[citation needed] Along with Brookings scholar Philip Gordon, O'Hanlon wrote in The Washington Post in late 2001 that any invasion of Iraq would be difficult and demanding and require large numbers of troops.

[12] On July 9, 2007, O'Hanlon said during a panel discussion in Washington, D.C. that a "soft partition" of Iraq is already occurring that might break the country up into three autonomous regions – Kurdistan, "Shi'astan" and "Sunnistan".

[citation needed] Months after the Surge which increased American troop levels and overhauled the war's strategy, in a July 30, 2007, op-ed piece in The New York Times, O'Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack, just back from an 8-day DOD-scheduled itinerary in Iraq reported that: [A]s two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily 'victory' but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

[15] According to attorney and columnist Glenn Greenwald, O'Hanlon and Pollack "were not only among the biggest cheerleaders for the war, but repeatedly praised the Pentagon's strategy in Iraq and continuously assured Americans things were going well".

[17] In response to the charge that he based his judgment on "dog-and-pony shows" in Baghdad, he claimed that his assessment was also informed by years of study of the situation through a large number of knowledgeable sources, including many that were reflected in the Iraq Index (and contributed to its sober message for much of the war).

[citation needed] Writing in the National Interest in May 2008, O'Hanlon gave himself 7 marks out of 10 for his predictions about Iraq, although he acknowledged that among his incorrect positions was his initial support for the war – given the Bush administration's poor preparations for the post-Saddam period.