<<In defense of those handling the war, my understanding is that most of the regular army, exclusive of the elite Republican Guard units which fought to their destruction, essentially evaporated.>>
Brumar,
There never was an attempt to keep the regular army from evaporating. I'm sure you recall the final days of the regular war where thousands of Iraqi regular army were hitchhiking home - often hundreds of miles away. Also, do you recall demonstrations by hundreds of regular army officers who wanted only jobs? Initially, America was not even going to pay them pensions, but eventually we relented on that.
It seems to me that with relatively little effort we could have -at what in retrospect seems a rediculously low cost - hired on the bulk of the Iraqi military to do basic security and border patrol work.
<<Re. the police, my belief is they were Saddam's enforcers and keeping them in place would have created more problems than it solved.>>
Nothing in my view is more fundamental than basic public safety. In the 2 months following our victory, there was a true orgy of crime, revenge killings, and general lawlessness. It was this crime spree that got the various clerical militias their start.
Also, as in most dictatorships, membership in the official party (in this case the Baathists) was a nominal requirement for career advancement. If we had left the police and the police hierarchy, in place we could over time have eliminated the "bad apples".
Bruce |
