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what went wrong?
From turf battles in Washington to real-life battles on the streets of Baghdad, here's a look at the planning for postwar Iraq and how it has affected the situation on the ground.

 

Turf Wars and the Future of Iraq
Much has been written and said about the internecine warfare between the State Department and the Pentagon in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Yet it has only recently become clear just how much those bureaucratic battles over turf and ideology affected the planning for the postwar occupation. Here are excerpts from FRONTLINE's interviews with Richard Perle, Richard Haass, Kanan Makiya, Edward Walker, and Laith Kubba.

 

Is This Victory?
Critics say that the U.S. failed to plan for the violence and disorder on the ground in Iraq after military operations ended. Could we have known what we were getting into? In these excerpts from their FRONTLINE interviews, Jay Garner, L. Paul Bremer, Robert Perito, Ahmad Chalabi, Kanan Makiya, and Richard Haass, discuss the current situation in Iraq and debate whether the U.S. should, or could, have done more to prepare for the war's violent aftermath.

 

'We Want a Government and we Want it Now'
Was the U.S. was unprepared for the power vacuum left by the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime? As Baghdad was looted, another, less visible drama was going on in which decisions were made, and left unmade, about how to impose authority and restore the rule of law. Here, discussing these events in excerpts from their FRONTLINE interviews, are Kanan Makiya, Jay Garner, L. Paul Bremer, Richard Perle, Richard Haass, and Ahmad Chalabi.

 

Dispatch: Baghdad Shootout (with video)
FRONTLINE cameraman Scott Anger offers a first-hand account of what he saw, and felt, as he filmed a tragic incident on the streets of Baghdad in which U.S. troops fired into an Iraqi crowd. Plus, a video excerpt from "Truth, War and Consequences" in which Anger's footage is featured.

 

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posted october 9, 2003

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