Were Bush's Iraq War plans finalized before November 2002?

Yesterday's post showed that Halliburton subsidiary KBR was given the task order to create a Contingency Support Plan on November 11, 2002, four months before the U.S. invaded Iraq.  If Department of Defense was already working out the details on how to put out the post-invasion fires by then, when did it finish its plans for the invasion itself?

Here's a very abbreviated review of the Bush Administration's planning for War in Iraq up between September 11, 2001, and November, 2002:

September 11-12, 2001:

January 29, 2002:

In his State of the Union Address, President Bush linked Iraq, Iran and North Korea, calling them an "axis of evil." [CNN]  When pressed for any evidence of coordination between the three countries that warranted a comparison to the World War II axis of powers, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer explained that the phrase was "more rhetorical than historical." [Slate]  It should be noted that "axis" has a specific meaning in the political context, even when it is not being used in direct reference to World War II: Merriam-Webster defines it as a "partnership" or "alliance." [Merriam-Webster]

Spring 2002:

Word began to come from Bush administration officials that the decision to invade Iraq had already been made.  On February 13, 2002, an unnamed Bush official told the Philadelphia Inquirer: "This is not an argument about whether to get rid of Saddam Hussein. That debate is over. This is . . . how you do it." [Philadelphia Inquirer]  In the same article, another Bush administration official described Vice President Cheney's planned March 2002 trip to meet with Middle Eastern heads of state: "He's not going to beg for support . . . He's going to inform them that the President's decision has been made and will be carried out, and if they want some input into how and when it's carried out, now's the time for them to speak up." [Philadelphia Inquirer]

An unnamed former White House official later told the New Yorker that, by March 2002, it was understood by many in the Bush administration that the President had decided to  invade Iraq.  In that article, Seymour Hersh wrote that:

The undeclared decision had a devastating impact on the continuing struggle against terrorism. The Bush administration took many intelligence operations that had been aimed at al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups around the world and redirected them to the Persian Gulf. Linguists and special operatives were abruptly reassigned, and several ongoing anti-terrorism intelligence programs were curtailed.  [The New Yorker]

September 2002:

White House chief of staff Andrew Card was asked why, if the Iraq threat was as immediate as the Bush administration claimed it was, we weren't going ahead and invading them.  Card responded that "from a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." [CNN] 

Archived 7/13/04 (originally posted 6/29/04):

Justifications given for Halliburton's "Other Than Full and Open Competition" Iraq reconstruction contract

Today's post is a continuation of yesterday's post (Halliburton's "Other Than Full and Open Competition" contract), analyzing the "Justification and Approval for Other Than Full and Open Competition for the Execution of the Contingency Support Plan," which gave Halliburton subsidiary KBR its no-bid contract.

In November 2002, Department of Defense officials made the determination that KBR was "the only source capable of developing a CSP in the time required."  Nowhere in the document is this "time required" for delivering the CSP clarified.  However, an earlier section in the document does say that the award is projected for second quarter 2003.

                                   (Full document PDF: Judicial Watch.  Also available through the Download For Democracy campaign)

The section below provides the justifications for giving KBR the no-bid contract:
                    
(Full document PDF: Judicial Watch.  Also available through the Download For Democracy campaign)

In the section shown above, the main argument made in defense of KBR's no-bid contract is that the company is more familiar with the operating procedures of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) - due to the fact that it holds the Defense Department's massive Logistics Civil Augmentation Program contract (LOGCAP).  In 2001, KBR won the competitive bidding process for the LOGCAP contract, which is renewable for up to 10 years.  Later, in response to Congressional inquiries, "Army officials said they determined that extinguishing oil fires fell under the range of services provided under LOGCAP, meaning that KBR could deploy quickly and without additional security clearances." [Center for Public Integrity]

However, government procurement experts have testified that this contract for extinguishing oil fires does not fall under LOGCAP - and require a separate bidding process.  General Accounting Office comptroller David Walker recently released a report on Iraq contracts that found that the Defense Department and other agencies involved in Iraq frequently expanded contracts beyond their original intent without holding new bidding competitions:

“Of the 11 task orders we reviewed, seven were, in whole or part, not within scope,” he told lawmakers. Task orders outside the scope of their contracts had a combined value of $715 million through Sept. 30, 2003. Determining whether work is within contract parameters is subject to interpretation in the judgment of the contracting officer, according to the report, “Rebuilding Iraq.” Other than the basic requirement that task orders be within scope, there are no statutory procedures that guide a contracting officer in making this determination . . . The report studies 25 fiscal 2003 contract actions representing about 97 percent of the $3.7 billion obligated that year for reconstruction. One example cited in the report was a $1.9 million Army task order in November 2002 to KBR under its contract for military support, known as the LOGCAP, to develop emergency plans for dousing possible oil well fires in Iraq early in the war. That work, Walker said, was clearly unrelated to the scope of the contract, which was centered around camp maintenance, meal preparation and other chores. “All parties — including GAO and DoD — agree that repairing Iraq’s oil infrastructure would not have been within the scope of the LOGCAP,” Walker said. [Federal Times]