Today’s Must Read

Beyond the decision to invade in the first place, it was no doubt the most disastrous decision of the war. In May of 2003, the U.S. disbanded the Iraqi Army, rendering more than 200,000 armed Iraqis angry and unemployed. This morning, The New York Times provides the most detailed account yet of how the decision went down. It’s not pretty.

The original plan, concocted by the seasoned and competent Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, was to not disband the army. Only the Republican Guard would be disbanded. The reason was clear, according to a March, 2003 PowerPoint presentation given at a National Security Council meeting. Said one slide of the presentation: “Cannot immediately demobilize 250K-300K personnel and put on the street.”

Exactly whose idea it was to disband the army, no one can say. No, Paul Bremer won’t take the credit for it. But Bremer and his deputy did champion the idea. And in late May, he told the president and his aides that he was going to disband the Iraqi Army the next day. The president signed off on it. But it’s pretty remarkable who did not:

Colin L. Powell, the secretary of state and a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was never asked for advice, and was in Paris when the May 22 meeting was held.

Mr. Powell, who views the decree as a major blunder, later asked Condoleezza Rice, who was serving as Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, for an explanation.

“I talked to Rice and said, ‘Condi, what happened?’ ” he recalled. “And her reaction was: ‘I was surprised too, but it is a decision that has been made and the president is standing behind Jerry’s decision. Jerry is the guy on the ground.’ And there was no further debate about it.”

And then there’s the question of whether Bremer consulted the military command in Iraq about the decision. Funny story, that. The senior commander there at the time, Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, had clearly opposed the idea of disbanding the army. And when the time came to see if he would sign off on the plan to disband the army, Bremer assigned a retired officer on his staff, Col. Greg Gardner, to check in on McKiernan. For some reason, the two sides can’t seem to agree on whether McKiernan signed off:

Mr. Bremer’s headquarters was in the Green Zone in central Baghdad, while General McKiernan’s was at a base near the Baghdad airport several miles away. Colonel Gardner said that there were problems with telephone communications but that he finally reached a member of General McKiernan’s staff who told him that the general accepted the decree.

“I got the impression that Lieutenant General McKiernan was not all that keen about the course of action,” Colonel Gardner said, “but was clearly told that he did endorse the draft.” Colonel Gardner added that he could not recall the name of the staff officer he spoke with.

General McKiernan, however, asserted that he neither reviewed nor backed the decree. “I never saw that order and never concurred,” he said. “That is absolutely false.”

Lt. Gen. J. D. Thurman, who serves as the Army’s chief operations officer and was the top operations officer for General McKiernan at the time, had a similar recollection. “We did not get a chance to make a comment,” he said in an e-mail message. “Not sure they wanted to hear what we had to say.”

Bremer did apparently notify Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld before the decree and says that Rumsfeld approved in a phone conversation. If that is the case, Rumsfeld doesn’t seem to have thought much about it. And if you sense a pattern here, it’s that those who might have thought much about it weren’t consulted:

“Anyone who is experienced in the ways of Washington knows the difference between an open, transparent policy process and slamming something through the system,” said Franklin C. Miller, the senior director for Defense Policy and Arms Control, who played an important role on the National Security Council in overseeing plans for the postwar phase. “The most portentous decision of the occupation was carried out stealthily and without giving the president’s principal advisers an opportunity to consider it and give the president their views.”