CAIRO, March 14, 2006 (IslamOnline.net) – Leaked memos have shown that British Prime Minister Tony Blair was warned at the very beginning of the US-led occupation of Iraq that the US postwar plan was a mess as a declassified Pentagon document said that US intelligence agencies misread Saddam Hussein's directions on weapons of mass destruction, leading British and US newspapers reported Tuesday, March 14.

In a series of confidential memos to Downing Streets in May and June 2003, John Sawers, Blair's envoy in Baghdad in the aftermath of the US-invasion of Iraq, described the US postwar administration led by retired US general Jay Garner as "an unbelievable mess", The Guardian said.

"No leadership, no strategy, no coordination, no structure and inaccessible to ordinary Iraqis," said Sawers in a May 11, 2003 memo titled "Iraq: What's Going Wrong," less than two months after the US-led invasion.

The memo catalogued a series of US failures that contained the seeds of ongoing insecurity and anarchy in the occupied Arab country.

It cited the lack of interest by Tommy Franks, then commander general of the US forces, in the post-invasion phase.

The US authority even failed to deal with health hazards, such as 40% of Baghdad's sewage pouring into the Tigris and rubbish piling up in the streets, added that document.

The memo said that the sacking of many of Saddam Hussein's Baath party was among the major failures of the US authority in Iraq.

On May 23, 2003, former US civil administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer announced the dissolution of the Iraqi army forces, other security structures of the ousted regime and the information ministry.

The order also does away with the Ministry of Defense and Hussein's elite Republican Guard corps.

Powell's UNSC presentation depended on information misinterpreted by the US intelligence services.

Sawers' grim message was further reinforced by Major General Albert Whitely few weeks later.

"We may have been seduced into something we might be inclined to regret. Is strategic failure a possibility? The answer has to be 'yes'," Whitely said in a separate note.

He accused Garner of underestimating the reaction of lay Iraqis.

"There was a blind faith that Phase IV (postwar period) would work. There was a failure to anticipate the extent of the backlash or mood of Iraqi society," he wrote.

Both Sawers and Whitley blamed US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's decision to cut troops after the invasion.

Sawers advocated sending a British battalion, the 16th Air Assault Brigade, to Baghdad to help fill the gap.

However, Downing Street rejected the plan weeks later despite the prior US approval.

Sawers particularly criticized the US Third Infantry Division, describing it as "a big part of the problem" in Baghdad.

He said the US troopers were reluctant to leave their heavily armored vehicles to carry out policing.

He cited an incident when British troops saw them fire three tank rounds into a building in response to a relatively harmless rifle fire.

A declassified Pentagon's report, meanwhile, revealed that US intelligence in 2002 misread internal Iraqi messages about weapons of mass destruction, according to the Washington Post.

The report by the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command said that the US intelligence officials believed incorrectly the Iraqi orders were a ruse meant to hide evidence of such weapons from UN inspectors.

The report said when US intelligence intercepted an internal message in 2002 between two Iraqi commanders talking about removing the words "nerve agents" from "wireless instructions," the analysts "had no way of knowing that this time the information reflected the regime's attempt to ensure it was in compliance with UN resolutions".

This message was cited by former US Secretary of State Colin Powell in his February 5, 2003 statement to the UN Security Council as an example of Iraq's bad faith, said the magazine.

Powell, who had forcibly made the case for the Iraq invasion in his UN Security Council presentation, regretted in September his UN statement, saying it was a "blot" on his record.

Another misread Iraqi message also from 2002 referred to instructions to "search the area surrounding the headquarters camp and (the unit) for any chemical agents, make sure the area is free of chemical containers, and write a report on it."

The US analysts viewed this information through the prism of a decade of prior deceit.

"They had no way of knowing that this time the information reflected the regime's attempt to ensure it was in compliance with UN resolutions," said the document.

US President George W. Bush admitted in December that faulty intelligence assessments on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction damaged US credibility