In an interview with the Telegraph in London Bremer said some interesting things about Syria's contribution to violence in Iraq.

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria secretly incited Iraq's top Shia leader to declare holy war against US and British forces, according to Washington's former administrator in the country.

In his new book, My Year in Iraq, Paul Bremer said he heard the explosive intelligence in October 2003 as sectarian tensions soared across the country following the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The report came from an extremely senior source, the supreme leader of Iraq's majority Shia community, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

According to Mr Bremer, the news was passed to him by Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a senior Shia politician involved in negotiations with the ayatollah. The Syrian leader had apparently recalled the Shia-led uprising against the British in 1920 and urged the Shia to repeat history.

This suggest some outside forces were behind some aspects of the insurgency. The question about disbanding teh Army is raised from time to time, but the Iraqi Army pretty much disbanded itself before the war was over. It was a top heavy, corrupt organization when it did exist. It most effective action in the last 20 years was the genocide against the Kurds and Shia. Speculation about how it could have helped prevent the insurgency is still just speculation. There is little, to no, evidence it could have helped prevent the insurgency.

I think Bremer's biggest mistake was agreeing to stop the original clearing operation in Fallujah. That one act probably extended the war by a year.