Iraqi Army, Day One

A new biography of President George W. Bush is being released. Written by Robert Draper, a former writer for Texas Monthly, it was oddly welcomed by the White House, perhaps believing that Mr. Draper would write an entirely glowing review. To this end, Mr. Draper was given access not only to staff and documents, but to the President himself. While I have no idea if the work is by and large favorable to the President or not, one section has gotten considerable press of late.

On 2 September 2007, the New York Times ran a piece on the book, noting several passages. One such passage was an account of an interview between Bush and Draper on the fate of the Iraqi army just after the fall of Baghdad.

Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of Iraq when he said of disbanding the Saddam Hussein-era military, "The policy was to keep the army intact; didn't happen."

But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush's former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army's dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, "Yeah, I can't remember, I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy, what happened?' " But, he added, "Again, Hadley's got notes on all of this stuff," referring to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser.

I'll let Steve Benen of TPM sum up what was pretty much -- at least in part -- my response.

Let's not brush past this too quickly. The disbanding of the Iraqi army was one of the biggest mistakes of an administration burdened by near-constant missteps, one that was largely responsible for the creation of an Iraqi insurgency. On the subject, Bush sounds like a confused child -- he didn't understand the decision, he's not sure how the decision was made, and asked for his reaction to the decision, Bush is left to conclude, "Yeah, I can't remember."

My other reaction was that Bush, while not remembering exactly how the deal went down, is putting the burden of the policy squarely on L. Paul Bremer, the first US envoy to Iraq. Bush is saying that it was Administration policy to keep the army together and that he doesn't know why Bremer didn't follow through with this. The problem is, it isn't true.

Since being fingered by the President for the policy that most believe lit the fire of sectarian violence in Iraq, Bremer has come out swinging. Bremer gave the New York Times documents and letters attesting to the fact that it was Bush's policy to dissolve the Iraqi army from the beginning.

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 “dissolve Saddam’s military and intelligence structures,” 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 “to keep the army intact” but that it “didn’t happen.”

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. Bush’s comment that Mr. Bremer had acted to disband the army without the knowledge and concurrence of the White House.

I'm not actually sure which is worse: the fact that Bush is lying in this case or that he can't remember the events surrounding the implementation of such an important policy. What is telling about the Bush Administration and its complete incompetence is the fact that Bremer can't say that he didn't go along with the policy, only that he didn't change it. They were -- are! -- all rotten from the top down.

6 September 2007