Here's some info on the Bush-Cheney Occupation Plan

U.S. Has a Plan to Occupy Iraq, Officials Report The revelation of the occupation plan marks the first time the administration has described in detail how it would administer Iraq in the days and weeks after an invasion, and how it would keep the country unified while searching for weapons.

It would put an American officer in charge of Iraq for a year or more while the United States and its allies searched for weapons and maintained Iraq's oil fields.

For as long as the coalition partners administered Iraq, they would essentially control the second largest proven reserves of oil in the world, nearly 11 percent of the total. A senior administration official said the United Nations oil-for-food program would be expanded to help finance stabilization and reconstruction.

Administration officials said they were moving away from the model used in Afghanistan: establishing a provisional government right away that would be run by Iraqis. Some top Pentagon officials support this approach, but the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and, ultimately, the White House, were cool to it.

"We're just not sure what influence groups on the outside would have on the inside," an administration official said. "There would also be differences among Iraqis, and we don't want chaos and anarchy in the early process."

Instead, officials said, the administration is studying the military occupations of Japan and Germany. But they stressed a commitment to keeping Iraq unified, as Japan was, and avoiding the kind partition that Germany underwent when Soviet troops stayed in the eastern sector, which set the stage for the cold war. The military government in Germany stayed in power for four years; in Japan it lasted six and a half years.


In a speech on Saturday, Zalmay Khalilzad, the special assistant to the president for Near East, Southwest Asian and North African affairs, said, "The coalition will assume — and the preferred option — responsibility for the territorial defense and security of Iraq after liberation."

"Our intent is not conquest and occupation of Iraq," Mr. Khalilzad said. "But we do what needs to be done to achieve the disarmament mission and to get Iraq ready for a democratic transition and then through democracy over time."

Iraqis, perhaps through a consultative council, would assist an American-led military and, later, a civilian administration, a senior official said today. Only after this transition would the American-led government hand power to Iraqis.

He said that the Iraqi armed forces would be "downsized," and that senior Baath Party officials who control government ministries would be removed. "Much of the bureaucracy would carry on under new management," he added.