Orrin Hatch: “in the debate over whether we should be supporting or withdrawing our support from the President's plan to surge over…”

“in the debate over whether we should be supporting or withdrawing our support from the President's plan to surge over 20,000 more troops into Iraq, I am acutely aware of one overriding irony. Those who are seeking to begin the withdrawal from Iraq are committing the same conceptual error that many of the same critics have accused the administration of committing when they made their flawed plans for the invasion of Iraq. They are not thinking about what will happen on the day after we begin our withdrawal. Let me say that the situation in which we find ourselves today in Iraq is certainly in part due to the administration's failure to anticipate many variables in the Iraqi theater, in the region, and in Iraqi society. Those who prepared only for the military defeat of Saddam's forces committed such a profound error that it will be a lesson learned in the history books long after we are gone. We did not prepare for the vehemence with which certain elements of the displaced Sunni elite would fight to retain their status quo. We did not anticipate how fractured and weak the oppressed Shia society of Iraq would be once the dictator was deposed, and we did not appreciate how unprepared the Shia would be to present true leadership. And we did not anticipate, because we apparently did not plan for this, that a political and leadership vacuum created by the fall of Saddam would invite the influence of Iran, whose interests in Iraq are anything but charitable.”