US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz acknowledged that some key assumptions underlying the US occupation of Iraq were wrong, the Washington Post reported Thursday.

Paul D. Wolfowitz, briefing reporters Wednesday after a four day trip to Iraq, said that in postwar planning, defense officials made some assumptions that "turned out to underestimate the problem."

Wolfowitz said one assumption that proved wrong was 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 US military and its civilian partners in rebuilding Iraq, he said.

Three months after Hussein's government evaporated, 150,000 US troops are enduring dozens of armed attacks in Iraq each week. The bureaucracy remains dysfunctional. A governing council of 25 Iraqis began sharing limited power with US authorities there only last week.

The US occupation, now costing US$4 billion a month, has no clear end. And an assessment by outside experts commissioned by the Pentagon warned last week that the window of opportunity for postwar success is closing.

Officials critical of the occupation planning were quoted as saying that some problems could have been predicted and prevented.

Before the invasion, for example, US intelligence agencies were persistent and unified in warning the Defense Department that Iraqis would resort to "armed opposition" after the war was over.

However, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his team disagreed, confident that Iraqi military and police units would help secure a welcoming nation.

(Xinhua News Agency July 25, 2003)