This week, he told the LA Times that the invasion of Iraq opened a Pandora's box of sec-tarian conflict with the potential to erupt into full-scale civil war.
Khalilzad's experiences in Baghdad have led him to voice some doubts over the timing of the invasion, and he is said to believe that the postwar period was handled abominably, but his conviction that Saddam had to be removed appears unshaken.
His faith in US military power as a vehicle for democratic change was passed on by Albert Wohlstetter, a foreign policy guru at the University of Chicago, where Khalilzad arrived in 1975 from Beirut to work on a doctorate. Professor Wohlstetter's proteges read like a who's who of the neoconservative movement, including Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle.
As a leading graduate of the neoconservative school, Khalilzad is now in a unique position. Most of the others who pushed for invasion have moved on.
Wolfowitz is running the World Bank. Perle is a private sector consultant. Meanwhile, Khalilzad has stayed on to face all the messy consequences.
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