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Quote by: The Decider Quote: |
Quote by: dilligras Bush, nor any other coalition entity, caused the Iraqi military to disband......they did it of their own accord, by removing their uniforms and blending into the general population. | So the Iraqi military disbanded themselves? Paul Bremer disagrees:
Bremer defends disbanding Iraqi army as the 'most important decision I made'
BY HANNAH HICKEY
Printable VersionL.A. Cicero
L. Paul Bremer, the former presidential envoy to Iraq, spoke with reporters last week on campus.
In an interview last week, L. Paul Bremer, who headed the American-led occupation authority in Iraq, defended his widely criticized decision to abolish the Iraqi army.
"I think it was probably the most important decision I made, and it had the effect of avoiding a civil war in Iraq," Bremer said. "The old army had been used to crush Kurds for 50 years." Rebuilding the force reassured the Kurdish minority that there would be real changes, he said, and encouraged support for the January elections.
"Just look what's happened in the last two months," Bremer said. "They had the first free elections in Iraq's history. Nine million people—almost nine million people went out and voted. Sixty percent, more than we get in our presidential elections, and they went at a time when the terrorists were saying, 'We'll kill you if you vote." Bremer defends disbanding Iraqi army as the 'most important decision I made' |
The article you posted is from 2005, two years after the invasion, when Saddam's Army was often noted to be leaving their uniforms behind and going home. It may be true that Bremer could have recalled some of them, but the Kurds probably would have rebelled.......that does not equate to him having, "disbanded" them, however.
All this was noted by Fred Barnes, more than three years ago:
MYTHS OF IRAQ
Not everything you know about Iraq is true.
by Fred Barnes
05/14/2004 12:00:00 AM
"Another myth has been lingering for several months: that Bremer was wrong to disband the Iraqi army. The fact is the army disintegrated on its own in the face of the American invasion. Sure, Bremer could have quickly summoned parts of Saddam's military back to service. But, again, the Kurds and Shia wouldn't have stood for their oppressors being in position to oppress them once more. There was a price to pay. Some ex-soldiers took up arms against the U.S. occupying force because they weren't being paid. But not many did. So it was a price worth paying.
Critics of disbanding the army point to Falluja. If the army had been kept around, it could have dealt with the Baathist revolt there. But would it have? I doubt it. The real problem was that U.S. forces won so swiftly that they never took the war to the Sunni Triangle and Falluja in the first place. They should have. Now former Saddam soldiers are being used to pacify Falluja, but only because the alternative--scores of civilians and U.S. Marines killed--may be worse."
That's not to say that Bremer never declared the Army
as well as other agencies to be disbanded, it's just that it was already a fait accompli by the time he got around to it.
As for complaints that some of Saddam's Army could have been put to good use during the reconstruction, just such a thing was attempted in Falujah, and the unit had to be disbanded as well, because their "good use" turned out to be merely
good and useless.
As you were.