One of the top architects of the Iraq war Monday night said postwar planning was hobbled by the fact that the U.S. intelligence community failed to predict that an insurgency would materialize after the invasion.

"There was not a plan for the precise type of insurgency … that we wound up seeing. And the intelligence community didn't see it," said Douglas Feith, who was undersecretary of defense for policy from 2001 to 2005.

"Centcom is relying to a large extent on the intelligence community to tell it what are the main things to worry about," Mr. Feith said at the American Enterprise Institute to promote his forthcoming book. "If the intelligence community misses that, then the planners don't plan for it."

Mr. Feith, who is now teaching at Georgetown University, also said the U.S. government poured fuel on the Iraqi insurgency by allowing its interim governing body, the Coalition Provisional Authority, to remain in place for 14 months.

"It was very unfortunate that we kept the CPA around as long as we did and ran an occupation," Mr. Feith said.

He said that his office had come up with plans to quickly establish an Iraqi-run government, similar to the way that the U.S. operated in Afghanistan after toppling the Taliban, but that CPA administrator Paul Bremer sidetracked this strategy.

"U.S. officials began to implement it, but then the CPA effectively set the plan aside over the summer of 2003. The results were highly damaging," Mr. Feith said. "The United States forfeited the status of liberator of the country and functioned instead as occupier. This fueled the insurgency."

— Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times