Pace's testimony was quoted in a two-paragraph item in the Nov. 6 USA Today; the item is no longer on the newspaper's Web site. I obtained a full transcript of the hearing from the Joint Chiefs of Staff public-affairs office; it should be on the JCS Web site soon. Pace's remarks, following those two sentences, are worth setting down:

As I recall, it was around January of this year that it became evident that it was more likely that we would be going to war than not, and that's when, if I recall, the office for reconstruction was stood up and the policy folks inside the building and others in the government began starting to pull together some of the ideas that would be needed to run postwar Iraq.

At first glance, this may suggest that postwar planning did take place, if somewhat late in the game, but look more closely. First, war was "more likely … than not" quite a bit earlier than January. Second, Pace merely says that the office of reconstruction was set up and "policy folks" began planning for the postwar (or, actually, not even that—they "began starting to pull together some of the ideas that would be needed"). He says nothing about postwar planning by the military, which would have to stabilize the country's security before anything much further could be accomplished.