The NYT lays out the case against the early occupation of Iraq

One of my correspondents, who has a lot of experience with military affairs, writes to urge me to feature a new book by Larry Diamond, titled Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (Times Books/Henry Holt & Co., 24$).

OK, I'm doing so.

I have not read the book, and I suspect my correspondent has not done so either. But here is the essence of the NYT feature promoting it.

The failures of the Bush administration to prepare adequately for the postwar period in Iraq are by now well known, underscored by the revelation this week that a briefing paper, prepared for Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain eight months before the invasion, warned that "a postwar occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise" and that "little thought" had been given by the United States to "the aftermath and how to shape it."It is a subject explicated in chilling - and often scathing - detail by "Squandered Victory," a new book by Larry Diamond, a former senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad and a leading American scholar on democracy and democratic movements. In this book, Mr. Diamond contends that the postwar troubles in Iraq - a bloody and unrelenting insurgency, the creation of a new breeding ground for terrorists and metastasizing ethnic and religious tensions - are the result of "gross negligence" on the part of a Bush administration that rushed to war. He asserts that "mistakes were made at virtually every turn" of the occupation, and that "every mistake the United States made in Iraq narrowed the scope and lengthened the odds for progress."

In other words it is a hit piece on the Bush Administration, part of the ongoing effort on the part of the Democrats to undermine the credibility of their opponents going into the coming election cycle, subsidized by the NYT itself.

It combines 20/20 hindsight with grossly exaggerated criticism of the war effort, and a willingness to assume that the worst possible case scenario is in fact what will eventuate.

Even the NYT has to admit that Diamond brings nothing new to the table and that he was an early opponent of the war.

Diamond's account is based on, and essentially treats, his experience of the early months of occupation when things were at their most chaotic.

The charges are the standard litany of complaints:

1) There was inadequate planning for the aftermath of victory.

2) Rummy didn't put enough boots on the ground.

3) The US didn't listen to Iraqi leaders like al-Sistani.

4) The US disbanded, instead of enlisting, Saddam's military establishment, thus driving them into opposition.

5) The US spurned UN urging to transfer authority quickly to an international/Iraqi authority that would have been seen as legitimate.

In other words. There's nothing here that you haven't heard time and again on the pages of the NYT.

In each case there is a reasonable counterargument, but the NYT isn't interested in being reasonable. It wants to regain Democrat control of the government. What Dr. Diamond has produced is a coherent layout of the major Democrat campaign themes for the coming political season. The Republicans have to be able to answer these criticisms in a way that is not only accurate, but is also in tune with public sensibilities.

It's going to be fun watching them try.

Read the review here.