Counselor to the State Department Philip Zelikow presented Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with a Memorandum to the Secretary of State on February 10, 2005. ” ‘At this point Iraq remains a failed state shadowed by constant violence and undergoing revolutionary political change,’ Rice read. This was a shocking notion–‘a failed state,’ after two years, thousands of lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars. …The insurgency was ‘being contained militarily,’ but it was ‘quite active,’ leaving Iraqi civilians feeling ‘very insecure,’ Zelikow said.”
– Bob Woodward, State of Denial, Page 388