The United States was the de facto leader of statebuilding in Iraq from the beginning. While the Iraq reconstruction effort quickly took on international dimensions – both coalition partners and the United Nations became involved early – leadership clearly lay with the Americans. In fact, Americans jealously guarded this privilege, perceiving it as one that had been earned through political decisiveness, military commitment, and presumed civilian prowess. The net results of this leadership can be summarized in a few words: late, poorly conceived and planned, uncoordinated, badly managed, and largely ineffective. This chapter examines the US-led effort in Iraq, from roughly 2002 until 2010. As James Dobbins’ chapter suggests, there were many errors in both the planning and implementation in Iraq, despite the existence of good ideas, many experts, and previous experience. In time, as this chapter explains, the United States did learn from its mistakes, coming to realize that its initial infrastructure-focused efforts were misguided. Washington planned initially to spend little on Iraq. In the end it spent a lot, but to little effect, until relatively recently. This is not to say that some programs and projects were not well conceived and well run, and a few in fact were remarkably successful. But the whole was far less than the sum of its parts, largely because of failures in security, leadership, integration, management, appropriateness to the local context, and international engagement. This also applies to non-US assistance, which never gained real traction. This chapter begins with a discussion of events before the war started, specifically with evidence of the several plans that were being discussed for how the United States should manage Iraq after the violence ended. This research is based on secondary sources, interviews in the United States, but it also includes observations and interviews that I conducted during my numerous visits to Iraq between 2004 and 2010. I argue that, indeed, many mistakes were made in US-led statebuilding in Iraq. Yet, despite poor planning and leadership from the beginning, by 2006 the United States had shifted its orientation, with some success in capacity building as the Iraqis took over direction of their state. With security improving by 2008, the Iraqis and Americans have managed by fits and starts to install institutions that are now governing the country about as well as it has ever been governed.1 This chapter examines this progression of statebuilding efforts in Iraq.