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A year after the Axis of Evil speech, President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans: the author Kanan Makiya; Hatem Mukhlis, a doctor; and Rend Rahim, who later became iraq's first post war representative to the United States. As the three described what they thought would be the political situation after Saddam's fall, they talked about Sunnis and Shiites. It became apparent to them that the president was unfamiliar with these terms. the three spent part of the meeting explaining that there are two major sects in Islam.

So two months before he ordered U.S. troops into the country, the president of the United States did not appear to know about the division among Iraqis that has defined the country's history and politics. He would not have understood why non-Arab Iran might gain a foothold in post-Saddam Iraq. He could not have anticpated U.S. troops being caught in the middle of a civil war between two religious sects that he did not know existed.

I recount this episode not to illustrate the president's ignorance, but because it underscores how little the American leadership thought before the war about the nature of Iraqi society and the problems the United States would face after it overthrew Saddam Hussein.
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In early April, U.S. troops had arrived at al-Qaqaa, a large facility thrity miles south of Baghdad. the bunkers at the complex contained 194 metrictons of High Melting Point Explosive (HMX) and 141 metric tons of Rapid Detonation Explosive (RDX). High explosives, like RDX and HMX, are used to implode a uranium or plutonium sphere and thus trigger a chain reaction leading to a nuclear explosion. "fat Boy", the plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, used one ton of high explosives...
In spite of these warmings, U.S. troops left the al-Qaqaa bunkers unguarded. in the months that followed, looters removed the RDX, the HMX, and 5.8 tons of PETN, a third explosive...
Less than a pound of RDX brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988
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At Uday Hussein's house on the banks of the Tigris, Bob Bauer, a retired CIA agent who was also an ABC News consultant, found the personnel records of the Saddam Fedayeen, the guerrilla force that had carried out deadly ambushes against American troops advancing on Baghdad. It later became a pillar of the insurgency...I called Wolfowitz's office in the hope he could arrange protections for the transcripts. I also offered to turn over the Saddam Fedayeen files. Nothing happened. Even though the Sharton was surrounded by U.S. troops, the deputy secratary of defense's office could not arrange a pickup of the Fedayeen documents. One would have thought it might be useful to have the names and home addresses of people already attacking U.S. troops. Of course, they did not protect the transcripts.
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Tom Foley, a top Bush fundraiser with no experience in handling economic transitions ( and no knowledge of Iraq ), was put in charge of privatizing Iraq's industry. He lasted a few months and was replaced by Michael Fleischer, a brother of Bush's first press secretary.. After explaining that he had only got the job in Iraq through his brother Ari, Fleischer told the Chigao times, without any apparent irony, that Americans were going to teach the Iraqis a new way of doing business. "The ony paradigm they know is cronyism".
No privitization took place. But it is just as well that Fleischer and Foley were in charge. International law prohibits an occupying power from selling off the assets of the occupied state, although it doesn't appear that anyone in the CPA was aware of this.
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