This is supposed to reassure you:

In a lengthy interview with the Voice last week, a high-ranking Defense Department political official did concede that preparation for Iraq after a war is seriously lacking. "The planning should have started much sooner," the official said. "That's hard to deny." But, the official added by way of spin, that's really nothing to be concerned about, because compared to Afghanistan, Iraq is really much easier to handle, and won't require a protracted military presence, in keeping with Donald Rumsfeld's view that the military should not be a tool for "nation building."

"It's not like there's a bunch of roving warlords and ethnic or religious differences on the same scale as Afghanistan," the official contended.

That's from a good story by Jason Vest in this week's Village Voice about the U.S. government's inadequate postwar plans. I'm sure the lack of religious differences in Iraq will be news to the ruling Sunnis, southern Shi'ites, and non-Arab Kurds in the north.

Citing an Army War College paper on reconstruction, Vest writes:

While the administration has often tried to describe a post-Saddam Iraq as something akin to post-war Germany and Japan, the paper notes that an entire army staff was dedicated to planning for post-war occupation two years before the end of World War II. In the case of Iraq, similar foresight has not been exercised.

Ah, but back then the U.S. government was run by adults.