The Washington Post is reporting that the CIA and other intelligence agencies warned the Bush administration that a U.S. occupation in Iraq would face significant armed resistance. One CIA report warned that “chaos after war would turn [Iraq] into a laboratory for terrorists.” One unnamed official told the Post “Intelligence reports told them at some length about possibilities for unpleasantness. The reports were written, but we don’t know if they were read.”

But former Army secretary Thomas E. White, who resigned in April, said postwar planning was based on the assumption held by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his civilian advisors that U.S. troops would be “greeted in the streets by a euphoric public, glad of being rid of Saddam Hussein.”