Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [279]
The Iraqi army, in Bremer’s words, “disbanded itself.”32 The evolving situation called to mind the John Maynard Keynes quote, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” Few, if any, of the arguments in favor of using the army continued to be applicable, while most of the reasons against using it remained. Bremer recommended a change of course.33 He made the decision in close coordination with his senior adviser on defense issues, Walter Slocombe, who had served as undersecretary of defense for policy in the Clinton administration and who at my request had agreed to assist the CPA.
Bremer and Slocombe championed a proposal to create an entirely new Iraqi army. The training and equipping of the army would fall under the control of the CPA and not, as commonly assumed, under the United States military. Bremer briefed me and several other Defense officials about the outlines of the plan on May 19, 2003 and then other members of the National Security Council three days later. His decision, particularly its specifics, did not receive the full interagency discussion it merited.34 We were told that each of the soldiers was to receive a stipend while the army was reorganized, so that they would not be aimless, unemployed, and on the streets.35 Unfortunately, there was a month delay before Bremer’s office announced the payments and another month before the CPA could issue them.36 Many members of the Iraqi army became embittered. The initial pace of training the new army was also excruciatingly slow.37
Later I revived the question of whether it might be desirable or possible to reassemble units of the old Iraqi army and bring them into service in some form.38 I asked General Abizaid for an assessment. But Bremer strenuously objected to this idea, apparently on the grounds that Iraqis would not want any remnants of the old army reconstituted.39 Whether or not disbanding the Iraqi army was ultimately a good idea, the failure to reform and reconstitute it quickly was costly.
Bremer’s plan for a new Iraqi army focused on defending Iraq from an external threat rather than on using it for internal security.* This decision stemmed from his certain view that the Iraqi people would never trust or tolerate any version of Saddam’s army patrolling their streets. Yet the far greater threat to Iraqis was not from outside invaders but from the insurgency being waged from within. The army was being trained to fight the wrong war.
For nearly a year Abizaid made efforts to get the training of the Iraqi army transferred from the CPA to the military, which had vastly more experience. Bremer finally relented in the spring of 2004. In the meantime, Abizaid and Sanchez had built up the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, a force of military units that remained in their communities, but the size of Iraq’s national security forces was still too small to deal with the insurgency.
It is fair to ask why differences between the CPA and CENTCOM, and more broadly between State and Defense, were not better resolved. I have asked it myself as I look back. The fact was that Bremer’s views on Iraqi governance and occupation reflected those of the State Department. Those key differences were never clearly or firmly resolved in the NSC. Only the President could do so.
As time went on, Bremer’s pride of ownership in his policy concerning the Iraqi army wavered. In 2005, Bremer said the decision had been his, calling it “the most important decision