<Plan to secure postwar Iraq faulted

KEY QUOTES:

"Pentagon ignored lessons from decade of peacekeeping, critics say."

"A month before the war began in Iraq, senior Bush administration officials said their plan for winning the peace was built upon the swift provision of basic services that would “immediately” make the Iraqi people feel they were better off than they had been under the government of Saddam Hussein."

"FIVE WEEKS after the war ended, the administration is still struggling to accomplish that goal. It has failed to establish law and order on the streets and has achieved only mixed results in restoring electricity, water, sanitation and other essential needs."

"It also badly underestimated the potential for looting and lawlessness after the collapse of the Iraqi government, lacking forces capable of securing the streets of Baghdad in the transition from combat to postwar reconstruction."

"How and why senior military and civilian leaders at the Pentagon were caught unaware of the need to quickly make the transition from war-fighting to stability operations with adequate forces mystifies military officers, administration officials and defense experts with peacekeeping experience from the 1990s."

"Defense experts inside and outside the Pentagon say military planners were clearly influenced by the Pentagon’s belief, expressed by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and other senior leaders, that U.S. forces would be welcomed as liberators. They also point to the Bush administration’s professed antipathy to military peacekeeping and nation-building, as articulated by the president during the 2000 campaign when he charged the Clinton administration with overextending the armed forces with such missions."

"On Capitol Hill, however, even some Republicans are beginning to warn that the administration, having brilliantly prevailed on the battlefield, is in danger of losing the peace."

"But the Pentagon had no plan for civilian policing assistance in place, and almost no military police on hand, when the fighting stopped in early April."

Yup, "quagmire."