Wolfowitz concedes that errors were made in planning the invasion and reconstruction of Iraq.

Paul D. Wolfowitz, briefing reporters after a 41/2-day trip to Iraq, said that in postwar planning, defense officials made three assumptions that “turned out to underestimate the problem,” beginning with the belief that removing Saddam Hussein from power would also remove the threat posed by his Baath Party. In addition, they erred in assuming that significant numbers of Iraqi army units, and large numbers of Iraqi police, would quickly join the U.S. military and its civilian partners in rebuilding Iraq, he said.

The really astonishing thing about this article is the analysis that follows Wolfowitz’s announcement, which documents the way the administration made ideologically- or politically-based decisions about Iraq in the face of data indicating that (in most cases) very different actions were needed.

The continued practice of this administration to ignore data is apalling and flat out embarassing.