LAUSR

continued American military presence in Afghanistan’. The unilateral American action for regime change in Iraq, made under the false assumptions of President Saddam Hussein harbouring al-Qaeda and possessing weapons of mass destruction, was followed by a military victory and political defeat. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory was the result of a series of poor choices made by the US administration: extended American occupation; failure to promote power sharing among the ethnicities and protecting the Sunni Arab Iraqi people, who were subjected to reprisals; disbanding of the Iraqi Army; and dismissal of all Iraqi public servants who were members of the Iraqi Baath Party. Ambassador Khalilzad cannot be held responsible for any of these. It is not hard to believe him when he writes that President George W. Bush told him he had learnt of the decision to dissolve the Iraqi Army after it had ceased to exist. Richard Hadley, then Deputy National Security Advisor, confirmed to Ambassador Khalilzad that the White House had no hand in the decision. The mistake was to hand over charge of postwar Iraq to the Pentagon, a symptom of the institutional dysfunctionality of the US administration. This is an honest account from an able practitioner, highly recommended for all those interested in US foreign and security policy in the early years of this century.