Analysis: Bush gambles on a quick exit plan for Iraq

But the price of a speedy transfer of power, Bush's own top aides worry, may be a rapid loss of control -- control over the drafting of a constitution, and over the effort to make democracy flower in a land where it had never been cultivated. Now that Bush himself has redefined America's mission in Iraq -- from disarming Saddam Hussein to creating "a free and democratic society" that will be a model for the rest of the Middle East -- any plan that grants Iraq its sovereignty before it adopts full-fledged democracy risks derailing that grander mission.

"It's a gamble, a huge gamble," one of the most senior architects of Bush's campaign to oust Saddam conceded last week, after two days of meetings with L. Paul Bremer, the head of the U.S.-led occupation authority. "But it's easy to overestimate the degree of control we have over events now," the official said, "and to underestimate how much we will retain."

If the plan succeeds, Bush could declare an end to the formal U.S. occupation of Iraq by early summer, just as the presidential campaign heads into its final and decisive stretch.

But American officials expect that tens of thousands of allied troops will remain at the new government's "invitation," and nobody can predict whether they will still face a violent and deadly insurgency, possibly targeting Iraqi security forces as well. That would make it harder for Bush to describe the transfer of power to a new government, and the drawing down of U.S. troops, as an unqualified success.

Aside from its continuing military presence, the United States will continue to flex its financial muscle as it doles out $20 billion in rebuilding aid and oversees billions more in private investments in the country.

But the combination of an intensifying insurgency and rapidly eroding Iraqi support for the U.S. occupation left Bush few options but to loosen his grip over the nation that he had conquered and is now trying to rebuild.

So in the past week, an administration that is loath to admit any doubts about the wisdom of its judgments basically rewrote its strategy.

Administration officials have dismissed critics who suggest that the process might be driven by Bush's electoral needs, taking pains to portray the new approach as Iraqi-born, initiated by Iraqi leaders out of what Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, called a "clamor" for a faster turnover of power.

Yet until sometime in the past few weeks, Bremer argued internally that the Iraqis were not ready to assume full authority, and that turning it over before the basic outlines of Iraqi democracy were established would invite chaos, or worse.

During his abruptly scheduled meetings at the White House on Tuesday and Wednesday, Bremer delivered the news that the fractious Iraqi Governing Council was approaching rebellion over the plan to draft a constitution first and to transfer power only after national elections. It was an approach that was straightforward, logical, deeply rooted in the history of the occupations of Japan and Germany, and untenable on the streets of Baghdad.

"The initial idea was essentially a softer version of the MacArthur approach," said one senior official, referring to how Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who led the seven-year occupation of Japan, drafted the defeated nation's constitution with a pliant, U.S.-installed government.

Bush's original plan was slightly less imperial than MacArthur's approach, calling for the Iraqis themselves to write the constitution. But all the hard questions -- whether Iraq will be a secular state or an Islamic one, and how to protect the rights of minorities like the Kurds -- would have been vetted closely by the Americans.

The new strategy creates a government before the constitution. It turns power over to Iraqi leaders before there are national elections, and perhaps before it is clear that an interim government formed from town meetings or provincial elections has established legitimacy.

The rights of minority groups would not yet be established. The question of federalism -- the degree to which Baghdad's dictates would apply in the provinces of a stitched-together nation -- would be unsettled. The relationship between Islamic law and national law would still be undefined. The country would be operating under a basic legal framework -- one expected to set out principles of human rights and equality for all religious sects -- that would have to suffice until a constitution is written.

Administration officials have taken in recent days to drawing comparisons with the Articles of Confederation, which held a young America together in the 1780s before the drafting of the Constitution.

Bush's aides insist that even after sovereignty passes to the provisional government, American influence will be strong. The U.S. military will have the heavy firepower. The $20 billion for reconstruction that Congress has approved will still be under U.S. control, its flow directed to influencing events according to Washington's wishes. The administration will emphasize that U.S. investors will demand independent courts, a secular government and political stability before risking billions reconstructing the Iraqi economy.

"We'll have more levers than you think, and maybe more than the Iraqis think," one senior White House official said last week.

But if there are lessons in the occupation so far, they boil down to this: It takes less planning to topple a dictator than to build a democracy. The invasion of Iraq was largely in the command of the invaders. The building of a democratic government, by definition, is in the hands of the new electorate and subject to the disruptions of the Baathists and foreign groups whose campaign of terror has seemed to gain strength each month.

Bush has insisted that it is "inconceivable" that U.S. forces will leave until a stable democracy is established. The question, which no one in the White House will yet answer, is how he will know when that moment has come.