The de-Nazification was a success but members of the Nazi party, Nazi and German Scientisits and the German regime kept high positions. The idea of trying to ban all Nazis and figure out who they all were famously got bogged down.Like most Americans, I am disappointed by the difficulties the nation has encountered after our quick 2003 victory over Saddam Hussein. But the U.S.-led coalition was absolutely right to strip away the apparatus of a particularly odious tyranny. Hussein modeled his regime after Adolf Hitler's, which controlled the German people with two main instruments: the Nazi Party and the Reich's security services. We had no choice but to rid Iraq of the country's equivalent organizations to give it any chance at a brighter future.
I do not think the comparions of Sadam's Iraq to Hitler's Germany is a very good one. Working with the Germans and Japanese after WWII (where they were soundly beaten after a long extreme fight) was a major reason for the lack of chaos. In Japan the head was kept and in Germany they cut off the head and kept the body. In Hungry many Arrow Cross members joined the Communists in '45. The US could have had many people join their side at the beginning. Bremer and Rumsfeld fumbled the ball and others are paying for it now.
I agree he sounds like he is trying to justify a bad policy. I wonder how much Bremer had studied his own country's occupation of Germany and Japan?
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