I among many have blamed Dick Cheney for the fiasco of the Iraq war but in a very long article at The American Conservative John Hay suggest it may not be that simple. As I said it is a long article so I can’t give it any justice with a lot of copy and paste- you really need the entire thing. But I will cut and paste the introductory first 3 paragraphs.
In May 2003, in the wake of the Iraq War and the ousting of Saddam Hussein, events took place that set the stage for the current chaos in the Middle East. Yet even most well-informed Americans are unaware of how policies implemented by mid-level bureaucrats during the Bush administration unwittingly unleashed forces that would ultimately lead to the juggernaut of the Islamic State.
The lesson is that it appears all too easy for outsiders working with relatively low-level appointees to hijack the policy process. The Bay of Pigs invasion and Iran-Contra affair are familiar instances, but the Iraq experience offers an even better illustration—not least because its consequences have been even more disastrous.
The cast of characters includes President George W. Bush; L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer, the first civilian administrator of postwar Iraq; Douglas Feith, Bush’s undersecretary of defense for policy; Paul Wolfowitz, Bush’s deputy secretary of defense; I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Richard B. Cheney (and Cheney’s proxy in these events); Walter Slocombe, who had been President Clinton’s undersecretary of defense for policy, and as such was Feith’s predecessor; Richard Perle, who was chairman of Bush’s defense policy board; and General Jay Garner, whom Bremer replaced as the leader of postwar Iraq.
What he is saying is that policy making decisions were being made by mid level and some times low level appointed bureaucrats hijacked the Bush 43 presidency. Their poor decisions ultimately resulted in ISIL.
Now George W Bush is ultimately responsible but so are the American Voters who elected someone with few if any managerial skills and a lack of knowledge. It was the debathification and dissolving the Iraqi army that was ultimately responsible for the creation of ISIL.