Bremer Claims He Was Used as Iraq 'Fall Guy' By Edward Alden and Guy Dinmore The Financial Times Monday 09 January 2006 Paul Bremer, former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, says that senior US military officials tried to make him a scapegoat for postwar setbacks, including the decision to disband the Iraqi army following the US invasion in 2003. In a memoir published on Monday that broke a more than year-long silence, Mr Bremer portrays himself in a constant struggle with Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, and military leaders who were determined to reduce the US troop presence as quickly as possible in 2004 despite the escalating insurgency. He also writes how Mr Rumsfeld was "clearly unhappy" that Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, had taken control of Iraq policy from the Pentagon in late 2003. A Pentagon spokesman on Monday confirmed that Mr Bremer had sent Mr Rumsfeld a memo based on a report by the Rand Corporation consultancy that recommended 500,000 US troops would be needed to pacify Iraq - far more than were sent. But Mr Bremer's advice was rejected by military leaders and Mr Rumsfeld. Mr Bremer's account of his 13 months as Iraq's governor is at times vituperative - scathing of the Iraqi exiles who formed the initial Iraqi Governing Council, resentful of Democrats in Congress who sniped at his efforts, the press for focusing on the negative and feeding on leaks, and bureaucrats in Washington who obfuscated when he was trying to rebuild an entire country. "They couldn't organise a parade, let alone run a country," Mr Bremer writes of the Iraqi politicians. Even allies come in for some criticism, including Britain for being "weak-kneed" in avoiding a showdown with a militant Shia cleric. What emerges clearly from the diary is that there was no detailed postwar reconstruction plan, that the US lacked decent intelligence to deal with an insurgency it failed to predict, and the naivety of Americans who were shocked at the dismal state of Iraq's economy and infrastructure after years of sanctions. Mr Bremer accuses Pentagon officials of setting him up to take the fall for the postwar failures in Iraq, even though the decision to disband the army was personally approved by Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary, and cleared by Mr Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush. Mr Bremer - who headed the CPA during the crucial period from May 2003 until transferring sovereignty in June 2004 - has been widely blamed for acting precipitously in disbanding the army. Critics say that decision fuelled the insurgency by leaving the army's Sunni leadership unemployed and hostile to the US occupation. But he defends the decision, insisting that reconstituting a Sunni-led Iraqi army would have plunged the country into civil war. He says that military leaders, including the commanding US general John Abizaid, exaggerated the readiness of Iraqi police and military forces in an effort to justify reducing the US troop presence. At the same time, Pentagon civilians, led Mr Wolfowitz and Doug Feith, were urging him to transfer Iraqi sovereignty quickly. In one particularly bleak moment in October 2003, Mr Bremer pleaded with the president to back him in this internal struggle. "I'm concerned that a lot of the Pentagon's frenetic push on the political stuff is meant to set me up as a fall guy," he told Mr Bush at the White House. When the president looked puzzled, he added: "In effect the DoD position would be that they'd recommended a quick end to 'occupation', but I had resisted so any problems from here on out were my fault." http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011006F.shtml
It will be interesting know who these military leaders / ground commanders are. And other military officials who disagree with them.
sadly, this bit of fiction survives (i've exposed the timeline of shinseki's firing elsewhere, so i won't bother to go through it again), even w/in the military. Through an odd coincidence, i had occasion to chat briefly about the war with a former senior marine officer who was involved in a command role during the march to baghdad, as well as the assaults on Najaf and first Fallujah, and later assumed an administrative role in post-invasion reconstruction w/ direct responibility for over 1M iraqis. your boy bremer would've known him well. he made a similar comment re shinseki. the social environment of our conversation didn't really lend it self to hard questions, but he did say they did not have enough troops to guard the ammo dumps, some of which were hundreds of acres in size. apparently they were all surprised by what they found as regards the size of Iraq's conventional weapons depositories. the country was armed to the teeth. on the crucial question of WMD, he said he believed that even Saddam was fooled. he'd created such a climate of fear his commanders were afraid to tell him he didn't have as much WMD as he thought. what he did have is now in Syria. we apprently have satellite imagery of a convoy of trucks, under the command of a russian general, who'd been paid 1M by saddam, moving apparent WMD across the border in the days before the invasion. whether it is now under assad's control, he couldn't say, but he felt sure it's "for sale," and that's some scary ****...
Whatever happened to that General who stated we needed far more troops than what the Administration wanted? Didn't he lose his job for going against the company line, yet was correct? The Truth has no political affiliation, although this admin is trying to corner the market on Ineptitude.
Just remember to change your stance on veteran's benefits, Trader_J. If you're going to defend us, you might need them. Keep D&D Civil.
Urban myth material. Our sat photos in the leadup to the war proved a whole bunch of nothing. Shi*, we owned the Iraqi air space, our spy planes would have been the source of any escaping-trucks-loaded-to-the-brim with WMD intel. And damn you gotta know that those planes had shoot-first-ask-questions-later orders at that time. Of course, you could alternatively played the *plausibly incompetent* card and wrote that GWB et al never for a moment considered tracking Iraq military vehicles, especially those heading toward the border of Syria or Iran, during the leadup to the war.
do you have any links? or is this what you call "revisionist" history here's when he said it http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-02-25-iraq-us_x.htm and here's when he retired not replaced. and don't change you're argument to - his successor has been selected.. because thats different from being replaced.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Shinseki okay go back to you hole now..
i'm no expert on wmd, but i'm guessing it's probably not a great idea just to bomb trucks carrying them. unless you're damned certain of the dispersal patterns, etc. in any case, the dude i'm referring to is high enough up the food chain to have seen the photos.
thats what I did.. and I presented the results of my search.. care to dispute them? let me make it simpler for you, when did he state that and when did he retire? which came first? did he retire was he replaced prematurely before his set retirement date?
If this is true then Bush's war is an even more spectacular failure than is already apparent as it has made WMD more readily available for terrorists to acquire.
so we all agree now that the war which has costed over $2 trillion and over 2,000 US lives has not made the world a safer place, "and that's some scary ****"
BTW mods when are you going to ban this person. This is not the type of posts you should have on Clutch Fans.
