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Who Disbanded the Iraqi Army?
September 8, 2007 1:58 AM

Do not miss the documentary, "No End in Sight." It's a powerful indictment of the Bush administration's handling of the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Iraq where two major blunders were made. CPA orders #1 and #2 were issued days after Paul Bremer arrived in Baghdad on March 14, 2003. Order #1 barred members of the Baath Party from all but the lowliest government posts and order #2 disbanded the Iraqi army. The subsequent looting of the city (except for the oil ministry) prevented the implementation of a fully-functioning government, and from that flowed all the subsequent disasters.

To this day, we still do not know who ordered the firing of 250,000 Iraqi servicemen (CPA order #2), thereby creating an instant sea of unemployed, angry, well-armed, men. Fred Kaplan at Slate has an idea, though. It starts out:

In Robert Draper's new book, "Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush," Bush blamed L. Paul Bremer, who was head of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority during the occupation's first year, for the decision.

"The policy had been to keep the [Iraqi] army intact; didn't happen," Bush told Draper. Asked how he had reacted to Bremer's reversal, Bush replied, "Yeah, I can't remember. I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy, what happened?'"

Bush doesn't know what happened? Please...Kaplan's on the trail, though:

In his memoir, published last year, Bremer wrote that he was handed the orders—and told to announce them as soon as possible - by Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy. "We've got to show all the Iraqis that we're serious about building a new Iraq," Feith reportedly told him. "And that means that Saddam's instruments of repression have no role in that new nation."

Feith was a messenger, too, reporting directly to Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, and ultimately to Secretary Rumsfeld.

Did Rumsfeld write the order? Bob Woodward, in State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III, quotes Rumsfeld as saying that the order came from elsewhere. Does that mean it came from the White House? My guess is it came from Vice President Dick Cheney, if only because his is one of the most leakproof offices in Washington. Had the order originated someplace else, that fact would have leaked by now. It's like the dog that didn't bark in the Sherlock Holmes story; unbarking dogs in this administration, especially at this late date of decrepitude, tend to be the hounds in Cheney's kennel.

And yet, the U.S. government is set up to make momentous decisions like these with the utmost care. For instance:


On March 10, 2003, a week before the invasion, the National Security Council held a principals' meeting, attended by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet, the Joints Chiefs of Staff, and the top aides to all these officials. They decided that after the war, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission would be set up - similar to such panels in post-apartheid South Africa and post-Communist Eastern Europe - to ferret out the undesirable Baathists from those who could reliably work for a post-Saddam regime. Most Baathists were ordinary, even apolitical, people whose jobs required them to join the party. A rough calculation by NSC staffers and intelligence analysts was that only about 5 percent of the party -- the leaders -- would have to be removed, and even they would have the right to appeal.

On March 12, at another principals' meeting, on what to do about the Iraqi military, these same top U.S. officials decided to disband the Republican Guard -- Saddam's elite corps and bodyguards -- but to call the regular army's soldiers back to duty and to reconstitute their units after a proper vetting of their loyalties.

Both of these decisions were unanimous. NSC staff members had briefed officials on these plans before the meetings, up and down the chain of command, and they encountered no substantive dissent.

Which led to Colin Powell trying to find out what happened:

Most of these officials learned about Bremer's orders the way that most citizens did -- by reading about them in the newspaper. Colin Powell, then secretary of state, called Gen. Peter Pace, then vice chairman of the JCS, and asked if he had known about the order. Pace replied that he hadn't and that none of the chiefs had been consulted.

It truly blows the mind that, in fact, such a momentous decision could have been overturned by one man - the Vice President of the United States. And this is the most important part of this story:


Perhaps the most galling part of this sad saga is that nobody was held accountable for this extraordinary act of insubordination.

Many stories have since been told about the dysfunctional nature of the Bush administration -- the many instances when a decision would be made, in some cases by the president himself, only to be reversed or simply ignored by (most often) Rumsfeld and/or Cheney. But this story had, very possibly, the most destructive consequences.

Did Bush realize the magnitude of the act? Did he so much as read the letter that Bremer later sent to the Times? Did he order an investigation into how this order could have been promulgated? Finally, did he care?

Bush's casual reply to Robert Draper's question about Bremer's orders -- "Yeah, I can't remember" -- suggests that the answer to all these questions is, pathetically, tragically, "No."

One of the legacies of this administration is that there is so much of this stuff that has gone on since 2000 that it may take decades for it all to come out. The history that will be written about the Bush administration and Iraq will blow our minds for a long time to come...



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