So how did Donald Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks create the Iraq battle plan. Well according to 4 star-General Hugh Shelton, who served as one of the Joint Chiefs of staff under George W. Bush, they had their ways. The following is an excerpt from his book "Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of An American Warrior."
"The answer, according to Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz, was an Iraqi politician by the name of Ahmed Chalabi, who had long since convinced them that he and his INC (Iraqi National Congress) party were capable of overthrowing Saddam and unifying Iraqi public sentiment against him. They believed Chalabi was going to be the Northern Alliance, which proved to be dead wrong. The Northern Alliance was on the ground fighting and dying every day. Chalabi and his forces were wining and dining their fat asses in elite London hotels, funded by big bucks they had received throughout the years from the United States. The United States had been paying Chalabi's INC $340,000 a month for intelligence gathering, in part surrounding the existence of large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction he promised existed, but were never found. The payments, according to Wolfowitz, were discontinued in May 2004. Around the same time, Fox News reported that U.S. Officials had "rock solid" evidence that Chalabi spied for Iran, an accusation that Chalabi subsequently denied.
Rumsfeld was further emboldened and encouraged by the success of the Afghanistan plan and decided to go with it despite the vast differences---a tremendous mistake---and one that would have been avoided had they followed the intended procedure and utilized that treasure chest of knowledge, the Joint Chiefs."
Source: Shelton, Hugh. Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of An American Warrior. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2010. pg.481-482.
