http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11135500

.....Most of the arguments in favour of invading back in 2003 have come to nothing.

Many Iraqis welcomed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein - 50% regarded the invasion as a liberation, according to a BBC poll taken in 2004, while 50% regarded it as an occupation - but nowadays it is hard to find anyone who sees America as Iraq's friend and mentor.

Nor has the overthrow of Saddam Hussein led to a general domino effect towards democracy throughout the Middle East. On the contrary, America's position in the Middle East has been visibly eroded. Some of the things done by the American authorities in Iraq, based in the Green Zone in Baghdad, were sober, positive and practical. Some have become a burden, for instance the constitution the Americans wished on Iraq, which makes it fiendishly hard to create a decent effective government.....

...And because the Green Zone administration was thrown together in a huge hurry back in 2002-03, overseen by former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - a man with no interest in nation-building - some of what was done involved grotesque levels of corruption and mismanagement.

Mr Rumsfeld was sent a careful, conscientious 900-page report by the state department containing detailed plans for the post-invasion period. He reportedly dumped it, unopened, straight into his waste-paper basket.

Iraqis, and some Americans, pile a good deal of the blame for what happened during this period on to Mr Rumsfeld's ally Paul Bremer, the temperamental pro-consul who often seemed unaware of what was going on right under his nose.

Former Vice-President Dick Cheney, when asked by the Saudi foreign minister why the US insisted on going ahead with the invasion, answered: "Because it's do-able."

But the problem began even higher up.

A respected Iraqi dissident, who later became vice-president, has described how shocked he was to find, a few weeks before the invasion, that President Bush seemed wholly unaware that Muslims in Iraq were divided between Shia and Sunni Islam.