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History is beset by military blunders, from Napoleon's attempt to conquer Russia to America's decision to invade Iraq. But do leaders learn from the mistakes of others?

The authors of the RAND Corporation report Blinders, Blunders, and Wars: What America and China Can Learn look at eight examples of blunders -- and four cases where blunders were not made -- with the aim of warning leaders away from future blunders of their own.

Here is the authors take on the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

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States like [Iraq, Iran, and North Korea] and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil. . . . By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. . . . I will not wait on events while dangers gather.

President George W. Bush, State of the Union, January 29, 2002

For us, war is always the proof of failure and the worst of solutions, so everything must be done to avoid it.

President Jacques Chirac to a joint session of the French and German parliaments, January 2003

President George W. Bushs decision to invade Iraq on March 20, 2003, was not a blunder on the scale of those of Napoleon, Hitler and Tojo.

There was a case to be made on several grounds for operations against Saddam Hussein. The initial phase of combat was highly successful, and some still argue that the American investment was worth the cost of toppling the Saddam regime.

Bush was reelected in November of 2004 as much because of as despite his invasion of Iraq. His subsequent 2007 decision to launch the surge did limit some of the damage.

The main premise for the war was that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and that these were at risk of falling into the hands of terrorists. In the end, however, there were no such weapons, and Saddams links to al Qaeda were unproven. This robbed the invasion of legitimacy.

The insurgency that ensued after initial combat operation robbed the invasion of success. Today, the United States has less influence in Baghdad than Iran does. Iraq is a Shia-dominated state with an alienated Sunni minority, rampant violence and virtually no control over the Kurdish north. At least 134,000 Iraqis died as a direct result of the American invasion, and the violence there continues.

Violent Salafists from Syria and elsewhere have swept through the Sunni areas of Iraq, routing the Iraqi army, seizing important cities and declaring an Islamist caliphate. There were no U.S. military forces available in Iraq to support the Iraqi army.

The Kurds have taken the oil-rich contested city of Kirkuk and hinted at the possibility of separating from the Iraqi state. The United States has been compelled to send military advisors back to Iraq, and it may no longer have enough influence with any of the parties or in Baghdad to preserve a unified state.

Meanwhile, the Afghan conflict was neglected for half a decade. Allied trust in America was eroded, and attitudes about the United States in the Muslim world were poisoned. Some 4,486 American service personnel were killed and more than thirty thousand wounded. The total financial cost by some estimates could approach $2 trillion. Largely because of Iraq, the U.S. public has become very skittish about overseas U.S. combat deployments, especially involving ground forces.5

Major errors included misinterpretation and misuse of intelligence on Iraqs WMD capability, unwillingness to give WMD inspectors time to conclude their work, peremptory diplomacy that damaged the Atlantic Alliance, and failure to properly anticipate what would happen in post-conflict Iraq.

When George W. Bush entered office, nation building was anathema.

During the 1990s, the United States would have preferred regime change in Baghdad, but it settled for containment. The 1991 Gulf War ended after one hundred hours of combat with Saddam still in power. Afterward, President George H. W. Bush signed a covert-action finding authorizing the CIA to topple the Saddam regime.

During the Bill Clinton administration, no-fly zones in the north and south of Iraq kept Saddams aircraft grounded in an effort to protect the Kurds and Shias. In February 1998, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright confirmed that U.S. strategy toward Saddam was containment, arguing that removing Saddam would be too costly and that fomenting a coup would create false expectations.6

In October 1998, however, Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act, providing funds for the Iraqi opposition. Later in 1998, Clinton authorized a four-day bombing campaign designed to strike Iraqi WMD sites.7 But the Clinton administration never contemplated an invasion of Iraq.

When the George W. Bush administration entered office, its initial focus was on China and military transformation. Nation building was anathema. CIA threat briefings concentrated on al Qaeda, not Iraq,8 though efforts to have the new administration deal with al Qaeda failed.

Well before the September 11 attacks, officials at the Pentagon, led by Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, quietly began to consider military options against Saddam. Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley developed a policy of phased pressure on Iraq, which included ratcheting up many of the measures used by the Clinton administration, such as sanctions, weapons inspectors, and aid to the opposition.9

That all changed on September 11, 2001.10 Initially, Bush, Wolfowitz and others thought that Iraq might be behind the attacks.11 So did a large majority of the American people, a belief reinforced by the speculation of administration officials.

It became clear that this was not the case, as Bush finally revealed,12 but for many this connection stuck. The first order of business was to destroy al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but the case against Iraq moved rapidly to the front burner. Bush indicated that as soon as the Taliban were driven from Afghanistan, he would turn his attention to Saddam.13

After 9/11, the CIA began to highlight Saddams WMD capabilities.

The case for invasion resembled a layer cake. At the base was the acute sense of imminent national danger caused by the September 11 attacks. A rogue regime with WMDs and ties to terrorists aroused fear of a much more devastating attack on the U.S. homeland.

Saddam had shown himself for the ruthless villain he was. He had used chemical weapons against his own people and against Iranian troops in the 1980s. He had invaded Kuwait and started a bloody war against Iran. He perpetually threatened Israel. He refused to implement at least ten UN Security Council resolutions aimed at ending his WMD programs and had expelled weapons inspectors in 1998.

In the aftermath of September 11, the CIA began to highlight Saddams WMD capabilities. The director of central intelligence, George Tenet, revealed eight ways that Saddam might develop a nuclear capability and called the WMD case against Saddam a slam dunk.14

The CIA had missed several indications that might have given specific warning about the September 11 attack and was not about to be caught off guard again.15 Because the Bush administration had not acted on more-general intelligence warnings of the al Qaeda threat to the U.S. homeland, it would take any future warning much more seriously.

This sense of immediate and extreme danger was amplified in the wake of the September 11 attacks by two other events that cemented the link between WMDs and terrorism. Soon after September 11, anthrax spores were mailed to the U.S. Congress and others, killing five people. Intelligence reports indicated, wrongly it turned out, that Saddam had weaponized anthrax, although he was not suspected of initiating these particular attacks.

If the US could change the regime in Baghdad, it might create a new model of democracy in the Middle East.

Also, the CIA received reports that Osama bin Laden was seeking dirty (i.e., radiological) bomb capability, possibly from Pakistan.16 Public concern grew, U.S. hardware stores began to run out of duct tape and pharmacies ran short of ciprofloxacin.

In considering war on Iraq, the sibling of danger was opportunity.17 Some of the neoconservatives around Wolfowitz had held mid-level jobs in the administration of George H. W. Bush. They had seen efforts at regime change work when the United States invaded Panama to topple Manuel Noriega in 1989, when Eastern Europeans cast communism aside that same year, when the Soviet Union itself collapsed in 1991, and when the Bulldozer Revolution toppled the Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic in the wake of the Kosovo War.

Emboldened by these successes, this group now saw the opportunity to press for forcible regime change in Iraq.

Meanwhile, there was growing recognition that U.S. military power was in a class of its own. The United States had developed new military technologies and tactics that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld championed as defense transformation.

These included data networking, accurate and voluminous intelligence, instantaneous command and control, and precision strike. Developed in the 1980s and 1990s, they had been on display during Desert Storm and more recently in Afghanistan, where this military transformation technology toppled the Taliban regime effortlessly and created a sense of total American military dominance.

By contrast, the Iraqi military had suffered contractions of 35 percent in its army and 60 percent in its air force since before Desert Storm.18 Iraq stood no chance in a force-on-force war.

The thinking went that if the United States could change the regime in Baghdad, it might create a new model of democracy in the Middle East. After all, democracy was on the rise globally in what the political scientist Samuel Huntington called the Third Wave.

Just as it was flourishing throughout Eastern Europe and Latin America, it could take hold in Iraq and serve as a model for the Arab world. Democracy in the Middle East would be a geostrategic game changer, foster stability in that strife-ridden region, and provide Americas ally Israel with a much more secure environment.19

The fact that Saddam tried to kill [his] dad weighed on Bushs decision making.

In addition, a new regime in Iraq would allow the United States to remove its troops from Saudi Arabia, where they fueled extremism, and to have another friendly source of oil.20 Converting Iraq from an adversary to a friend could also strengthen the U.S. handand even provide military basesagainst Iran.21

A third and related line of thinking that led to war was a prevailing sense of unfinished business with Saddamnamely, his removalthat needed closure. The United States had been waging a low-grade undeclared war against Saddam since Desert Storm ended as part of its containment strategy. As part of Operations Northern Watch and Southern Watch, the U.S. Air Force flew daily missions over 60 percent of Iraqi territory and was often fired upon, though never hit.22

Other anti-Saddam options seemed to be failing. France and Russia were not cooperating with international sanctions and funds were being diverted by Saddam from the Oil-for-Food Programme to buy arms. In January 2002 the CIA presented Vice President Dick Cheney with an assessment that Saddam had created a nearly perfect security apparatus that made the prospects of a successful coup nearly impossible.23

This unfinished business concerned Bush directly. Saddam had earlier tried to have assassins attack his father while on a Middle East trip. The fact that Saddam tried to kill [his] dad evidently weighed on his decisionmaking.24

The concept of preemptive war was deeply flawed.

Finally, after September 11, forcing a regime change in Baghdad made good political sense for the Republicans. The attack on Afghanistan had bipartisan and international support. But the administration needed to be seen as doing more in its declared global war on terror. By going after Saddam they would be well positioned to wrap themselves in the flag and compensate for missing the September 11 attacks.25

The 2000 Republican platform had already set the stage by calling for a comprehensive plan to remove Saddam, though without specifically referring to an invasion.26 After September 11, the use of force against Saddam would be difficult for Democrats to protest.

From this logic developed a new national security doctrine of preemptive war. Bush made the case for this during a June 2002 speech at West Point, arguing that the United States could not rely on Cold War concepts such as deterrence and containment to deal with terrorists who are willing to commit suicide for their cause. Neither could it afford to wait for a rogue regime to transfer WMDs to others or gain a decisive capability to harm the United States. It had a responsibility to preempt if necessary.27

During his UN General Assembly speech in September 2002, Bush tied the doctrine of preemption to Iraq, noting with every step the Iraqi regime takes towards gaining and deploying the most terrible weapons, our own options to confront that regime will narrow.28

This concept was formalized in the September 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States of America, which said: We cannot let our enemies strike first. . . . The overlap between states that sponsor terror and those that pursue WMD compels us to action.29 The new strategy had general application, but in the context of 2002 it provided the specific strategic justification for an invasion of Iraq.

This concept, born of danger and opportunity, was deeply flawed. The case for Saddam having WMDs turned out to be wrong, and Saddam never had close ties to Sunni terrorists. The preemption doctrine lacked international legitimacy and undermined international trust in the United States.

And yet this flawed concept drove the Bush administration to an early and uncoordinated decision for war, brushing aside the need for analysis, distorting intelligence, marginalizing senior officers who raised doubts and neglecting postconflict stabilization requirements.

Hawks, Doves, Diplomats and the Decider

It is not clear exactly when Bush decided to invade Iraq. Even before the inauguration, Cheney asked outgoing Secretary of Defense William Cohen to provide Bush with a briefing focused on Iraq. Wolfowitz was pushing for military seizure of Iraqs oil fields, which Secretary of State Colin Powell is reported to have called lunacy.30

Rumsfeld raised the possibility of an invasion on September 11, 2001, as a potential opportunity.31 On September 17, Bush told his advisors: I believe Iraq was involved.32 Some in the administration felt that al Qaeda would be unable to organize an attack like September 11 without a state sponsor. With little intelligence to support this assertion, the administration continued to repeat that claim.33

A week after the attack, Wolfowitz began sending memos to Rumsfeld making the case for an attack on Iraq.34 Cheney soon began talking about Iraq as a threat to peace.35 Bush told the British prime minister, Tony Blair, in mid-September that Iraq was not the immediate problem.36 But that changed after the fall of Kabul.37

On November 21, 2001, Bush asked that the war plan for Iraq be secretly updated, which shocked the military.38 By the end of December 2001, Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander Tommy Franks was at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas, briefing the President and his national security team on the war plan.39

This early planning did not necessarily reflect a final decision: Some saw it as part of a two-track effort to rid Saddam of his WMDs by using diplomacy and military threats to give diplomacy teeth. But within the next six months, the cement began to dry.

Some speculate that Cheneys change of heart was caused by his bypass operation.

In March of 2002, Bush informally told a group of senators: Were taking him [Saddam] out.40 That same month, Cheney told Senate Republicans that the question was no longer if the U.S. would attack Iraq, the only question was when.41 By late July 2002, the British chief of intelligence returned from Washington concluding that military action against Saddam now seemed inevitable.42

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice brushed back State Department concerns about invasion, saying that the president had made up his mind.43

The three camps in the administration regarding Iraq might be called the hawks, the doves, and the diplomats.44 The hawks were led intellectually by Wolfowitz. Bureaucratically they formed the leading position within the Bush administration in 2002, with Cheney dominating the White House and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz controlling Defense.

Wolfowitz thought it was a mistake in 1991 to have allowed Saddam to attack Iraqs Shia population after Desert Storm and had favored a demilitarized zone enforced by the United States. Powell opposed him. In the late 1990s, both Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, out of office, continued to call for Saddams overthrow.45 Wolfowitzs model in 2002 was the Holocaust, believing that a tyrant who attacks his own people will eventually export that terror.46

Cheney had been a pragmatic internationalist while serving in the George H. W. Bush administration; but according to Brent Scowcroft, he had changed.47 Some speculate that it was his bypass operation, others that it was the psychological impact of being in the White House during the September 11 attacks. Cheney had daily contact with Bush and was his closest advisor on national security matters.

The doves were anything but 1960s tie-dyed peaceniks.

Cheney was described during this period as having a disquieting obsession and acting as a powerful steamrolling force.48 Rumsfeld also strongly supported military intervention, but his principal role was to think about details of the coming conflict and continually refine the war plan to conform it to his notion of military transformation.49

The hawks in government were supported by a combination of neoconservative colleagues and people with connections to the Middle East. Prime among them was a slick American-educated mathematician Iraqi expatriate named Ahmed Chalabi, who was head of the Iraqi National Congress and hoped to return as Saddams successor. Wolfowitz gave Chalabi access and Chalabi provided intelligence that turned out to be of highly questionable veracity.50

The doves were anything but 1960s tie-dyed peaceniks. They were generally influential pragmatic leaders who were not in the administration. They included the chairman of Bushs Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Brent Scowcroft; the former CENTCOM commander Anthony Zinni, and the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Ike Skelton.

Scowcroft went public in August 2002, telling Face the Nation that war with Iraq would be an unnecessary and bad choice that would seriously harm international cooperation against terrorism.51 Zinnis alternative model was Vietnam. He had been badly wounded there and wanted to make sure the cause was just before sending young Americans into harms way.

"Blinders, Blunders and Wars" by David C. Gompert, Hans Binnendijk, Bonny Lin Rand Corporation

The Joint Chiefs cut off debate about the wisdom of an invasion.

While at CENTCOM, he had seen no intelligence that Saddam had WMDs. He wanted evidence. He also felt that those pushing for war had no idea that the war might last ten years.52 Skelton sent Bush multiple questions about the cost and duration of the occupation, noting that he should not take the first step without considering the last. Skelton was told that the administration did not need his vote.53

Within the military, several senior officers, including Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold and General Eric Shinseki, demonstrated concern about the force structure needed for the operation. But in the fall of 2002, the Joint Chiefs cut off any further debate about the wisdom of an invasion.54 Most in the military were compliant with Rumsfelds directions.

The diplomats tended to see the same problems that the doves saw, but many were serving in the State Department or wanted to preserve their standing with the administration. Once it became clear that Bush was on a track to war, they sought to find a diplomatic exit or, failing that, to garner international support and create legitimacy for an invasion. This group included Powell and former secretaries Henry Kissinger, James Baker, and Lawrence Eagleburger.55

On August 5, 2002, Powell advised the President that the United States should only attack Iraq if it had a UN Security Resolution authorizing such action. Powell hoped that a UN resolution might force Saddam to back down from his intransigence on WMD inspectionswhich it in fact did. Powell also told Bush that the United States would own Iraq after an invasion and that it would dominate all other foreign- policy initiatives.

Bushs decision-making style was based on his gut instincts.

Bush did not back down from his decision to proceed toward war, but he did agree to give a UN resolution a try. The diplomats may have delayed the invasion by half a year by seeking UN authorization, but once a modest UN resolution was achieved, they lost the ability to prevent war.

Foreign leaders also lined up as hawks and doves. The most important hawk was Blair, who was weary of letting a gap open with American policy.56 Spains prime minister, Jos Mara Aznar, lined up with Blair, while the French president, Jacque Chirac, and the German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, eventually opposed invasion. Getting the international consensus Powell wanted would not be easy.

Bush considered himself to be the decider. After September 11, he seemed reborn as a crusading internationalist who had embraced Woodrow Wilsons vision of a democratic world and who was willing to use Americas military might to make it happen.57

Bushs decision-making style was based on his gut instincts.58 His snap judgment that somehow Saddam was behind September 11, or might be behind the next attack on America, remained with him. Bush felt that September 11 was the Pearl Harbor of the 21st Century,59 and that his new and transcending purpose as president was to prevent another, possibly worse, one.60

That early decision solidified during the first half of 2002. Bush was quick to reach decisions, and, once reached, he saw change as a sign of weakness.61 After he reached an early decision on war, he was prepared to try a UN resolution, but not change his fundamental course. He would not let Saddams new willingness in 2003 to open up to WMD inspectors stop him from invading.62

Rice was Bushs closest confidant. Her primary interest was protecting the President and translating his wishes into policy. But she did not develop the decision-making process needed to analyze and debate the wisdom and implications of going to war. According to Powell, there was no moment when all views and recommendations were aired.63

Nor was there much White House interest in complicated analysis: They already knew the answers, it was received wisdom.64 There was no meeting with pros and cons debated. . . . If there was a debate inside the Bush Administration, it was one- sided and muted.65 The urgent sense of danger, the instinct to be bold and the vision of transforming the Middle East trumped debate and analysis.

Demonstrators with the Iraq Campaign 2008 raise a banner declaring "Mission Accomplished?" on the fifth anniversary of U.S. President George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech which declared an end to major hostilities in Iraq during a rally on Pennsylvania Avenue in Front of the White House in Washington, DC, May 1, 2008. Joshua Roberts/Reuters

The worst U.S. intelligence failure since the founding of the modern intelligence community.

Shortly after the September 11 attacks, Tenet presented Bush with a list of countries malevolent enough to help al Qaeda get a dirty bomb: Iraq was on the top of that list. That notion had a profound impact on Bush.66 Bush said: I made my decision [for war] based upon enough intelligence to tell me that [our] country was threatened with Saddam Hussein in power.67

The case for Saddams complicity in September 11, or at least for his strong ties with terrorist organizations, was weak.68 The case for his possession of WMDs appeared stronger and drove decision-making. After all, he had used chemical weapons against the Iranians and the Kurds in the 1980s.

But the intelligence was wrong. Iraq had gotten rid of its WMDs. Some say this was the worst U.S. intelligence failure since the founding of the modern intelligence community.69

The intelligence that Bush and others received was based on outdated and incorrect evidence, material from untrustworthy human sources, and worst-case analysis.70 The United States had no reliable intelligence assets in Iraq.71 International WMD inspectors had been kicked out of Iraq since 1998; so in that sense Saddam brought this about himself.

The Pentagon was receiving intelligence from Chalabi, the Iraqi opposition politician, who had an ulterior motive, and from sources such as the aptly named Curveball. The Pentagon set up a one-off intelligence unit, called the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group, which began producing alarming interpretations of the murky intelligence about Saddam Hussein, WMD, and terrorism.72 They were in essence cherry-picking the intelligence in order to draw links between al Qaeda and Iraq and thereby justify intervention.73

In July of 2002, British intelligence concluded that the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.74 A State Department intelligence analyst concluded similarly that the administration was looking for evidence to support conclusions it had already drawn.75

The decision-makers and their staffs did not listen to WMD experts like Charles Duelfer, who argued that there was no significant remaining stockpile.76 In fact, they sought to have two intelligence officers removed whose analysis did not comport to their view of events.77

We dont want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

CIA analysts were tasked to prepare a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE).78 They had just been embarrassed by missing the September 11 attacks. Now they were faced with the Pentagons autonomous intelligence unit, to which the Vice President was listening.

Before the intelligence community rendered its official verdict, Cheney was saying in August of 2002 that Saddam was pursuing a nuclear weapons program.79 Similarly, Rice told CNN: We dont want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.80

At the same time a series of leaks to The New York Times put this faulty intelligence on the front pages.81 So while there was no effort by the intelligence community to falsify evidence,82 all of the mistakes tilted in the same direction.83

The NIE was delivered in October 2002 and was considered by many as a warrant for going to war. It concluded, with caveats, that the Iraqis possessed chemical and biological weapons along with delivery systems and sought to reconstitute their nuclear program.84

The body of the NIE contained several qualifiers that were dropped in the executive summary. The fact that the State Departments Bureau of Intelligence and Research disagreed with the conclusions was not highlighted.85 As the draft NIE went up the intelligence chain of command, the conclusions were treated increasingly definitively.86 Only the summary of the NIE was partially declassified, and it omitted most of the reservations and nonconforming evidence.87

The fact that the NIE concluded that there was no operational tie between Saddam and al Qaeda did not offset this alarming assessment.88 A year later, a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report found that the NIE was wrong, that it overstated the case, that statements in it were not supported, and that intelligence was mischaracterized.89

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The Iraq War: Bushs Biggest Blunder