AP,

Overall it is a policy question and then the strategy (whole of government) to achieve the policy goals. I can't describe what I was privy to until I validate it is now unclassified (I assume it is, and has already been written about), but overall I think our strategy was based on an assumption that the Iraqi people would embrace us, embrace democracy, and that the transition would be easy because this is the natural drift of civilization. We just needed to remove Saddam to let it blossom. If that was the underlying assumption then we didn't need a plan, we just needed to remove Saddam.

There is no excuse for poor officership in combat, but my point remains no matter how great our officers could have been it wouldn't make a difference if the policy objective and underlying assumption were deeply flawed from day 1. GEN Petraeus has a famous quote that goes along the line of "tell me how this ends" which indicates he experienced similar frustrations with the policy goals.