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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (147339)	10/7/2004 5:53:47 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Bremer: Bush personally responsible for not retaining the Iraqi army (as recommended by several Generals). “The president told me that de-Baathification comes before the immediate needs of the Iraqi people.” Newsweek: Inner Circle No More? msnbc.msn.com At the heart of the controversy is a still-unresolved dispute over who was mainly responsible for one of the biggest mistakes of Bremer’s 15-month tenure in Iraq, one that is commonly ascribed to him. This was the decision in May 2003 to reverse the efforts of Bremer’s predecessor, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, to put the ragged elements of the Iraqi Army to work. After Bremer formally disbanded the army, some disaffected soldiers were believed to have joined the insurgency, which still rages. Administration officials said today that this decision was made on the ground in Iraq, rather than in Washington. Before the war, the plan was to get rid of Iraqi Army officers but use regular troops for security and reconstruction after Saddam’s ouster. But Bremer “flipped that around,” said a White House official. He added that Bremer and his deputy, Walt Slocombe, made the decision by themselves. But Bremer and Garner have previously indicated the decision was made in Washington. According to one official who attended a meeting that Bremer had with his staff upon his arrival in Baghdad in mid-May of 2003, Bremer was warned he would cause chaos by demobilizing the army. The CIA station chief told him, “That’s another 350,000 Iraqis you’re pissing off, and they’ve got guns.” According to one source who was at the meeting, Garner then asked if they could discuss the matter further in a smaller meeting. Garner then said: “Before you announce this thing let’s do all the pros and cons of this, because we are going to have a hell of a lot of problems with it. There are a hell of a lot more cons than there are pros. Let’s line them all up then get on the phone to [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld.” Bremer replied: “I don’t have any choice. I have to do this.” Garner then protested further, but Bremer cut him off. “The president told me that de-Baathification comes before the immediate needs of the Iraqi people.”

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (147339)	10/8/2004 1:31:37 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I feel fine. I acknowledged from the start that Kay might be right, and I am happy now, after the matter has been gone over thoroughly enough, to defer entirely to this inspection team. Until that point, where I am satisfied that it has been looked at enough to have a high degree of confidence in it, I have no problem with anything I actually said, as I recall it. Remember, Kay presented his opinion that there were no stockpiles at the outbreak of war as "personal", and noted that there was some evidence of moving things to Syria, even though he thought it too weak. I do not consider it a matter of "thinking for ourselves", a meaningless phrase under the circumstances. We are dealing with highly specialized intelligence and its interpretation, in a situation where we are not privy to it. It is the default position to defer to the intelligence professionals, and to find it difficult to believe they could have gotten it so wrong, even acknowledging that there might be legitimate controversy about specific allegations. Every allied intelligence service thought Saddam had stockpiles, that was never the substance of any controversy. It was all arguments over how advanced his nuclear program was, and such. So I am not going to apologize for finding it difficult to believe that there was nothing to find beyond a few violations, such as the effort to increase trajectory.