Free Republic

As the Bush administration's envoy for Iraqi politics, Zalmay Khalilzad had considerable experience dealing with Iraqi opponents of Saddam Hussein. Before the war, Mr. Khalilzad was the White House's point man in meetings with Iraqi exile leaders in London and Kurdistan. After the shooting started, he was a key figure at political gatherings in Baghdad and at Tallil air base to begin assembling a new Iraqi leadership. So when the White House prepared to announce the appointment of L. Paul Bremer III as the chief civilian administrator in Iraq in May 2003, Mr. Khalilzad had every expectation that he would...

THE persistence of the insurgency in Iraq has divided America in a way not seen since Vietnam. Now the blame game among the principals has begun. The former presidential envoy to Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, has written in his new memoir that he informed President Bush that the military did not have "a strategy to win." Quite. The lesson the Pentagon should learn from Iraq is to avoid another L. Paul Bremer. This is less a reflection on Mr. Bremer, who accurately described himself as "the American viceroy" in Iraq and "the president's man," than on the position he...

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR In recent days, attention has been focused on some remarks I've made about Iraq. The coverage of these remarks has elicited far more heat than light, so I believe it's important to put my remarks in the correct context. In my speeches, I have said that the United States paid a price for not stopping the looting in Iraq in the immediate aftermath of major combat operations and that we did not have enough troops on the ground to accomplish that task. The press and critics of the war have seized on these remarks in an effort to...