As I was completing this book in November 2003, US military forces were still struggling to control and pacify occupied Iraq. Basic services were still not functioning properly in many parts of that country and the massive task of reconstruction had hardly begun. It was not clear when or how US officials would transfer substantive power to Iraqis, attacks on US occupation forces were on the rise, and the United States (and Britain, its junior partner in the invasion and occupation of Iraq) remained thoroughly isolated in the world community.

In the months that followed the overthrow of the Ba'thist regime which had ruled Iraq for thirty-five years, it became clear not only that the American public had been misled about the rationale for going to war in Iraq but also that Bush administration officials had given inadequate thought to what would happen in the wake of military victory. Lacking any very deep understanding of the complex realities of Iraqi society and politics and willingly lulled by the optimistic forecasts of pro-war scholars and experts, those officials envisioned a scenario in which the vast majority of Iraqis would enthusiastically welcome their country's occupation and, under the benign tutelage of the United States, happily go about creating a stable, peaceful, free-market democracy in the heart of the Arab world. They were thus grossly unprepared for what actually ensued. That the United States, by far the strongest military power on earth, could defeat Iraq's armed forces and conquer that country was never in doubt; whether the United States could successfully put Iraq back together afterward in anything like the way it imagined remains highly uncertain.