Knight-Ridder's Warren Strobel, Jonathan Landay, John Walcott, et al have an important three-part review of the decisions that led to the US failure to win the peace in Iraq, based on documents and interviews with more than three dozen current and former US officials. Here's a snip from the first part, with the devastating title, "Post-war Planning Non-Existent":

The Bush administration's failure to plan to win the peace in Iraq was the product of many of the same problems that plagued the administration's case for war, including wishful thinking, bad information from Iraqi exiles who said Iraqis would welcome American troops as liberators and contempt for dissenting opinions.

However, the administration's planning for postwar Iraq differed in one crucial respect from its erroneous pre-war claims about Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and links to al Qaida.

The U.S. intelligence community had been divided about the state of Saddam's weapons programs, but there was little disagreement among experts throughout the government that winning the peace in Iraq could be much harder than winning a war. . .

A half-dozen intelligence reports also warned that American troops could face significant postwar resistance. . .

"It was disseminated. And ignored," said a former senior intelligence official.

Why was it ignored? You know the answer. The should-be post-war planners in Feith's office refused to do any planning, except to lobby to install Ahmad Chalabi, now working with Shiite insurgent Moqtada al Sadr and suspected of passing US intelligence to Iran.

Here's the second part, by Jonathan Landay and John Walcott, on how US reconstruction efforts in Iraq have been overwhelmed by the violence.

Here's part three, which asks:

After nearly 19 months of combat, more than 1,000 American soldiers dead and $119 billion spent, the central question about Iraq isn't whether it will become a beacon of democracy in the Middle East but whether the United States can prevent it from becoming a black hole of instability.

The quotes from Chalabi and supporters in this graphic are worth being reminded of.

Also: BASIC's David Isenberg has an analysis of the private military companies getting contracts in Iraq.

Update: The New York Times plays catch up here:

In the debate over the war and its aftermath, the Bush administration has portrayed the insurgency that is still roiling Iraq today as an unfortunate, and unavoidable, accident of history, an enemy that emerged only after melting away during the rapid American advance toward Baghdad. The sole mistake President Bush has acknowledged in the war is in not foreseeing what he termed that "catastrophic success."

But many military officers and civilian officials who served in Iraq in the spring and summer of 2003 say the administration's miscalculations cost the United States valuable momentum - and enabled an insurgency that was in its early phases to intensify and spread.

Posted by Laura at October 17, 2004 09:04 PM