Agreed. Dick Pearl is abusing the term "lessons learned" in order to attempt to sprinkle his comments with credibility, but it doesn't work for me.
You don't think there was an on the ground intelligence weakness? Do you think my post #13 has any validity?
I think one aspect is a lesson learned.
When he talks about the Iraqi Congress and a quick hand off to an Iraqi government, you have to relize that that was a plan. Just like we had a French government in exile ready to take control after we liberated France, we had a "government in exile" that was there to put an Iraqi face on the effort much earlier. Infighting between State and Defense department derailed this. Perhaps things would have gone better, now its hindsight. If Bush had a failure it was not resolving this conflict.