides briefed to the White House and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2002, obtained via FOIA request. Here's a related BBC News article: Link.

Image: Tab K, Slide 10 - U.S. Central Command estimated that only 5,000 U.S. troops would remain in Iraq by December 2006. (Click here for a larger version of this slide. Click here to view Tab K in its entirety.)