The US invasion plan for Iraq envisaged that only 5,000 US troops would remain in Iraq by December 2006, declassified Central Command documents show.
The material also shows that the US military projected a stable, pro-US and democratic Iraq by that time.
So who was the braintrust that said this?
The documents - in the form of PowerPoint slides - were prepared by the now-retired Gen Tommy Franks and other top commanders at the time.
The documents were presented at a briefing in August 2002 - less than a year before the US invasion of Iraq in April 2003.
The commanders predicted that after the fighting was over there would be a two- to three-month "stabilisation" phase, followed by an 18- to 24-month "recovery" stage.
They projected that the US forces would be almost completely "re-deployed" out of Iraq at the end of the "transition" phase - within 45 months of invasion.
These papers were ordered by NSA, an independent research institute at George Washington University. The NSA said it received the documents last month, after making a request in 2004.
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