Who is to blame for the steady disintegration of stability in Iraq? Democrats have long faulted the Bush administration for mistakes and mismanagement. The Iraq issue has become a liability for the president, as Democrats try to capitalize on recent developments on the eve of the Novermber election.

Insider journalist Bob Woodward’s new book “State of Denial,” published Monday, has set off a firestorm of criticism about the Bush administration’s initial unwillingness to face the realities of the Iraq war. It also has prompted prominent professors to question the positive spin put on the quickly-building stream of bad news that emerged from the country as the insurgency flared up.

“I don’t want anyone in the cabinet to say it is an insurgency. I don’t think we are there yet,” Woodward quotes Bush as saying in late 2003.

The book provides ammunition in the war over how Iraq should be handled.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the title of the book is right on the mark,” said Prof. Larry Diamond, a Hoover Fellow, who served as an advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2004. “We’ve never had enough troops and we’ve never dealt adequately with the insurgency...the administration has rejected most advice it’s been given.”

Political Science Prof. James Fearon also thinks that the president has a great deal to answer for.

“I think the absence of serious and intelligent pre-war planning for the post-war is directly traceable to a failure of leadership and initiative by the President, and this lack of planning is partly responsible for the generally terrible state of post-war Iraq,” he told The Daily.

“The worst ‘decision,’ in my view, was the failure to take account of the fact that by decapitating Hussein’s regime, the U.S. invasion would be introducing anarchy, so that without a very large initial force presence and a clear and well worked out policy for setting up a new and legitimate Iraqi government, the chances of stability would be extremely low (instead of just low).”

The issue of whether Iraq is actually in deep trouble is no longer on the table, and voices of those like Donald Rumsfeld who contested negative media portrayals of the on -the-ground situation have died down.

Now, aside from asking who is to blame, the questions of “How bad is it?” and “What exactly should be done?” are crucial issues of discussion that may be lost in election year recriminations. Few offer positive outlooks.

Prof. David Abernethy, who published a book, “Global Dominance,” on the legacies of colonialism, sees the current struggles as a reflection of historical divisions in Iraq.

“It is not the failure of electoral democracy that poses a problem for Iraq today but rather its success. The current Government of National Unity reflects quite well a fractured society, and leaders are unable to curb sectarian violence because the main perpetrators of this violence are militias closely linked to political parties whose participation in government is deemed essential.”

“The government is sufficiently reflective of society that it cannot effectively govern society, and so dependent on militia-based political factions that it cannot disband the militias or coerce them to integrate into a disciplined national army and police force.”

While questions about what the U.S. could have done to better manage these divisions are interesting, they are proving less and less relevant. In Diamond’s view, there’s little hope for what has been called the “Bush Freedom Doctrine.”

“I don’t think there’s any question now of democracy in Iraq,” said Diamond, the author of the 2005-book “Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq.”

“The question is if Iraq can be stabilized,” he said.

Fearon was one of several expert witnesses called to testify before Congress in a hearing on “Iraq’s Progress Toward Democracy” in the House Subcommittee on National Security on Sept. 15. He told Congress that, by almost any definition, Iraq is now in a civil war, and while immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops would be harmful, “simply staying the course” or even deploying more troops is not a productive option.

Iraqis are likely to continue suffering the violent consequences of a war they didn’t start and the aftermath of mistakes made by others. In the end, the solution may be their responsibility and out of U.S. control, Fearon said.

“We need to plan for the possibility that a democratic Iraq that can stand on its own is not going to take root while we’re there,” he testified. “This means planning to put ourselves in the best position to influence for the good the evolution of a civil conflict that only Iraqis have the power to end at this point.”