NEW YORK Knight Ridder's Washington bureau, which in the past two years has produced a string of important exclusives related to the Iraq war (and prewar), offered evidence today about poor or "non-existent" planning for the U.S. occupation of Iraq, as well as the failure to provide 100,000 more troops military commanders had wanted.

The article carries the byline of Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott but was also reported by Joseph Galloway and Jonathan Landay. It was based on official documents and on interviews with more than three dozen current and former military and civilian officials who participated directly in planning for the war and its aftermath.

Some senior officials spoke about their concerns for the first time, the story said.

"A Knight Ridder review of the administration's Iraq policy and decisions has found that it invaded Iraq without a comprehensive plan in place to secure and rebuild the country," the article declares.

"The administration also failed to provide some 100,000 additional U.S. troops that American military commanders originally wanted to help restore order and reconstruct a country shattered by war, a brutal dictatorship and economic sanctions. In fact, some senior Pentagon officials had thought they could bring most American soldiers home from Iraq by September 2003. Instead, more than a year later, 138,000 U.S. troops are still fighting," it also states.

The authors quote a veteran State Department officer who was directly involved in Iraq policy saying, "We didn't go in with a plan. We went in with a theory."

"We've finally got our act together, but we're all afraid it may be too late," commented one senior official still engaged daily in Iraq policy.

The Bush administration's failure to develop a plan to win the peace was the product of many of the same problems that plagued the administration's case for war, the KR report continues, "including wishful thinking, bad information from Iraqi exiles who said Iraqis would welcome American troops as liberators and contempt for dissenting opinions."

However, the administration's planning for postwar Iraq differed in one crucial respect from its erroneous prewar claims, the article says: "The U.S. intelligence community had been divided about the state of Saddam's weapons programs, but there was little disagreement among experts throughout the government that winning the peace in Iraq could be much harder than winning a war.

"A half-dozen intelligence reports warned that American troops could face significant postwar resistance. This foot-high stack of material was distributed at White House meetings of Bush's top foreign policy advisers, but there's no evidence that anyone ever acted on it. 'It was disseminated. And ignored,' said a former senior intelligence official."

The KR story features this anecdote up top: "In March 2003, days before the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, American war planners and intelligence officials met at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina to review the Bush administration's plans to oust Saddam Hussein and implant democracy in Iraq. Near the end of his presentation, an Army lieutenant colonel who was giving a briefing showed a slide describing the Pentagon's plans for rebuilding Iraq after the war, known in the planners' parlance as Phase 4-C.

"He was uncomfortable with his material, and for good reason. The slide said: 'To Be Provided.'

In an interesting sidelight, the article notes that every effort was made to get those who were interviewed to speak for the record, "but many officials requested anonymity because they didn't want to criticize the administration publicly or because they feared retaliation. One official who was deeply involved in the pre-war planning effort, and was critical of it, initially agreed but then declined to cooperate after expressing concern that the Justice Department might pursue a reporter's telephone records in an effort to hunt down critics of the administration's policies."

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