Secretary Colin Powell, the State Department and the CIA - not Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - are responsible for the chaos that has grown out of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, says Richard Perle, the former chairman of Pentagon's Defense Policy Review Board.

Perle said the U.S. made a most serious mistake after Iraq was liberated and the "keys" were not handed over immediately to Iraqis to run their own country, while appearing on Fox News' "O'Reilly Factor" November 29th.

Subsequently, the U.S. military became an occupying force, growing increasibly unpopular.

"We didn't hand the keys over to the Iraqis. Instead we embarked on what became an extended occupation. That was fundamentally mistaken, it was politically driven," Perle said.

Perle's remarks places significant distance between postwar policies and neo-conservatives like himself who have backed the war and have been championed in the Bush administration by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, and Vice President Cheney.

Perle told O'Reilly the idea of a military occupation was not the Pentagon's original plan. "It was not Don Rumsfeld's decision," he said.

Asked by O'Reilly if handing the keys over to the Iraqis after deposing Saddam would have sparked a civil war between the Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites, Perle said he didn't think so. He noted that there were already groups of anti-Saddam Iraqis in place when the dictator fell.