IRAQI RESITANCE

ZMAG: This Is What A Guerilla War Looks Like

While it's now apparent that The Pentagon made no substantial plans for how to run post-war Iraq, somebody else in Iraq has certainly made plans for how to sabotage U.S. rule.

Before the war began, military strategists insisted that they had a plan for Iraq after the fighting was over. Their plan was to swoop in, seize or kill Saddam Hussein and his top cadre, and leave the mid-level government managers, city officials, village mayors, and police forces in place to run the country. The Pentagon expected the Iraqi military to refuse to fight, to depose Saddam in a coup, and to maintain control of the security situation in Iraq so U.S. troops could waltz into Baghdad and set up a new government.

None of these optimistic scenarios has played out as planned. In fact, while Congress slowly nibbles on the intelligence data from the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency in search of the people who overestimated Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, no one has thought to demand hearings over which military planners or upper level Bush administration officials took us into a war with a long-term plan that resembles a Harry Potter novel.