It never was about the mushroom cloud,

The weapons of mass distraction, the mocking by Saddam's mustache, the smearing of democracy, the Eternal War on a Noun... it was to slot in Chalabi as a Bush pal in Iraq (so they could then bomb Iran?)

BooMan of The Booman Tribune discusses the recent review of General Sanchez' book where he talks about how Rumsfeld tries to scrape off the Iraqi hot potato on him:

Sanchez goes on the explain that his interpretation of this meeting was that he was being bribed with job offers in an attempt to get him to agree that Rumsfeld had no knowledge that he was being left in charge of the occupation of Iraq. But, again, while that is interesting, the important point is that it appears that there was no plan to stick around in Iraq. The plan was to get the hell out.

The only thing I can think of that explains this is that the lunatics around Cheney and Rumsfeld seriously believed that they could just install Ahmed Chalabi as a new strongman and that he would be able to maintain order. But once they arrived in Iraq they quickly realized that that would be impossible and that Ayatollah Sistani (who they had probably never heard of before) was the most important man in Iraq. They couldn't do anything without his approval, and that is when things began to unravel in a hurry.

This theory can explain a lot of things, like why General Franks did so little Phase IV (occupation) planning and why the State Department's plan was tossed aside, and (potentially) why the decisions were made to disband the military and engage in de-Ba'athification.

But, in any case, it doesn't look like the plan was initially to have a long-term occupation of Iraq.

If this is true, the neocons in the Bush administration are not only evil but incompetently evil. And we get to pay for their destructive influence for decades to come. Heckovajob, Bushies!