After arriving in the country, I saw that the US government was not adequately prepared to deal with the growing security threats. Looting raged unchecked in major cities. By late 2003, as the insurgency and terrorism grew, it became clear that the coalition also lacked an effective counterinsurgency strategy.

Prewar planning provided for fewer than half the number of troops that independent studies suggested would be needed in Iraq, and we did not have a plan to provide the most basic function of any government – security for the population.

I should have pushed sooner for a more effective military strategy.

Richard Perle

An assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute

After defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Bush administration turned its attention to the risk that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was thought to pose to a nation still reeling from the attacks of 9/11.

I think the right decision was made, and Baghdad fell in 21 days.

Then the trouble began. Rather than turn Iraq over to Iraqis to begin the daunting process of nation building, a group including then Secretary of State Colin Powell; then national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice; and then director of central intelligence, George Tenet – with President Bush's approval – reversed a plan to do that.

Instead, we blundered into an ill-conceived occupation that would facilitate a deadly insurgency from which we, and the Iraqis, are only now emerging. With misplaced confidence that we knew better than the Iraqis, we sent an American to govern Iraq.

L. Paul Bremer, the presidential envoy to Iraq, underestimated the task, but did his best to make a foolish policy work. I had badly underestimated the administration's capacity to mess things up.