AUSTIN BAY, just back from Iraq, has a new column up:

According to the Times, the report from the National Intelligence Council “outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war.”

Wake up the Beltway bureaucrats: The Iraqi civil war started in summer 2003, when a group hard-core Baath (and Sunni-dominated) holdouts decided their route to personal survival — and possible track back to power in Baghdad — was relentlessly savage violence.

Savage violence is the daily routine of the criminal gangs who run dictatorships large and small, so virtually everyone expected some degree of post-Saddam thug resistance. However, no one knew the Baath hardcore had so much money. [Money? Where could that have come from? — Ed.]

The biggest mistake the Iraq coalition made, however, was underestimating the power of criminal arrogance. That’s a mistake we Americans make repeatedly — whether the thug is Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Saddam, Osama bin Laden or one of our own mob chieftains like John Gotti. . . .

When does arrogance turn to desperation?

I don’t know — perhaps Mohammad Bogy could give us an opinion. I do know the Baath thugs are attempting to manipulate the U.S. political cycle. If they continue to murder, they believe America will wilt and leave the new Iraqi government in the lurch.

Read the whole thing.