Up the Stovepipe (Or, How Douglas Feith didn't cherrypick)

I've now listened to this interview of Former Under-secretary of Defense Douglas Feith twice. That second time around, I couldn't get past this one response:

DF: Yeah, what happened was, and this story is at least partly recounted in Woodward’s latest book, and I’m going to be discussing it at some length in the book that I’m writing. Secretary Rumsfeld put together a memo, and he worked on it over several months, that listed everything that he could think of that could go wrong in the event of war. And he gathered his top Pentagon leadership, military and civilian, and we sat down and worked through a list of all the things that we could think of that would be arguments against going to war, and things that could go wrong in the event that we go to war, and put that together, and then Secretary Rumsfeld took it, and took it to the President and the National Security Council, and walked everybody through it. And he did that because he wanted to make sure before the decision was actually taken to go to war, that the government at its highest levels had given truly serious consideration to the best thinking that we could bring to the subject. And it was actually quite an impressive memo. And interestingly enough, while there were other agencies of the government that also did some pieces speculating about the problems that could occur in the event of war, I think Secretary Rumsfeld’s list was probably more serious, more comprehensive, graver, grimmer than anything produced by anybody else around the government.

HH: Has that memo been made public yet?

DF: No.

HH: Has it been widely reported as being in existence?

DF: There have been…yes, there’ve been quite a few stories that have referred to it.

HH: And did the Secretary of Defense’s memo underestimate what has actually transpired in Iraq, Mr. Feith?

DF: Well, some of the problems it hit on…I mean, he didn’t have a perfect crystal ball, but he definitely hit some of the problems, and then of course there were other problems that have arisen that he didn’t hit. But the point is not whether…to my mind, the point is not whether he had perfect seer capabilities. The point is that the notion that people in the Pentagon were pushing for war, and were trying to cherry pick information to persuade the President to go to war, and suppress any thought that might make the President reluctant to go to war, is complete nonsense, and is refuted by the written record, because in fact, we wanted the President and the whole National Security Council to take very seriously the full range of considerations, what would be the problems if we go to war, and what would be the problems if we don’t go to war.

Not that that quote or the existence of a 'written record' documenting the process will ever satisfy the cooked-books crowd, but I'm amazed that such revelations haven't earlier gotten the scrutiny they deserve. In the meantime, Hugh did a fine and masterful job of collecting at least some of said 'written record' here.