Gamed

An exact match Google search for the name "Paul Van Riper" produces about 18,600 hits.

Van Riper is a retired Marine Corps general officer who became famous for demonstrating to the Department of Defense in July 2002 exactly what would happen, and how it would happen, when and if the U.S. invaded Iraq. See Tom Engelhardt's blog for one account, or do the Google thing.

Briefly, Lt. Gen. Van Riper was cast in the role of enemy commander (read "Iraqi insurgent commander" here) in the most costly Pentagon war game in its history, the $250,000,000 "Millennium Challenge 02" exercise.

Lt. Gen. Van Riper won. He won bigtime. He won using exactly the strategies and tactics used by the Iraqi resistance from the beginning of our Iraqi adventure through today. At least he won until the Pentagon stopped the exercise, turned the clock back, and decreed that he could no longer use those devilish tactics.

To his credit, General Van Riper stepped down in protest as "enemy commander".

So, to sum it up, not only did the Bush Administration suppress, distort and fake intelligence, ignore advice from foreign policy and military experts, they also refused to believe their own quarter-billion dollar demonstration of exactly how and why Operation Iraqi Freedom would fail.

Go figure.