WASHINGTON — The recently departed director of the American office created to assist Iraq’s parliament in passing benchmark legislation to reconcile the country’s sectarian factions says the State Department is simply not up to the task of standing up a free Iraqi government.

In a February 5 memo to Ambassador Crocker in Baghdad, Manuel Miranda wrote that what he called a “Pax Americana,” or the security and political conditions needed for liberal, transparent Iraqi politics to take root, would be impossible with the State Department in charge.

“That civilian progress, and the Pax Americana, will not be achieved with the Foreign Service and the State Department’s bureaucracy at the helm of America’s number one policy consideration. You are simply not up to the task, and many of you will readily and honestly admit that.”

The unclassified memo, sent also to dozens of other government officials, may be the least diplomatic document in the recent history of the State Department. Mr. Miranda accuses the State Department of lacking leadership, warning that the American people would be “scandalized” to learn that during the debate over the surge, the embassy in Baghdad was more concerned about bureaucratic reorganization. At one point, he suggests that matters would not improve if more foreign service officers were sent to the undermanned embassy, urging Ambassador Crocker instead to seek out experts in the private sector.

The deputy spokesman for the State Department, Tom Casey, joked yesterday when asked about the memo at the daily press briefing. “Yeah, I guess he needs to tell us how he really feels,” he said.

He added: “Obviously, he’s expressing his own views and he’s entitled to his opinions. What I can tell you is that you’ve heard from the president, Secretary Rice, and many others about the job that Ryan Crocker is doing as the U.S. Ambassador to Baghdad. We think he and his team are doing a tremendous job under what obviously is very difficult circumstances.”

Mr. Miranda served as a senior legal counsel to a former Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, a Republican of Tennessee. He led the fight among conservative Republicans in the Senate against the president’s nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. He earned the enmity of Senate Democrats who accused him of pilfering, then leaking a Democratic strategy memo on judicial nominations to the press. This week Mr. Miranda endorsed Senator McCain for the Republican nomination.

Conservatives and Bush appointees have been at odds with the State Department bureaucracy since before the Iraq war even began. Back then, the State Department’s office for transition in Iraq, headed by Tom Warrick, clashed with the undersecretary of defense, Douglas Feith, over the contours of the Iraqi opposition and whether the body should be led by the Iraqi politician, Ahmad Chalabi.

In 2004, the State Department won a battle inside the administration for control over the money to rebuild Iraq, though the Pentagon still oversees the training of Iraq’s security services and military. Many retired foreign service officers have complained in the press of meddling by Bush administration appointees in the first phases of the Iraqi reconstruction.

In late 2006, Mr. Miranda was named the director of the Office of Legislative Statecraft and arrived in Baghdad in January of last year. The office was intended to assist Iraq’s novice legislature in the task of writing critical legislation such as a hydrocarbon law and revised debaathification procedures, deemed benchmarks for success by the Democratic Congress and the White House.

Mr. Miranda says that the Iraqi parliament’s failure to meet America’s legislative goals reflects on the State Department’s own failure to support legislative reform. He writes that since the coalition provisional authority was shuttered in June 2004, “there has been no concerted effort in the Embassy to support legislative reform in any manner, let alone a qualified and concerted manner.”

Instead, the embassy in Baghdad focuses on specific legislation in a manner that is often “negligible or ham-fisted.” He singles out the debate over a draft oil law. “Any experienced international lawyer could have judged in 15 seconds or less that the draft that your predecessor checked off as if done, was one in which Iraqis were not invested. This has repeated itself again and again.”

Mr. Miranda is also critical of the decision to “dismantle and cannibalize the Iraqi Reconstruction Management Office,” which was charged with doling out assistance and reconstruction aid to Iraq’s government. With the implementation of the surge strategy last year, the State Department adopted provincial reconstruction teams to oversee the task, relying in large part on military reserve officers to meet staffing demands. Mr. Miranda says the decision to get rid of the office was almost “criminal” in light of the surge and what he described as the failure of foreign service officers to pool critical information on past failures and successes.

Mr. Miranda also complains that “important information is kept from vital decision makers.” Without getting into specifics, he says he has seen the embassy keep information from the White House, the State Department, and the commanding general.