The CPA, Bremer and Year One in Iraq

[SWCAdmin]

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.

[Tom Odom]

Cynic that I am, I see Bremer's piece as a counter to Tenet's book -- and a bit of advertising to resurrect his book as a point of interest.

I understand that Tenet and Feith are both teaching at Georgetown. I guess Bremer should do the same thing and then we could have a panel of 3 who point fingers, deny, and then calim that they really got it right--as in Bremer's case.

Tom

[Jimbo]

I have to go with John T Fishel on this one. My sources who are/were as well placed or better than John's, have told me the same thing that John's source at USIP stated as far as Bremer and De-baathification.