You may have noticed a that few days ago it was revealed that President Bush, in a surreal turn, denied knowing how exactly the pre-war Iraqi military came to be disbanded. Paul Bremer gave the New York Times some letters and documents to help remind him.
A previously undisclosed exchange of letters shows that President Bush was told in advance by his top Iraq envoy in May 2003 of a plan to âdissolve Saddamâs military and intelligence structures,â a plan that the envoy, L. Paul Bremer, said referred to dismantling the Iraqi Army.
Mr. Bremer provided the letters to The New York Times on Monday after reading that Mr. Bush was quoted in a new book as saying that American policy had been âto keep the army intactâ but that it âdidnât happen.â
The dismantling of the Iraqi Army in the aftermath of the American invasion is now widely regarded as a mistake that stoked rebellion among hundreds of thousands of former Iraqi soldiers and made it more difficult to reduce sectarian bloodshed and attacks by insurgents. In releasing the letters, Mr. Bremer said he wanted to refute the suggestion in Mr. Bushâs comment that Mr. Bremer had acted to disband the army without the knowledge and concurrence of the White House.
I don’t remember the precise specifics. But in pretty much all the books on the Iraq fiasco it’s clear that this was a decision that came with Bremer from Washington. And my recollection at least is that this very much came out of the Chalabi/Feith/Wolfowitz ‘clean slate’ approach that dominated the early days of the occupation. So the idea that Bremer somehow came up with this on the fly or that the Americans were forced to confirm some sort of fait accompli flies in the face of all the evidence and, it would seem now, ample documentary evidence in Bremer’s possession.
