Who disbanded the Iraqi Army?
Apropos of various blog discussions about Paul Bremer's May 2003 exchange of letters with President Bush, here's a 2004 Frontline interview with Walter Slocombe, who at one time was "director of national security and defense in the Coalition Provisional Authority". Like Bremer, Slocombe defends the decision to disband the Iraqi Army. In the interview, he ...
Apropos of various blog discussions about Paul Bremer's May 2003 exchange of letters with President Bush, here's a 2004 Frontline interview with Walter Slocombe, who at one time was "director of national security and defense in the Coalition Provisional Authority". Like Bremer, Slocombe defends the decision to disband the Iraqi Army. In the interview, he characterizes the discussion on this topic within the Pentagon as "not particularly" controversial. And he said the same thing to Peter Slevin of the Washington Post:
Apropos of various blog discussions about Paul Bremer's May 2003 exchange of letters with President Bush, here's a 2004 Frontline interview with Walter Slocombe, who at one time was "director of national security and defense in the Coalition Provisional Authority". Like Bremer, Slocombe defends the decision to disband the Iraqi Army. In the interview, he characterizes the discussion on this topic within the Pentagon as "not particularly" controversial. And he said the same thing to Peter Slevin of the Washington Post:
The demobilization decision appears to have originated largely with Walter B. Slocombe, a former undersecretary of defense appointed to oversee Iraqi security forces. He believed strongly in the need to disband the army and felt that vanquished soldiers should not expect to be paid a continuing salary. He said he developed the policy in discussions with Bremer, Feith and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz.
"This is not something that was dreamed up by somebody at the last minute and done at the insistence of the people in Baghdad. It was discussed," Slocombe said. "The critical point was that nobody argued that we shouldn't do this."
President Bush, though, doesn't remember any of this:
Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of Iraq when he said of disbanding the Saddam Hussein-era military, "The policy was to keep the army intact; didn't happen."
But when [book author Robert] Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush's former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army's dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, "Yeah, I can't remember, I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy, what happened?'" But, he added, "Again, Hadley's got notes on all of this stuff," referring to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser.
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