Pentagon's postwar fiasco coming full-circle?

Pentagon mismanagement, which takes the form of abuses in Abu Ghraib and confusion in dealing with Ahmed Chalabi's aspiration to political power in Iraq, is part of a disturbing pattern.

Pentagon officials shelved existing postwar plans for the reconstruction of Iraq - yet had no plan of their own. They ignored the advice of Iraqis, except Mr. Chalabi. Critical information was obscured or withheld from Congress. As a result, national interests have been ill-served, and the promise of democracy in Iraq has been betrayed.

The Future of Iraq project was set up more than a year before the war and was led by the State Department. The project also involved 16 other federal agencies and hundreds of Iraqis,and cost $5 million. I was the architect and facilitator of the project's democratic principles working group, which Iraqis called "the mother of all working groups." It was charged with developing a strategy for the political transition after Saddam Hussein was removed from power.

I know that the Future of Iraq project was no silver bullet for all of Iraq's problems. Yet the Pentagon's outright dismissal - and even undermining - of the project was one of its critical mistakes.

Pentagon officials thought the endeavor was too academic and ignored its recommendations simply because it was an initiative of the State Department. As part of a bureaucratic turf battle, Pentagon civilians treated State Department colleagues with disdain and disrespect. Civilians in the Office of Secretary of Defense were scornful of diplomacy itself, which is inherently about dialogue and compromise.

Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his inner circle thought they could liberate a nation without even talking with those they were liberating. The Pentagon never had a policy or a program. All it had was a person - Ahmed Chalabi, who agreed with the Pentagon vision of making Iraq a laboratory for democratic development and using it as a launch point for reshaping the broader Middle East.

The State Department had a fundamentally different approach. It engaged Iraqis representing the country's different ethnic and religious groups. It was clear from the beginning of our work, however, that empowering other Iraqis was antithetical to the Pentagon's goal of pushing Chalabi into power.

At a meeting I attended with European diplomats to discuss reconstruction, a Rumsfeld protégé asserted that "Ahmed Chalabi is like the prophet Muhammad. At first, people doubted him but they came to realize the wisdom of his ways."

When a proxy of Chalabi's was wavering on whether to join our working group, he told me that officials in the Office of the Vice President had persuaded him to participate, with assurances that his views would prevail if he participated.

For sure, the Bush administration's decision to purge the Baath party and disband the Army was ideologically driven. In practical terms, the administration also wanted to eliminate centers of political gravity that might impede Chalabi's rise to power.

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