Iraq War, Planning for

Planning for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and its aftermath involved senior policymakers in George W. Bush’s presidential administration, the Departments of Defense and State, and the armed forces, particularly the U.S. Army and the U.S. Central Command. Battlefield victory and the rapid ouster of Saddam Hussein’s regime drew praise for the invasion plans, but postwar planning has been criticized for its overly optimistic assumptions and its failure to incorporate expert insights from the State Department’s Future of Iraq (FoI) Project. This entry surveys the pre-invasion planning for the Iraq War and discusses reports by the Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute and the FoI project on postwar planning.