One of the guidelines learned decades ago in army intelligence officers' school was "evaluate the source as much as the information."

In approaching the pile of articles and books about Iraq that is piling up in places like The Atlantic Monthly and Borders bookstores -- trying to piece together a semblance of accurate history and truthful, realistic intelligence -- one must conclude that Peter W. Galbraith has a credibility that far surpasses that of just about anyone else. At least I have encountered none whose judgment on the matter I would trust more.

As the enigmatic New York Times columnist David Brooks puts it: "President Bush doesn't lack for critics when it comes to his Iraq policies, but the smartest and most devastating of these is Peter W. Galbraith."

Let's get two things out of the way right up front: Yes, he is the son of John Kenneth Galbraith. But the younger Galbraith makes his own way; he makes no mention of his family tree until a fine-print acknowledgement tucked-in near the index, when he writes movingly: "Here I will only say he that inspired me, by example and in his words, to pursue a career devoted to mitigating the consequences of war and, now, to write about it."

Second, when one grasps the details of how Galbraith gathered his knowledge during 25 years of service as a staff officer to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and ambassador to Croatia, when one sees where has been and when, with whom he has spoken to and under what circumstances, and his own private forays across Iraqi rivers on the edge of combat (because he cared enough), the conclusion can only be: This guy has been here. This guy knows the score. The miracle is that he survived to give us this book.

If you have read anything about T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), or even seen the movie, think "Galbraith of Iraq," moving behind the scenes, sometimes officially, often privately, coaching Iraqis and especially Kurds on how to deal with American illogic. But Galbraith needs no Lowell Thomas to spin tales of intrigue from the desert. He is his own man, writing from his own journals, and although less flamboyant and (apparently) less addicted to combat than Lawrence, his intimate knowledge and credibility among key Iraqis may do us a lot more good.

At bottom, the point of the book is that Iraq is a fabrication of Winston Churchill and friends as they closed the coffin on the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. As such, it forced Shiites, Sunni Arabs, and Kurds into an ethnic and religious salad bowl that was doomed from the start. It never was a real nation, contends Galbraith, and thus it is pointless to force it to be so now. Furthermore, he points out, the new Iraqi constitution, crammed down their throats by Paul Bremer and Condoleeza Rice, actually pretty much locks in an independent Kurdistan, anyway, even as the Bush administration continues to bluster futilely about a democratic nation called Iraq. We are wasting our time, Galbraith says, more or less.

The book can conveniently be divided into four sections: a laying-out of the first Bush administration's duplicity in dealing with the Kurds (it went far beyond anything we might have guessed), a mind-blowing (and painfully specific) expose' of the second Bush administration's chutzpah and stupidity in non-planning and then occupying Iraq, then a review of reality as he sees it, followed by a prescription.

Some highlights:

[regarding the looting Baghdad] "On April 11-two days after Saddam's regime collapsed and The United States became legally responsible for Baghdad-looters attacked the museum. The museum housed artifacts going back to the beginning of human civilization ... As the looters attacked, the museum staff begged for help from the Marines at a nearby traffic circle. Although they were just 100 yards away, they refused to help ... I arrived at the museum on the morning of April 15, the day after the Marines were fully deployed to protect the building ... over the three weeks I was in Iraq [one of scores of times], I went unchallenged into many Iraqi buildings and facilities. ... Looters were at work in every building I visited, but not once did I have any sense of danger ...I rescued several treaties ...Many of the sites had obvious intelligence value ...yet neither the Pentagon nor the CIA seems to have made any effort to mine these sites for intelligence ...As part of its case for war, the Bush administration alleged that Iraq was covertly acquiring materials for weapons of mass destruction, like yellowcake from Niger, while Vice President Cheney insisted Saddam's embassies were in contact with al-Qaeda. The Foreign Ministry would have been a logical place to find documents relating to Iraq's foreign intelligence activities and procurement of forbidden materials. But looters were the only people I saw prying open foreign ministry safes."

"On my return to Washington in May, I spent an hour at the Pentagon briefing Paul Wolfowitz on what I had seen in Iraq. My account of looting of government ministries and sites with dangerous materials visibly upset Wolfowitz. I hoped his anger was directed at the planning failures I was describing, but I realized he was angry with me for being critical. After that meeting, neither Wolfowitz nor his staff returned my phone calls and I had no further contact with the Pentagon." "For a full year before the war, the State Department had spent millions of dollars working with Iraqi exiles and experts to prepare a 15-volume blueprint for how Iraq might be governed after the war. The Administration was so disorganized and so faction-ridden that the Defense Department (for which Bremer would work and which handled his briefings) did not tell him that this State Department study existed. He would learn of it in the press sometime after arriving in Baghdad." "Bremer's grand entry represented a 180-degree turn in strategy from Garner's." "Bremer was Kissinger's protŽgŽ."

"Two months before he ordered troops into [Iraq, Bush] didn't know that Islam was divided between Shiites and Sunnis."

Six young people who had not applied for jobs in post-war Iraq, and who had no relevant job experience, were hired without interview and without security clearance and ended up being responsible for spending Iraq's budget. "Finally the young people realized that the one thing they had in common was they had posted their resumes at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank. The Pentagon hired eleven people off the Heritage Foundation Web site, including those six who handled Iraq's budget."

"Without there being an Iraqi nation, it was impossible to create a genuine national army."

In recommending that Iraq be allowed to dissolve into a Shiastan (for the Shiites), a Sunni Arab zone, and a Kurdistan, Galbraith recognizes that critics will say such a solution will yield its own problems. But after weighing the possible repercussions, this experienced appraiser of Iraq thinks it is the best of only bad options.

"There is no good solution to the mess in Iraq," Galbraith writes. "The country has broken up and is in the throes of civil war. The Unites States cannot put the country back together again and it cannot stop the civil war."

To the nay-sayers who say Turkey would never stand by and let an independent Kurdistan arise, Galbraith has reasoned reply: "Turkish attitudes toward Iraqi Kurdistan have evolved significantly since 2003 ... a Turkish military intervention in northern Iraq would derail its chances of joining the European Union." (Moreover, he reminds us that a little-remembered add-on treaty of Sevres at the end of World War I -- which the Turks lost -- guarantees the Kurdish peoples of Turkey independence from Turkey if they should but ask for it. He doesn't make any claim that it could actually happen in today's modern context, though.)

And as for a Shiastan becoming a mere satellite of Iran, Galbraith says the Shiites of that region already are more loyal to Iran than to Iraq. It is their theology that binds them, not boundaries on a map.

Maybe Paul Wolfowitz didn't want to listen to Galbraith. But at least we can.