I probably need to get his book and learn more about his viewpoint.

I am certainly one who cringed severely at the time, and continue to buy in to the CW against de-Baathification that he attempts to counter here. And I believe I've made a post or two here saying that.

I don't know what shining light in a short WaPo article could have turned me around 180 and had me drinking the Kool-Aid. It didn't happen from this piece. Two points in particular that hit me yet again are the delivery of the de-Baathification directive from on high via Feith on the tip of a sledgehammer, and the mental leap from an army that was wrong to keep but was then right to reconstitute with 80%+ of the same folks.

But I will say there are nuances to this whole op that still remain lost to me, and that were real issues at the time, immersed in uncertainty and friction, that are not just revisionist justifications (at least not all). And that ORHA / CPA op was such an ad hocracy, it sure as hell was a force of will just showing up there to do the job. And a very big one it was.