Douglas Feith

As Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Feith spearheaded two secretive groups at the Pentagon — the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group and the Office of Special Plans — that were instrumental in drawing up documents that explained the supposed ties between Saddam and al Qaeda.

Colin Powell referred to Feith’s operation as the Gestapo. In Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack, former CentCom Commander Gen. Tommy Franks called Feith the “fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.”

Feith voluntarily resigned from the Defense Department shortly after Bush’s reelection. Feith is currently teaching at Georgetown. Feith’s secretive groups at the Pentagon are under investigation by the Pentagon and the Senate Intelligence Committee for intelligence failures.

In the run up to the 2003 war, Juan Cole (Informed Comment) relates, Douglas Feith was challenged by a State Department official who knows the Middle East about what in the world the US would do in Iraq once it won the war.

State Dept. Official:

Doug, after the smoke clears, what is the plan?

Feith:

Think of Iraq as being like a computer. And think of Saddam as like a processor. We just take out the old processor, and put in a new one--Chalabi.

State Dept. Official:

Put in a new processor?

Feith:

Yes! It will all be over in 6 weeks.

State Dept. Official:

You mean six months.

Feith:

No, six weeks. You'll see.

State Dept. Official:

Doug.

Feith:

Yes?

State Dept. Official:

You're smoking crack, Doug.

Feith:

Oh, so you're disloyal to the President, are you?

Washington Post 13-July-05:

I am not asserting to you that I know that the answer is — we did it right. What I am saying is it’s an extremely complex judgment to know whether the course that we chose with its pros and cons was more sensible.

P.J. Crowley, a retired Air Force colonel and a senior fellow at the Center of American Progress, said (10-Feb-07) that the intelligence peddled by Feith tainted the public dialogue.

They weren't creating intelligence, but they were assembling the pieces to create a rationale for war. Their production was discredited, but they had the desired effect. The little pieces ended up infecting the process.