Is it really possible that the Bush admin officials believed their caricature of Iraq, that totalitarian model in which there's really nothing between an oppressed atomised people and an oppressive regime? After all, weren't they courting and supporting these Shia clerics as a counterpoint to the regime? Were they not paying attention to the social and cultural changes under 12 years of sanctions as simultaneously dependency on the regime increased and its legitimacy declined -- leaving religion to move into the vacuum, thus aligning Iraq with the rest of the region in the wake of the failure of secular and nationalist regimes?
It's hard to believe that they didn't know the 1991 uprisings in the south were to some degree cleric-led and Iranian-inspired. Wasn't that one reason why they let it be suppressed and didn't create an autonomous zone in the south?
Is it too cynical to think that all this is establishing the basis for an extended occupation, the rehabilitation of the Baathist bureaucracy and administrative structure with reformed allegiances, and a combination of that with a Chalabi in a compliant regime that can exercise the right combination of surface freedoms and repression to keep the place 'safe'? Because now they can play the ultimate nightmare scenario to the US public: it's either we stay in or a fundi regime.
Although there's an even more ultimate nightmare scenario: US troops doing a Saddam on a Shia uprising!
That last quote from Pollack is a bit rich seeing how he's one of the intellectual supports for the invasion and regime change.
kjk