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02 Sep 2007 01:40 pm

The Decider Still Doesn't Know Who Disbanded Iraq's Military [Steve Clemons]

President Bush still does not know who actually controverted his policy on keeping Saddam's military intact and instead disbanded it.  That's an incredible admission -- unbelievable! 

This from a revealing New York Times piece today on Bush biographer Robert Draper's interviews with Bush (and in his forthcoming book Dead Certain:  The Presidency of George W. Bush):

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 Mr. 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.

Those still in doubt about how Iraq's military forces were disbanded and the incompetence and unaccountable idiocy that ran rampant during Bremer's reign at the Coalition Provisional Authority, watch the dog fight between former senior CPA Office of Reconstruction special initiatives chief Paul Hughes and former Senior Advisor for National Defense in the Coalition Provisional Authority Walter Slocombe in the Sundance Special Jury Grand Prize winning No End in Sight. 

Hughes is the good guy in the film -- and in the real life situation.  And Slocombe admits on film that he decided to disband the military -- he just did it, without authorization from anyone.

And Bush still doesn't get how this happened? or why?  And no one has paid a price. . .

-- Steve Clemons

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