Prewar Planning: Iraqi Leaders Say U.S. Was Warned of Disorder After Hussein, but Little Was Done:
"In the months before the Iraq invasion, Iraqi exile leaders trooped through the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department carrying a message about the future of their homeland: without a strong plan for managing Iraq after toppling Saddam Hussein, widespread looting and violence would erupt."

"On many occasions, I told the Americans that from the very moment the regime fell, if an alternative government was not ready there would be a power vacuum and there would be chaos and looting," said Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and a longtime ally of the United States. "Given our history, it is very obvious this would occur."

Similar warnings came from international relief experts and from within the United States government. In 1999 the same military command that was preparing to attack Iraq conducted a detailed war game that found that toppling Mr. Hussein risked creating a major security void, said Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, who headed the command.

But as Pentagon officials hurriedly prepared for war last winter, they envisioned Iraq after the fall of Mr. Hussein's government as far more manageable.

That miscalculation and the low priority given to planning for the aftermath of Mr. Hussein's fall have taken on new significance with the recent wave of deadly attacks and the Bush administration's abrupt decision this month to accelerate its timetable for transferring control to the kind of Iraqi authority that leading exiles were calling for a year ago.

The exiles were among the most energetic cheerleaders for the war, and critics of the Bush administration have accused some of them of skewing the facts in the process. But more than a dozen of the leaders who have returned to Iraq said in interviews here that they had also warned about the chaos that could follow.

The fact that the administration embraced their encouragement to go to war but apparently discounted their warnings is an insight into the Pentagon's prewar planning.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/30/international/middleeast/30PLAN.html?pagewanted=all&position=