...

The itinerary, scripted to the minute, featured brief visits to a model school, a few refurbished government buildings, a center for women’s rights, a mass grave and even the gardens of Babylon.


Mostly the analysts attended briefings. These sessions, records show, spooled out an alternative narrative, depicting an Iraq bursting with political and economic energy, its security forces blossoming. On the crucial question of troop levels, the briefings echoed the White House line: No reinforcements were needed. The “growing and sophisticated threat” described by Mr. Bremer was instead depicted as degraded, isolated and on the run.


“We’re winning,” a briefing document proclaimed.

“I saw immediately in 2003 that things were going south,” General Vallely, one of the Fox analysts on the trip, recalled in an interview with The Times.


The Pentagon, though, need not have worried.


“You can’t believe the progress,” General Vallely told Alan Colmes of Fox News upon his return. He predicted the insurgency would be “down to a few numbers” within months.
That certainly sounds like accurate information from the Pentagon to me. What a shame that the American people didn't get this sort of ground truth back in 2003-2005 more often. Then we could have continued on with the sort of remarkably effective strategies that brought us such enormous successes back then.


I recall reading a quote from a UN official that there was debate over referring to the genocide in Rwanda as a "genocide," since calling it that would obligate the international community to intervene. Given that behavior from the UN, I can understand having a tough time figuring out how to present the justification for the war.
That was a discussion within the Clinton Administration's NSC, not the UN.