More revelations via the WP on the forthcoming authorized biography of the Bush White House, where "the management structure had collapsed."

Draper offers little additional insight or details of Cheney's large influence in administration policy. But he writes that, despite his air of unflappability, the vice president did find himself ruminating over mistakes made, chief among them installing L. Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority to run Iraq for a year after the invasion. Instead, Draper suggests, Cheney believes that the White House should have set up a provisional government right away, as Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress recommended from the beginning.

Several of Bush's top advisers believe that the president's view of postwar Iraq was significantly affected by his meeting with three Iraqi exiles in the Oval Office several months before the 2003 invasion, Draper reports.

He writes that all three exiles, Kanan Makiya, Hatem Mukhlis and Rend Franke, agreed without qualification that "Iraq would greet American forces with enthusiasm. Ethnic and religious tensions would dissolve with the collapse of Saddam's regime. And democracy would spring forth with little effort -- particularly in light of Bush's commitment to rebuild the country."

At least two of the three Iraqis now live in the United States.

Posted by Laura at September 2, 2007 11:42 PM