Quagmire watch. What a hatchet job. From the people who brought you Jayson Blair. I am not going to fisk this point by point (although I expect this to be a fun project for many bloggers in the days to come), because Rieff's criticisms of the bureaucratic infighting and decision-making leading up to the war may very well be accurate, but so what? This is the conclusion he draws:

Had the military been as meticulous in planning its strategy and tactics for the postwar as it was in planning its actions on the battlefield, the looting of Baghdad, with all its disastrous material and institutional and psychological consequences, might have been stopped before it got out of control. Had the collective knowledge embedded in the Future of Iraq Project been seized upon, rather than repudiated by, the Pentagon after it gained effective control of the war and postwar planning a few months before the war began, a genuine collaboration between the American authorities and Iraqis, both within the country and from the exiles, might have evolved. And had the lessons of nation-building -- its practice but also its inevitability in the wars of the 21st century -- been embraced by the Bush administration, rather than dismissed out of hand, then the opportunities that did exist in postwar Iraq would not have been squandered as, in fact, they were.

The real lesson of the postwar mess is that while occupying and reconstructing Iraq was bound to be difficult, the fact that it may be turning into a quagmire is not a result of fate, but rather (as quagmires usually are) a result of poor planning and wishful thinking.

Well, is Iraq a quagmire? Have opportunities in postwar Iraq been "squandered"?

You decide:

No, it doesn't look like Bush went into the reconstruction of Iraq with a "meticulous" plan. Good. Because it would be stupid to create a detailed plan if you don't know what you're going to find. Instead, they have been feeling their way into the situation, being responsive, learning from mistakes, pushing responsibility down to the lowest level, encouraging different approaches. In short being as entrepreneurial as possible rather than bureaucratic.