While I'm not too worried about our ability to remove Saddam as an obstacle to a self ordered society in Iraq, I wonder if President Bush has a plan to defeat the US State Department. If Colin Powell wants to contribute to something other than war in Iraq he ought to spend some time cleaning out the appeasers and tyrant coddlers in the State Department. Even now his support for an invasion seems based more on his anger at the Axis of Weasel not playing fair than the actual danger from Iraq. He needs to be building a case for what we do after the invasion, something to which State should be contributing heavily.

We're also seeing multiple plans "leaked" (military occupation vs. in-and-out vs. a coup with some other thug left in charge). I thought that that was fine concerning planning for the actual invasion (it's not the place of the citizenry to debate military tactics) but it's a bad idea to do that for post-invasion nation restoration. I understand that perhaps President Bush wants to keep his options open so that he can play the alliance game better, but in this case I do not think that such concerns outweigh the benefits of a real discussion on what to do with Iraq after we conquer it. That's one of the major failings of the Left these days - instead of spouting appeasement in the streets they should be out there demanding actual planning for post-invasion Iraq.

UPDATE: The Chicago Boyz weigh in with an excellent post that draws from Powell's own writings on the subject. As a bonus they also discuss the systemic problem with the State Department.