[phyller]

My Iraqi friends, particularly one from Mosul, told me that the issue they had was that when Saddam was overthrown the coalition took too little control instead of too much. This created a power vacuum that allowed all sorts of bad actors to terrorize everyone else.

[jki275]

I would agree with one exception -- as bad as the baath party was, disbanding it and removing all its military officers was one of the watershed events that destroyed the coalition's ability to rebuild the country in a stable fashion.