WASHINGTON, October 22, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - A veteran US diplomat who served as a government adviser in Iraq has said that the US policy in the Arab country at the initial stage of the occupation was driven by neoconservative ideology rather than careful preparation and clear understanding of issues.

"What one needs to understand is that these decisions were ideologically based," said Ambassador Robin Raphel, who has been with the foreign service since 1977 and once served as assistant secretary of state.

The unusually candid remarks were made in a July 2004 interview for a relatively obscure history program at the US Institute of Peace, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP) Saturday, October 22.

The interview has remained unnoticed until now, when increasing numbers of Americans began to question the Bush administration's involvement in Iraq.

Raphel, who served as a trade adviser to the Iraqi government from April to August 2003, took particular issue with decisions by then administrator Paul Bremer to launch debaathification of the country and disband the Iraqi military.

"They were not based on an analytical, historical understanding. They were based on ideology. You don't counter ideology with logic or experience or analysis very effectively," she said.

"The ideology was what has come to be called neoconservatism and the whole belief that this would be an easy war, that we would be welcomed with open arms."

Raphel further said the theory that US forces would be welcomed by Iraqis was cultivated by expatriate Iraqis, who had their own agenda, which they tried to impose on US officials.

She said it became quickly obvious to her that the United States could not run a country that Americans did not understand.

"We were a bunch of amateurs largely except for the engineers, and even they didn’t have a professional means to interface with the Iraqis, so they were missing.

"There was very much the sense that we were getting in way over our heads within weeks."

A report presented by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) to Congress on Tuesday, October 18, concluded that the everyday live of the Iraqi people has not improved much since the US-led invasion of the oil-rich Arab country.

"It is unclear how US efforts are helping the Iraqi people obtain clean water, reliable electricity or competent health care," read the report.

Americans are showing more discontent with Bush’s handling of Iraq, with new poll results showing nearly six in 10 Americans worried about the outcome of the war.

In a poll published in September by the Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, 56 percent of the polled said the US was not meeting its objectives in Iraq.

With US death toll spiraling over 2,000 since the start of the invasion-turned-occupation in March 2003, Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, a possible presidential candidate in 2008, said the longer the US bogged down in Iraq, the more the conflict looked like another Vietnam War.

The US diplomat said she believed the administration of President George W. Bush went into Iraq too soon and it should have waited until the US was able to build an international coalition.

"But there were two pressures," she insisted.

"One was the clear political pressure, election driven and calendar driven. And the other was, the troops were deployed forward for Afghanistan and to let that kind of fall back and then reenergize everybody is very difficult."

Raphel said political pressure on professional foreign service officers was "huge" and "pervasive."

She said it was difficult for professional diplomats to express their views because of the administration's ideological enforcers present in the country.

"Oh, yes, there were political people round and about," she recalled. "One had to be careful."

After being reelected for a second term in office, President Bush was keen on putting an end to the genial moderation presented by Colin Powell, the outgoing secretary of state, and appointed a group of neo-conservative secretaries and aides.