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By Root 4110 0

having before the war been in favor of a short occupation. By the time I came in, that was gone.”10 That would have been news to me, and I suspect it would also have come as news to the President. Bush, at least in my presence, never wavered in his desire to turn power over to the Iraqis as quickly as possible. Then again, he never firmly resisted the State Department’s efforts to slow the timeline either. This ambiguity may have been just enough for Bremer to decide he had Bush’s support for delay. In any event, Bremer certainly never discussed with me his perception that the President had decided on a significant reversal in his policy toward Iraq.

For at least the first month of his tenure, in fact, Bremer continued to report back to me and Defense officials that he was implementing the President’s plan to create an interim Iraqi government as soon as possible. In a June 2, 2003 memo, he wrote to me that in a meeting with Iraqi political leaders he “laid out our vision for establishing an interim administration (IA) in the next five to six weeks.”11 Seven days later I responded with a memo expressing my agreement with his plan and “the need to move quickly to create a leadership council for the Interim Administration.” I noted we were running out of time to put an Iraqi face on the CPA:

Indications are that Iraqi political/ethnic groups are restless. Standing still may lead to unraveling. Progress toward an IIA may be essential to retard centrifugal forces... . Regime remnants are coalescing to some degree and stepping up sabotage. Their dream is a guerrilla insurgency. But guerrilla insurgencies depend on popular support. Progress toward an IIA will help neutralize if not dry up that popular support.12

Patience among Iraqis was wearing thin, and an insurgency was gaining momentum. Bremer gave no indication to me that he disagreed with my analysis that the best way to avert an escalating insurgency was to give Iraqis the opportunity to govern themselves.

By July, however, Bremer, echoing Colin Powell, apparently had concluded that a power-sharing arrangement between the coalition and Iraqis would not work. He asserted that there could only be one government at a time—the CPA or an Iraqi one, but not both.13 Bremer then announced he would appoint an advisory “political council” of thirty-five Iraqis called the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) and indicated that he would be making all the decisions.14

Even as mere advisers, the Iraqis on the council seemed to irritate Bremer. He frequently complained about their leadership abilities. “Those people couldn’t organize a parade, let alone run the country,” he wrote later.15 From my perspective, the leaders could not be judged on their administrative skills when they were not given real authority to administer anything. If the CPA had treated the governing council as something resembling an embryonic Iraqi government, the members might have been motivated to work more energetically and productively. Indeed, I thought one of the most important roles these leaders could play was to put an Iraqi face on the postwar administration, rather than an American one. I suggested to Bremer that the Iraqi Governing Council send someone approximating an ambassador to the United States: “It seems to me it could help our cause if there were a talented, articulate Iraqi available for the media every day explaining the views of the Iraqis who favor freedom and self-government.”16 This was typical of my guidance to Bremer. Contrary to popular perception, I was not inclined to issue direct, detailed, not to be questioned orders to those who work for me. I have found that people at senior levels generally do better when given broad guidance and the leeway to exercise their judgment as changing circumstances arise. In Bremer’s case, he had too much leeway.

I wondered if it would have been better for the CPA to promote self-government first and foremost at the local level, and to diffuse power out of Baghdad’s insular Green Zone complex. Our military division commanders across Iraq were tailoring