How they made ‘the perfect storm’

“It has been the perfect storm.” This was just one of many fine quotes in this extremely long retrospective of the past 12 days’ events in today’s WaPo, bylined to Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Anthony–yay! he got the Pulitzer he deserved!–Shadid.
The WaPo had extraordinarily comprehensive news coverage from Iraq and Washington today. (Sorry I didn’t post anything here earlier, but I needed a break.)
The Chandra/Shadid piece was the best of the fine bunch, imho. It was actually one of those big compilation articles, bylined to those two heroes but with additional reporting coming from other good reports elsewhere in Iraq, and in DC.
I was reading it very carefully to try to get a handle on how exactly all those disastrous decision got made eight or nine days ago: primarily, the decision to launch a big, bed retal raid against Fallujah at the same time they were upping the ante against Moqtada al-Sadr.
On such issues, I wanted to figure out, does Bremer report to Sanchez, or Sanchez to Bremer? Or, do they both report separately to Abizaid? Or, do they both report directly to Wolfie’s office and leave Abizaid to handle the (not inconsiderable) task of managing the military logistics?
Who was it exactly, who cooked up ‘the perfect storm’? (Btw, that quote was attributed in the article to an unnamed “official with the occupation authority.”)

Far as I can figure, it was Bremer who had made the decision to launch the original escalation against Sadr– by closing his paper March 28. Chandra & Shadid write:

When Bremer ordered the shutdown of al-Hawza, there was no intention to use force to apprehend Sadr or leaders of his militia, according to occupation authority officials familiar with the decision…
The newspaper closure was intended “to send another signal to Sadr, just like telling him about the arrest warrant,” the official said. “In hindsight, it was a huge mistake…”
… Officials in Washington familiar with the deliberations of both the National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs of Staff said they knew of no high-level meetings before the closure of Sadr’s paper in which either group reviewed military plans girding for a possible violent backlash.

But oh, is everyone running to cover his or own rear end regarding this decision! The article goes on to say of those same DC-based officials that they:

said that the decision to move against Sadr was fully supported by senior Bush administration officials. And while top officials may not have been familiar with military details, one senior administration official said that Washington had repeatedly advised Bremer and U.S. commanders in Iraq to ensure they were prepared for trouble if they went after Sadr.
“Every time we talked with Baghdad about taking any action against Sadr, we always talked about the need to have proper preparations in place to deal with a violent reaction,” the official said.

And here’s a little more world-class CYA-ing– this time attributed to “an [unnamed] senior military officer in the Pentagon”:

the overall commander for the Middle East at the U.S. Central Command, Gen. John P. Abizaid, was hesitant to move on Sadr out of concern that arresting or killing him would simply elevate his stature, the officer said.

Anyway, the decision to close Sadr’s newspaper may have been intended merely to “send a message”, but as the piece notes further on:

Within hours, the clerics ordered a full mobilization. Protesters flooded the traffic circle in front of the newspaper’s offices for a noisy rally, an action they would repeat over the next two days.
Three days after the newspaper was closed, on March 31, the demonstrations escalated…
That same day, in an unrelated incident, four American civilians working for a private security firm were ambushed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades as they drove through Fallujah. Residents mutilated the bodies of at least two of the men, dragged them through the streets, hung them from a bridge and burned them while a crowd cheered.
As soon as word of the incident reached Baghdad, “it was clear we would have to deliver a serious response,” a senior U.S. official said. “We were going to have to do something significant to clean up the town.”
With Fallujah having become the most immediate crisis, officials with the occupation authority assumed moves against Sadr would be put on hold.
“We didn’t want to fight two fires at once,” the senior official said…
Instead of de-escalating, the Americans kept increasing the pressure on Sadr. On Saturday, April 3, U.S. forces arrested Yaqoubi, Sadr’s top deputy, on charges of involvement in the killing of Khoei, the Shiite cleric.

Okay, I’ve tried to decode all of this, but I still don’t totally get it. Officials “with the occupation authority” assumed that moves against Sadr would be put on hold– but then three days later U.S. forces go ahead and arrest Sadr’s deputy??
Who made thatdecision?
And then, two days after that, they launch the big retal raid against Fallujah??
Who made thatdecision?
Chandra & Shadid note about the operation against Fallujah that:

American military commanders had intended to mount an intense but narrowly targeted operation in response to the contractors’ deaths…
But as with the campaign against Sadr, the military plan to quell Fallujah appears to have been based on faulty assumptions.

I mean, who the hell is in charge there? Is anyone? Is this an enactment of Henry Kissinger’s theory of ‘the madman view of strategy’? (I.e. that if you act crazy enough and have nuclear weapons you can terrify everyone else into abject submission.)
As so often with this truly scary bunch of folks in the administration, I’m asking what the hell is going on? But this time, the stakes are bigger than ever.