The exclusive report quoted more than a dozen current and former senior government officials, many of whom linked a lack of US planning to the current chaos in Iraq.

"There was no real planning for postwar Iraq," said one former senior official. Most of those interviewed requested anonymity.

Civilian planners at the Pentagon's secretive Office of Special Plans hoped to transform Iraq into an ally of Israel, remove a potential threat to the oil trade in the region and encircle Iran with US friends and allies, the report said.

It also quoted officials describing efforts by that office to sideline and disregard other US government departments' planning for a postwar Iraq.

Putting Iraqi exile leader Ahmed Chalabi in power in Baghdad was a key part of this vision, according to the officials.

Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, the head of the Pentagon planning group, denied the plan to install Chalabi, but Pentagon advisor Richard Perle confirmed it.

"The Department of Defense proposed a plan that would have resulted in a substantial number of Iraqis available to assist in the immediate postwar period," Perle, a close counsellor of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, was quoted as saying.

Had it been accepted "we'd be in much better shape today," he said.

Even after the White House curbed its support for the Iraqi exiles, the Pentagon assisted Chalabi's 700-strong paramilitary force and flew him to to an air base near Nasiriyah in anticipation of his taking power.

Soon after Saddam Hussein's regime fell it became clear that Chalabi lacked public support in Iraq, and anti-American anger grew as Iraq descended into chaos. But the Pentagon planners had made no alternate plan, the report charged.

They had also ignored experts from other departments who disagreed with their vision, it said.

Postwar planning documents from the State Department and the CIA were "disappearing down the black hole" at the Pentagon, a former US official was quoted as saying.

For example, the Pentagon ignored the "Future of Iraq" project, an eight-month effort by the State Department involving 17 agencies and dozens of exiled Iraqi professionals.

Officials in the Pentagon's Near East/South Asia bureau, which houses the Office of Special Plans, were told to ignore State Department views, according to Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who retired from the bureau July 1.

"We almost disemboweled State," she was quoted as saying.

Feith said the planning involved "a robust interagency process" and denied his staff was instructed to ignore other agencies and departments.

Pentagon plans avoided treating problems such as the possible destruction of oil fields, food shortages and large-scale refugee flows, he said.

"Instead, we are facing some of the problems brought on by our very success in the war," he said.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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