The New York Times, A year-long US State Department study predicted many of the problems that have plagued the American-led occupation of Iraq, according to internal department documents and interviews with Administration and congressional officials.
Beginning in April 2002, the State Department project assembled more than 200 Iraqi lawyers, engineers, businesspeople and other experts into 17 groups to study topics varying from creating a new justice system to reorganising the military to restructuring the economy.
Their findings included a much more dire assessment of Iraq's dilapidated electrical and water systems than many Pentagon officials assumed. They warned of a society so brutalised by Saddam Hussein's rule that many Iraqis might react coolly to Americans' notion of quickly rebuilding civil society.
Several officials said that many of the findings in the study were ignored by Pentagon officials until recently, although the Pentagon said it took the findings into account.
The work is now being relied on heavily as occupation forces struggle to bring stability to Iraq.
The group studying transitional justice was eerily prescient in forecasting the widespread looting in the aftermath of the fall of Saddam's government, caused in part by thousands of criminals set free from prison, and recommended force to prevent the chaos.
In a statement, the Defence Department denied that military officials had shunned the State Department planning effort.
The broad outlines of the work have been widely known, but new details emerged last week after the State Department sent Congress the project's 13 volumes of reports and detailed supporting documents, which a number of House and Senate committees had requested several weeks ago.
Senior Republican and Democratic lawmakers said the Pentagon and the Bush Administration squandered a chance to anticipate more of the postwar pitfalls by not incorporating State Department information.
But some Pentagon officials said that while some of the project's work was well done, much of it was superficial and too academic to be practical.
“It was mostly ignored,” said one senior defence official. “Here was the problem: State has good ideas and a feel for the political landscape, but they're bad at implementing anything. Defence, on the other hand, is excellent at logistical stuff, but has blinders when it comes to policy. We needed to blend these two together.”
A review of the work shows a wide variety of quality. For example, the transitional justice group met four times and drafted more than 600 pages of proposed reforms.
Other groups, however, met only once and produced slim reports or none at all.
