The usually highly astute Juan Cole also mooted the partition idea a few months ago http://www.juancole.com/2006/05/settling-iraq-before-it-blows-up.html and took a lot of heat about it (see the comments). It prompted an useful response from Helen Cobban: http://justworldnews.org/archives/001896.html

Remind us, what was the neoconservative line on the possibility of partition during the run-up to the invasion? Although the main narrative emphasis obviously lay elsewhere, I distinctly recall that several of them (I can't remember which), when asked about it, expressed a distinct lack of concern about the consequences. Didn't deny it was possible, but said it wouldn't be the worst tragedy in the world. Didn't forebear to publicly convey a sense of satisfaction at the prospect of dismembering a major Arab country. I remember wondering whether the war planners could have been so sanguine.

Replying to KH: Yes, you're right, many of the neocons pushing for war in Iraq in the 1990s and up until 2003 explicitly acknowledged that Iraq might disintegrate. And they didn't care. Bluntest was David Wurmser, who is now Dick Cheney's Middle East adviser, who wrote that Iraq would fall apart if Saddam Hussein's government were toppled, and he said that such was an outcome devoutly to be wished.

Thanks. I didn't remember Wurmser, but I know there were others, perhaps almost as frank. Contrary to some crude criticism, they were never so simple as to neglect the possibility that a unified democratic pro-American Iraq might not materialize. Other outcomes always were contemplated, & not without relish. Not that they always had some divide-&-conquer goal in mind, but rational agents evaluate the whole range of possible outcomes.

But did they underestimate the costs, from their own point of view, of partition, as most people now think? Did anyone within the government dispute their assessment at the time? (I'm sure you recall, the costs of partition were on everyone's mind in the late 1990s, not only because of the Balkans.)

Is there anything to be said about the casualness with which Americans now discuss partition? (These are just questions.)

I believe that it was always the Bush administration's intention to weaken and decentralize Iraq's government.

Prior to the 2003 invasion I kept waiting for Bush to say something specific about his post invasion plan for Iraq, apart from the "freedom" and democracy" pablum. Finally, in an early March '03 press conference, in response to a question regarding possible post-invasion sectarian or ethnic conflicts, Bush made a half-wit statement to the effect that he was confident that Kurds, Sunnis and Shi'a (the ungrammatical formulation, "Sunnis and Shi'a" was already set in concrete) could live together in a federation.

I can get the exact date and quote, if anyone's interested.

Given that the Iraqi state has always had a very centralized government, this federation plan seemed fraught with peril and specifically designed to weaken Iraq. By 2003 I had read Oded Yinon's 1982 "Divide the Arab World" Plan, the "Clean Break" proposal and the PNAC plan, so, in my alarmed and paranoid state, the invasion of Iraq seemed to be an obvious plan to turn the war on Islamist terrorism to the old program of putting more nails in the coffin of secular Arab nationalism.

Juan Cole has always seemed to be either naive about the structure of the Shi'a clerical hierarchy (I know that can't be true) or a partisan. Some of his writings about G.A. Sistani have seemed almost worshipful.

Keep up the great work on your blog. Best wishes WaltDe