Word: bremer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Although he was a presidential envoy, Bremer would report directly to the secretary of defense. His organization was given the title Coalition Provisional Authority. Once CPA had been established, Condi Rice ordered the interagency committee that had been constituted to deal with postwar planning issues to fold its tent. It was only a short while later, however, that, as one White House official told me, "The shit hit the fan and we had to rely on the British to tell us what was going on because we were getting no political reporting out of CPA." Rice then ordered...
...officers returned from a trip to Iraq a month or two after CPA had taken over and told me, "Boss, that place runs like a graduate school seminar, none of them speaks Arabic, almost nobody's ever been to an Arab country, and no one makes a decision but Bremer...
...Shortly before going to Baghdad, Bremer met with Doug Feith in the Pentagon. Feith, he says, urged him to issue an order as soon as possible upon arriving in Iraq that would prevent former Ba'ath Party members from having a role in the new government. Bremer did just that, on May 16, just four days after landing in Iraq. That morning's New York Times carried a hint of what was to come: "Shortly I will issue an order on measures to extirpate Baathists and Baathism in Iraq forever," Bremer was quoted as saying. "We have and will aggressively...
...Bremer writes in his memoir that the intelligence community estimated that this order would affect only about 1 percent of the Iraqi population. That could be taken to imply that [CIA] supported the move and thought it was a good idea, but that was definitely not the case. In fact, we knew nothing about it until de-Ba'athification was a fiat accompli. Clearly, this was a critical policy decision, yet there was no NSC Principals meeting to debate the move. As for the 1 percent number Bremer cites, he didn't ask for that estimate until the date after...
...Bremer's de-Ba'athification order became known as CPA Proclamation Number One. As bad as that was, CPA Proclamation Number Two was worse. Again, without any formal discussion or debate back in Washington-at least any that included me or my top deputies-Bremer, on May 23, ordered the dissolution of the Iraqi army...