An Iraqi woman voted in provincial elections on Saturday at a Baghdad school. Over all, the day passed peacefully.

The signs of mutual disengagement are everywhere. In the days leading up to the elections, it was possible to drive safely from near the Turkish border in the north to Baghdad and on south to Basra, just a few miles from the Persian Gulf — without seeing an American convoy. In the Green Zone — once host to the American occupation government, and now the seat of the Iraqi government — the primary PX is set to close, and the Americans have retreated to their vast, garrisoned new embassy compound. Iraqi soldiers now handle all Green Zone checkpoints.

American helicopters and drones may be in the sky, but Iraqi boots are on the ground. The Americans are already worried about securing the road to Kuwait because soon they will have to start hauling out much of the infrastructure they have built on bases across Iraq.

The end of an era comes not in a single moment, but looking back it has become evident that the mood has changed, power has shifted, the world is not the same.

In the United States, many Americans view the war as already over, even though more than 140,000 American soldiers remain on Iraqi soil.

President Obama has made it plain that Iraq is not his war; he wants to focus on Afghanistan. In an economic crisis, there is simply not enough money for the country to keep spending hundreds of millions of dollars a day in Iraq.

Any arguments that remain in Washington about the shape and timing of the troop withdrawal this year seem almost moot here, given how much Iraqis want to show they can govern on their own and how much Americans want to hand over responsibility to the Iraqis so they can meet withdrawal deadlines.

This is not to suggest that the war is over. In two provinces, Nineveh and Diyala, counterinsurgency operations are still under way, and the military is tracking signs of activity by Sunni extremist groups in the troubled areas surrounding Baghdad. For now, the rest of the country is mostly calm. The provincial elections will test political stability: whether Iraqis can begin to resolve still festering sectarian and ethnic tensions through the ballot box. The formal process of disengagement started in earnest in November, when the Iraqi Parliament approved a new security agreement with the Americans that sealed the date of departure, by the end of 2011, and almost immediately changed the balance of power.

The outlook of Iraqi citizens has changed as well. They are more confident that their problems are their own, and that the Americans cannot fix them and often have only made matters worse.

“The American military presence brought nothing to our streets but destruction and chaos,” said Omar al-Dulaimi, 57, a government employee who lives near the Um al-Khoura mosque, one of the largest Sunni places of worship in the capital. “We had nothing from them but tension and confusion. It’s much better for us and for them if they stay in their bases now.”

That resentment of the American presence boiled over in 2007 after Blackwater Security guards opened fire on Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square, killing 17 of them and wounding more than 30. That episode, which was widely publicized in Iraq and abroad, crystallized Iraqi loathing and resentment of what they saw as Americans’ casual disregard for Iraqi lives — and their own powerlessness to hold the Americans to account.

Such anger helped embolden Iraqis to drive a tough bargain on the security agreement, which cemented their sense that they were, at last, seizing control of their own destiny. The Iraqi resolve surprised the Americans, who in the end were forced to accept a hard deadline for departure, give up immunity for contractors like Blackwater and give Iraqis explicit authority over all military operations in the country.

Now, for both sides there is the feeling that something has changed and that whatever happens next, Iraq will not return to the way it was.

“We’re going through transition in Iraq at the same time we’re going through transition in our forces here,” said Gen. Ray Odierno, the commanding general for Iraq. “They will elect new provincial governments. I believe 75 percent to 80 percent of the provincial governments will change, and oh, by the way, we’ll begin to reduce our troops’ size.” The shifts are subtle, often unspoken. The American military role now has less to do with protecting Iraqis and more with giving them the psychological reassurance that they can handle what comes their way. The Americans no longer tell the Iraqis what to do, and the Iraqis, especially Iraqi Army officers, no longer look to the Americans for approval. At least that is the case in areas where the fighting has stopped; less so in areas like Mosul where American military might is still required to keep violence at bay.

When General Odierno stopped to inspect a polling center in rural Medaen, south of Baghdad, on Wednesday, his conversation with the Iraqi Army general who oversees the area was respectful, a little formal: two military men exchanging information. It was not exactly a conversation between equals; each knew that the other was from a different world, each knew the Americans have superior arms and training, and each offered the other his observations.

“I see less Sunni-Shia issues than I do a lot of other issues here,” General Odierno said.

Gen. Qassim al-Maliki nodded. “We have a lot of Shia voting this time,” he said. “We didn’t have a lot in the last election,” he said.

As the American military slowly steps back, the diplomats and the civilians are emerging from the wings. Certainly, this is far from a normal diplomatic relationship. Iraqis entering any area close to the Americans are still subject to multiple humiliating searches and interminable waits. American diplomats cannot yet leave the embassy; they live like virtual prisoners, every movement beyond its gates an armed undertaking. But it is possible for Americans and Iraqis to talk about issues other than sheer survival.

Iraqis, too, are beginning to explore a different kind of relationship, one that no longer looks to the Americans only for protection. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has agreed to finance a substantial scholarship program to send Iraqis to the United States and British Commonwealth countries for study, in an effort to create a better educated professional class. Still, the American era in Iraq is nowhere near a final act. If this were an opera, it would be just past midway in the libretto. While both sides are disconnecting, neither can let go entirely.

The Iraqis need the Americans not just to dampen terrorist activities within the country but to protect them from rapacious neighbors. Syria and Iran have interfered here since the invasion, and while the Iraqis are often uncomfortable with how the Americans have reined in these powers, they are reluctant to stop them because they fear their neighbors more.

When American forces pursued insurgents over the Iraqi border into Syria in late October, it was an international incident. Iraq was embarrassed in front of the Arab world. Such incidents are likely to recur and could become much more fraught.

For the United States, Iraq remains a strategic prize close to the Middle East flash points of Israel, Lebanon and Syria as well as Iran and the oil-rich Persian Gulf countries. It is not by chance that the Central Intelligence Agency has its largest station in the world in Baghdad.

It is inescapable that the United States exerts more influence here than in any other oil-producing country — and will be intent on continuing to do so. Iraq will be eager to demonstrate its independence; the United States will have to rely on levers other than a huge and continuing military presence. This promises considerable tension as each side redefines its relationship.

The elections on Saturday were a step toward a peaceful approach to settling disagreements among factions about the shape of the country. If new governments are seated from north to south and east to west, the United States and Iraq can begin the next act in earnest.

If all goes well, “The United States will not need big troops here,” said Jawad al-Bolani, the interior minister, a secular Shiite. “The Americans need to look at something besides security. Iraq needs America to start a new chapter.”

The entrance to the home of Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha in Ramadi, Iraq. Sheik Ahmed is fielding a slate of candidates in elections for provincial council seats.

But two weeks before the voting, in Anbar it appears that the ancient tribal way of doing business is on a collision course with the new ideal of democracy. Anbar is where the United States military enlisted tribal leaders and former insurgents to create the Sunni Awakening, fostering a calm that rippled around Iraq.

Now the tribes are jockeying to gain or maintain power, and people here complain bitterly that the machinery of democracy is gilding corruption, internal rivalries and an intense feudal instinct that regards elected office — unthinkable under Saddam Hussein — as a chance for a bigger cut of provincial resources and security forces.

“It’s a mess,” said Sheik Amer Abdul-Jabbar, an elderly and ailing tribal leader from Anbar Province, respected among some as the wise “prince” of Anbar, but derided by others as an opportunist eager to lend his tribal credentials to the highest bidder.

Around Iraq, the provincial elections, scheduled for Jan. 31, are viewed as a landmark moment to reshape, and make fairer, local politics. Many Sunni Muslims boycotted the last provincial elections four years ago, and as a result are now underrepresented in local councils in many parts of the country. The United States hopes that these elections will fix that as its own military and political power in Iraq wane.

And in Anbar, the campaign looks refreshingly like elections all over the world. Party posters are plastered around the province, at times on concrete blast walls, reminders of more violent days.

There are more than 500 candidates divided into 37 political groups — a robust choice given the boycott of four years ago. Sheiks making earnest campaign promises proudly display photographs of themselves posing with other politicians. One tribal leader managed pictures with both President Bush and Barack Obama.

But Anbar, poor and lawless even under Mr. Hussein, is different from many other parts of Iraq. It is overwhelmingly Sunni, so the fights are not ethnic or sectarian but between competing tribes. When the Americans began paying former insurgents and tribal leaders to help enforce security, they favored some tribes over others, in many cases displacing the old for upstarts.

That fostered a general peace layered over an angry tribal instability that many fear could turn lethal, in the elections or after.

“We are not suited for democracy,” said Maj. Gen. Tariq al-Youssef, the chief of the provincial police force, who worries that the tribes are seeking political power not to administer the security forces, but to co-opt them as quasi tribal militias.

Broadly, the Awakening is seeking to transform its credentials as peacemakers into political power, a force for the minority Sunnis against the dominance of the Shiite prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and the Shiite parties. Here in Anbar, the new political forces are meant to challenge the Iraqi Islamic Party, which became the main Sunni party after the elections in 2005, but is often accused of corrupt and autocratic rule.

On one level, the elections are functioning as their American designers had hoped: The lure of elective office is creating new political entities seeking to gain legitimacy by attracting the largest number of voters.

“This is democracy,” reveled Mamoon Sami Rashid, the governor, who is running for re-election despite many corruption allegations against him. “Each sheik wants to have his say. Previously only the paramount sheik ruled.”

On a recent afternoon here in Ramadi, Bangladeshi servants whisked around trays of mutton and rice for well-wishers at the opulent compound of Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha, who is not running for office but is fielding a slate of candidates. His party is casting for votes on promises to rebuild Anbar’s war-battered economy and to create jobs.

But dig deeper, and the tensions become clear.

Before the American invasion in 2003, the Abu Risha tribe had not been among the most powerful.

But as the American military built up the Awakening groups, his tribe has flourished with American support and political largess. Sheik Ahmed’s brother, Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, was the leader of the Awakening until he was killed in a suicide bombing, betrayed by his own bodyguard, in September 2007.

Now the sprawling Abu Risha estate is ringed with Iraqi Army and police checkpoints. Sheik Ahmed’s new wealth, as the Awakening leader, is on display: stables of Arabian horses, a camel farm, caged fawns, a pink mansion and a fleet of armored S.U.V.’s. Sheik Ahmed owns properties as well as trade and investment companies in the United Arab Emirates. He envisions a similar future for Anbar, and is pushing for a natural gas project worth billions.

“I dream of Anbar becoming like Dubai,” Sheik Ahmed said. “We have all the prerequisites.”

Not everyone shares his vision. Nestled amid palm groves just across the river from the Abu Risha fief is the seat of the Abu Dhiab tribe. Its leader, Sheik Mohammed al-Hayis, is nicknamed “the whale” because of the lucrative contracts steered his way by the American military, admits his brother, Sheik Hamid al-Hayis. A large photograph of Sheik Mohammed with President Bush adorns his opulent mansion, which is decked with marble stairs and giant crystal chandeliers.

Sheik Hamid, who counts himself among the early Awakening leaders, said that Sheik Ahmed had “dishonored” the legacy of his late brother Sattar by forming his own political party and making friendly overtures to the ruling Iraqi Islamic Party, which Sheik Hamid describes as the sworn enemy of the tribes.

As a result, Sheik Hamid and his brother have formed their own rival election slate called simply the Tribes of Iraq.

Among his backers is Sheik Jabbar al-Fahdawi, who accuses Sheik Ahmed of sowing discord inside many tribes, including his own Abu Fahed, by extending patronage to certain members of the tribes and promoting them over others as the real leaders.

“Ahmed inherited the Awakening from Sattar and turned it into an enterprise for deals and contracts,” said Sheik Jabbar, 35, who owns a contracting company.

“Anbar is splintered; the tribes are splintered.”

At the seat of the influential Abu Nimer tribe in the town of Hit, west of Ramadi, a part of the tribe has backed the Abu Risha and a rival group within the tribe belittles them as “highway bandits” unfit to enter politics.

Mr. Maliki has also jumped into the fray in Anbar, drafting nearly 3,000 Awakening members last fall in the town of Garma, near Falluja, into a new tribal council answerable to his office with oversight powers over the local government. This has jolted several sheiks affiliated with the Awakening in Garma, where security remains tenuous.

The council’s chief, Col. Saad Abbas, recently survived an attempt to poison him after narrowly escaping a truck bomb attack last month. The effective crumbling of the Awakening has benefited other forces in Anbar.

In a move viewed by many as a shrewd game of political survival, the Iraqi Islamic Party has spread its candidates among several lists, while its main list, the Alliance of the Educated and Tribes for Development, is led by Sheik Amer, the septuagenarian “prince” of Anbar.

The party’s legacy, after four years in power, has been tainted by numerous corruption charges, including financial improprieties involving a $52 million contract to import medical equipment for provincial hospitals and a $60 million contract to upgrade the telecommunications network.

And so some in Anbar are turning quietly to other alternatives: Gen. Saadoun al-Jumaili, a former commander in the Iraqi Air Force who now leads an elite police unit in Garma, said a reconstructed version of Mr. Hussein’s ruling Baath Party was becoming more popular. While it is officially banned, General Jumaili said with some approval that it was operating in secret in Anbar and that it was making strides in regrouping.

The party reportedly held a large secret meeting for its members late last year in the town of Khaldiya.

“The most honorable party at the moment is the Baath,” said General Jumaili, adding that tribal leaders, even his own relatives, have no place in electoral politics.

On the streets of Ramadi and Falluja there is little enthusiasm for the elections and there are ample accusations that both the Iraqi Islamic Party and the Awakening tribal leaders are siphoning off much of the billions of dollars of American and Iraqi financing intended for reconstruction. Much of the reconstruction, indeed, seems cosmetic.

“One gang leaves and another one comes in,” said Anas Ahmed, 22, a government employee in Ramadi.

In Qattana, a Ramadi neighborhood that was once an insurgent stronghold, and behind the crumbling and war-battered buildings on the main road that were given a quick bright paint job as part of the reconstruction drive, the back streets are flooded with a sludgy mix of sewage and clogged rainwater. A few dead rats float. Several months ago, a major water drainage project was supposed to have fixed the problem.

The greatest risk is that dissatisfaction with the current order could leave room for a return of the insurgency.

In recent months there have been a number of assassination attempts against political and tribal figures in Anbar. A double truck bombing against police stations in Falluja on Dec. 4 killed 17 people. On Dec. 26, militants broke out of a jail here, leaving 14 dead.

“I am pained because the situation is providing openings for Al Qaeda to come back, and it is coming back slowly but surely,” said Sheik Aifan al-Issawi, a native of Falluja and one of the original Anbar Awakening leaders, who is running for office.

Perhaps worse, some in Anbar say they are so fed up with what democracy seems to be bringing that they would welcome back the insurgency.

“This is what we will get from elections,” said Hassan Ramzi, 47, a carpenter, pointing to the filthy streets of Ramadi. “There must be a radical solution.”

The interior and defence ministries are in charge of Iraq's security

Interior Minister Jawad Bolani said they were innocent and there was no evidence that they had conspired to restore the outlawed Baath party.

The ministry had said they belonged to al-Awda, or the Return – widely seen as a front for Saddam Hussein’s party.

Charges will also be dropped against four others arrested on Thursday.

The judge investigating the officials issued “an order to release all of them because they are innocent”, Mr Bolani told the Associated Press news agency.

Correspondents say the arrest of the 23 officials from the interior and defence ministries came at a delicate time politically in Iraq.

Provincial elections are due to be held in January and political parties are vying for power and influence.

The interior ministry is a key part of stabilising the new Iraq and has in the past been heavily-infiltrated by Shia militias, although it has improved over the past two years.

Political tool

In February, a new law allowing former low-ranking Baath party members to become civil servants again meant that some lower-level officials who had served under Saddam Hussein were allowed back to work in Baghdad’s ministries.

The banned al-Awda is known as a clandestine Sunni organisation founded in 2003 to try to restore the Baath party to power, and included former members of the Baath party, Saddam’s former elite Republican Guard and members of his security services.

The group has carried out assassinations and attacks over the past five years.

Critics of the government, including politicians loyal to the radical Shia cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, have in the past accused the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki of using detentions and arrests as a political tool.

Some MPs have asked whether these arrests might be politically-motivated.

President Bush, left, ducks a thrown shoe as Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki tries to protect him Sunday.

BAGHDAD — Arriving here on Sunday for a surprise farewell visit, President Bush staunchly defended a war that has taken far more time, money and lives than anticipated, but he received a taste of local resentment toward his policies when an Iraqi journalist hurled two shoes at him at a news conference.

Hours later, Bush made another unannounced stop, landing before dawn Monday in Afghanistan for a meeting with President Hamid Karzai at his Kabul palace.

In Iraq, Bush said the conflict “has not been easy” but was necessary for U.S. security, Iraqi stability and “world peace.” He hailed a recently signed but still controversial security pact as a sign of impending victory.

“There is still more work to be done. The war is not over,” Bush said, with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki next to him. “But with the conclusion of this agreement . . . it is decidedly on its way to being won.”

Just after Bush finished his remarks and said “Thank you” in Arabic, an Iraqi journalist took off his shoes and threw them at Bush, one after the other.

Throwing a shoe at someone is considered the worst possible insult in Iraq and is meant to show extreme disrespect and contempt. When U.S. forces helped topple a statue of Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein after rolling into Baghdad in April 2003, jubilant Iraqis beat the statue’s face with their shoes.

“This is a farewell kiss!” the man, identified as Muntadar al-Zaidi, a reporter with the Cairo-based al-Baghdadia television network, yelled in Arabic as he threw the first shoe. Bush, about 12 feet away, ducked and narrowly missed being hit. When Zaidi threw again, Maliki reached out his hand to shield the president.

Zaidi yelled “Dog, dog!” as he was surrounded by Iraqi security officers, who tackled him and began to beat him. Zaidi was later removed from the ornate room in the heavily fortified Green Zone where the news conference was taking place.

Bush was not injured and joked about the incident minutes later: “If you want the facts, it’s a size 10 shoe that he threw. Thank you for your concern; do not worry about it.”

Zaidi, colleagues said, was kidnapped by Shiite militiamen last year and was later released.

Bush’s fourth and presumably final visit as president to Iraq was intended to highlight improving security conditions in the war-torn country. After spending about 7 1/2 hours here, he departed on Air Force One near midnight.

During the flight to Bagram Air Base, Bush joked about the “bizarre” shoe-throwing incident but also said he did not think the episode indicated broader resentment among Iraqis. “I don’t think you can take one guy and say this represents a broad movement in Iraq,” he said.  And Bush told reporters that the mission in Afghanistan was “the same” as the one in Iraq: “To have the young democracy develop the institutions so it can survive on its own, not to repeat the mistakes of the 1980s, which is to achieve an objective and leave.” He added that the United States also aimed to “deny a safe haven for al-Qaeda.”

Upon landing, Bush addressed U.S. soldiers and Marines on the tarmac before boarding a helicopter for a flight to Kabul, where he met with Karzai. The Afghan leader greeted him warmly, the Associated Press reported, but Karzai also emphasized that the visit, Bush’s second to Afghanistan, came only after repeated requests. He said that he wished that Bush had more time and that the Afghan people could see Bush in person.

The veil of secrecy for the Afghanistan leg was even more opaque than that for Iraq, the trip coming as Afghanistan is being wracked by levels of violence unseen since the United States invaded in 2001.

That situation contrasts with declining violence across Iraq, which Bush referenced in describing that war as on the path to victory. Yet many areas in Iraq remain unstable, particularly in the north. Last week, at least 57 Iraqis were killed in a suicide attack at a popular restaurant outside the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

More than 4,200 members of the U.S. military have died here since the 2003 invasion; the war has cost U.S. taxpayers $576 billion so far.

The improvement in security conditions in Iraq over the past year has had little discernible impact on the mood of the American public, which has said in polls that the invasion was a mistake. Bush said in a recent interview that faulty intelligence that preceded the war was his “biggest regret,” although he declined to say whether he would have changed course if he had known Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.

On Sunday, Bush met with a series of Iraqi leaders about the recently completed security agreement, which calls for the withdrawal of U.S. forces by the end of 2011.

After meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani at Salam Palace, Bush hailed the security agreement as “a reminder of our friendship and as a way forward to help the Iraqi people realize the blessings of a free society.”

Bush’s praise for the pact is particularly notable given that the U.S. administration spent years dismissing proposals for withdrawal timelines as dangerous admissions of defeat. The agreement came after months of hard bargaining by Iraqi leaders, who insisted on a firm date for the removal of U.S. troops.

Although Bush and his aides characterize the agreement as a sign of improvement, it is still divisive and may not last. A national referendum on the pact is required in the summer; rejection by the Iraqi public could speed the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The country’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has expressed concerns about the agreement. Opponents are railing against it.

Bush previously traveled to Iraq in November 2003, June 2006 and September 2007.

Bush’s farewell visits are part of a carefully orchestrated series of valedictory trips, speeches and interviews aimed at highlighting his administration’s record on a variety of issues, including terrorism and the fight against AIDS. The effort has largely been overshadowed, however, by the ongoing economic crisis and by President-elect Barack Obama’s preparations for his arrival at the White House.  Last week in a speech at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., Bush vigorously defended the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and argued that his administration had “laid a solid foundation” for Obama overseas. Bush also urged Obama to “stay on the offensive” against al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Obama has urged shifting U.S. troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, calling the situation in the latter country an “urgent crisis.” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday in Kandahar, Afghanistan, that thousands of additional troops would head there by next summer.

Bush drew acclaim from leaders in both countries. Talabani, speaking in English, called Bush a “great friend” who had “helped to liberate” Iraq. “Thanks to him and his courageous leadership, we are here,” he said.

Maliki thanked Bush for his support. “Today, Iraq is moving forward in every field,” Maliki said before the shoe incident.

And Karzai said, “I and the Afghan people are very proud and honored to the profoundest depth of our hearts to have President Bush with us here today.”

After the chaotic news conference, Bush went to Camp Victory, where hundreds of U.S. troops greeted him with cheers and whoops. “Thanks to you, the Iraq we’re standing in today is dramatically freer, dramatically safer and dramatically better than the Iraq we found eight years ago,” Bush said, positioned beneath an enormous American flag.

After Bush left Iraq, the al-Baghdadia network released a statement demanding Zaidi’s release from Iraqi custody “to spare his life.” It was unclear Sunday night what charges he might face for throwing the shoes.   “Any step taken against him will be a reminder of the dictatorial time and the violence and lack of freedom that Iraqis faced,” the statement said.

BAGHDAD

The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.

In one passage, for example, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’ ”

Mr. Powell’s assertion that the Pentagon inflated the number of competent Iraqi security forces is backed up by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former commander of ground troops in Iraq, and L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian administrator until an Iraqi government took over in June 2004.

Among the overarching conclusions of the history is that five years after embarking on its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II, the United States government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale.

The bitterest message of all for the reconstruction program may be the way the history ends. The hard figures on basic services and industrial production compiled for the report reveal that for all the money spent and promises made, the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed during the invasion and the convulsive looting that followed.

By mid-2008, the history says, $117 billion had been spent on the reconstruction of Iraq, including some $50 billion in United States taxpayer money.

The history contains a catalog of revelations that show the chaotic and often poisonous atmosphere prevailing in the reconstruction effort.

¶When the Office of Management and Budget balked at the American occupation authority’s abrupt request for about $20 billion in new reconstruction money in August 2003, a veteran Republican lobbyist working for the authority made a bluntly partisan appeal to Joshua B. Bolten, then the O.M.B. director and now the White House chief of staff. “To delay getting our funds would be a political disaster for the President,” wrote the lobbyist, Tom C. Korologos. “His election will hang for a large part on show of progress in Iraq and without the funding this year, progress will grind to a halt.” With administration backing, Congress allocated the money later that year.

¶In an illustration of the hasty and haphazard planning, a civilian official at the United States Agency for International Development was at one point given four hours to determine how many miles of Iraqi roads would need to be reopened and repaired. The official searched through the agency’s reference library, and his estimate went directly into a master plan. Whatever the quality of the agency’s plan, it eventually began running what amounted to a parallel reconstruction effort in the provinces that had little relation with the rest of the American effort.

¶Money for many of the local construction projects still under way is divided up by a spoils system controlled by neighborhood politicians and tribal chiefs. “Our district council chairman has become the Tony Soprano of Rasheed, in terms of controlling resources,” said an American Embassy official working in a dangerous Baghdad neighborhood. “ ‘You will use my contractor or the work will not get done.’ ”

A Cautionary Tale

The United States could soon have reason to consult this cautionary tale of deception, waste and poor planning, as troop levels and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan are likely to be stepped up under the new administration.

The incoming Obama administration’s rebuilding experts are expected to focus on smaller-scale projects and emphasize political and economic reform. Still, such programs do not address one of the history’s main contentions: that the reconstruction effort has failed because no single agency in the United States government has responsibility for the job. 

The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.

In one passage, for example, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’ ”

Mr. Powell’s assertion that the Pentagon inflated the number of competent Iraqi security forces is backed up by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former commander of ground troops in Iraq, and L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian administrator until an Iraqi government took over in June 2004.

Among the overarching conclusions of the history is that five years after embarking on its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II, the United States government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale.

The bitterest message of all for the reconstruction program may be the way the history ends. The hard figures on basic services and industrial production compiled for the report reveal that for all the money spent and promises made, the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed during the invasion and the convulsive looting that followed.

By mid-2008, the history says, $117 billion had been spent on the reconstruction of Iraq, including some $50 billion in United States taxpayer money.

The history contains a catalog of revelations that show the chaotic and often poisonous atmosphere prevailing in the reconstruction effort.

¶When the Office of Management and Budget balked at the American occupation authority’s abrupt request for about $20 billion in new reconstruction money in August 2003, a veteran Republican lobbyist working for the authority made a bluntly partisan appeal to Joshua B. Bolten, then the O.M.B. director and now the White House chief of staff. “To delay getting our funds would be a political disaster for the President,” wrote the lobbyist, Tom C. Korologos. “His election will hang for a large part on show of progress in Iraq and without the funding this year, progress will grind to a halt.” With administration backing, Congress allocated the money later that year.

¶In an illustration of the hasty and haphazard planning, a civilian official at the United States Agency for International Development was at one point given four hours to determine how many miles of Iraqi roads would need to be reopened and repaired. The official searched through the agency’s reference library, and his estimate went directly into a master plan. Whatever the quality of the agency’s plan, it eventually began running what amounted to a parallel reconstruction effort in the provinces that had little relation with the rest of the American effort.

¶Money for many of the local construction projects still under way is divided up by a spoils system controlled by neighborhood politicians and tribal chiefs. “Our district council chairman has become the Tony Soprano of Rasheed, in terms of controlling resources,” said an American Embassy official working in a dangerous Baghdad neighborhood. “ ‘You will use my contractor or the work will not get done.’ ”

A Cautionary Tale

The United States could soon have reason to consult this cautionary tale of deception, waste and poor planning, as troop levels and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan are likely to be stepped up under the new administration.

The incoming Obama administration’s rebuilding experts are expected to focus on smaller-scale projects and emphasize political and economic reform. Still, such programs do not address one of the history’s main contentions: that the reconstruction effort has failed because no single agency in the United States government has responsibility for the job. 

Titled “Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience,” the new history was compiled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, led by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., a Republican lawyer who regularly travels to Iraq and has a staff of engineers and auditors based here. Copies of several drafts of the history were provided to reporters at The New York Times and ProPublica by two people outside the inspector general’s office who have read the draft, but are not authorized to comment publicly.

Mr. Bowen’s deputy, Ginger Cruz, declined to comment for publication on the substance of the history. But she said it would be presented on Feb. 2 at the first hearing of the Commission on Wartime Contracting, which was created this year as a result of legislation sponsored by Senators Jim Webb of Virginia and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, both Democrats.

The manuscript is based on approximately 500 new interviews, as well as more than 600 audits, inspections and investigations on which Mr. Bowen’s office has reported over the years. Laid out for the first time in a connected history, the material forms the basis for broad judgments on the rebuilding program.

In the preface, Mr. Bowen gives a searing critique of what he calls the “blinkered and disjointed prewar planning for Iraq’s reconstruction” and the botched expansion of the program from a modest initiative to improve Iraqi services to a multibillion-dollar enterprise.

Mr. Bowen also swipes at the endless revisions and reversals of the program, which at various times gyrated from a focus on giant construction projects led by large Western contractors to modest community-based initiatives carried out by local Iraqis. While Mr. Bowen concedes that deteriorating security had a hand in spoiling the program’s hopes, he suggests, as he has in the past, that the program did not need much outside help to do itself in.

Despite years of studying the program, Mr. Bowen writes that he still has not found a good answer to the question of why the program was even pursued as soaring violence made it untenable. “Others will have to provide that answer,” Mr. Bowen writes.

“But beyond the security issue stands another compelling and unavoidable answer: the U.S. government was not adequately prepared to carry out the reconstruction mission it took on in mid-2003,” he concludes.

The history cites some projects as successes. The review praises community outreach efforts by the Agency for International Development, the Treasury Department’s plan to stabilize the Iraqi dinar after the invasion and a joint effort by the Departments of State and Defense to create local rebuilding teams.

But the portrait that emerges over all is one of a program’s officials operating by the seat of their pants in the middle of a critical enterprise abroad, where the reconstruction was supposed to convince the Iraqi citizenry of American good will and support the new democracy with lights that turned on and taps that flowed with clean water. Mostly, it is a portrait of a program that seemed to grow exponentially as even those involved from the inception of the effort watched in surprise.

Early Miscalculations

On the eve of the invasion, as it began to dawn on a few officials that the price for rebuilding Iraq would be vastly greater than they had been told, the degree of miscalculation was illustrated in an encounter between Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, and Jay Garner, a retired lieutenant general who had hastily been named the chief of what would be a short-lived civilian authority called the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.

The history records how Mr. Garner presented Mr. Rumsfeld with several rebuilding plans, including one that would include projects across Iraq.

“What do you think that’ll cost?” Mr. Rumsfeld asked of the more expansive plan.

“I think it’s going to cost billions of dollars,” Mr. Garner said.

“My friend,” Mr. Rumsfeld replied, “if you think we’re going to spend a billion dollars of our money over there, you are sadly mistaken.”

In a way he never anticipated, Mr. Rumsfeld turned out to be correct: before that year was out, the United States had appropriated more than $20 billion for the reconstruction, which would indeed involve projects across the entire country.

Mr. Rumsfeld declined to comment on the history, but a spokesman, Keith Urbahn, said that quotes attributed to Mr. Rumsfeld in the document “appear to be accurate.” Mr. Powell also declined to comment.

The secondary effects of the invasion and its aftermath were among the most important factors that radically changed the outlook. Tables in the history show that measures of things like the national production of electricity and oil, public access to potable water, mobile and landline telephone service and the presence of Iraqi security forces all plummeted by at least 70 percent, and in some cases all the way to zero, in the weeks after the invasion.

Subsequent tables in the history give a fast-forward view of what happened as the avalanche of money tumbled into Iraq over the next five years.

Dashed Expectations

By the time a sovereign Iraqi government took over from the Americans in June 2004, none of those services — with a single exception, mobile phones — had returned to prewar levels.

And by the time of the security improvements in 2007 and 2008, electricity output had, at best, a precarious 10 percent lead on its levels under Saddam Hussein; oil production was still below prewar levels; and access to potable water had increased by about 30 percent, although with Iraq’s ruined piping system it was unclear how much reached people’s homes uncontaminated.

Whether the rebuilding effort could have succeeded in a less violent setting will never be known. In April 2004, thousands of the Iraqi security forces that had been oversold by the Pentagon were overrun, abruptly mutinied or simply abandoned their posts as the insurgency broke out, sending Iraq down a violent path from which it has never completely recovered.

At the end of his narrative, Mr. Bowen chooses a line from “Great Expectations” by Dickens as the epitaph of the American-led attempt to rebuild Iraq: “We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us.”