Word: bremer
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Articulate, energetic, with the kind of Kennedyesque profile to which men of a certain age aspire, Bremer has the look of a man used to success. But he has inherited a mess. His predecessor, retired General Jay Garner, is leaving Baghdad only 40 days after arriving. Garner insists that he always knew he would be replaced rapidly--he had told his wife that he would be home for his family's annual Fourth of July picnic--but everyone understands that the switch was accelerated because the first month went badly. Officials acknowledge that America's postwar planners made a central...
...remnants of the Iraqi army, irregular forces loyal to Saddam Hussein and gangsters on the streets of Baghdad and other towns, American forces are far from being secure. The Iraqi army was supposed to have been disbanded last week--at least an edict to that effect was issued by Bremer. But saying an army no longer exists is different from disarming it. Iraq has half a million unemployed soldiers, many of them expected to care for extended families, many of them having received no pay for two months and many of them with weapons. That's a combustible combination...
...Saddam's name, and in both Baghdad and Tikrit--Saddam's hometown--graffiti, some of it new, celebrates the Iraqi dictator: SADDAM WILL STAY FOREVER. BUSH IS A DOG, BLAIR IS A PROSTITUTE, says a scrawling in Tikrit. "I think it's important that we capture or kill Saddam," Bremer tells TIME, "because it affects the political psychology of the place." Failure to collar the fallen dictator, he says, is "one of the reasons that we are now seeing a renaissance of the Baathists in small groups." So where is Saddam? The problem, says Bremer, is that...
...already announced plans to ban celebratory firing, but communications in central Iraq are so poor--there is effectively no functioning TV or radio--that it is doubtful whether anyone in Samarra had heard of them. "Hell," says a senior official at ORHA, "we don't even get copies of Bremer's decrees...
...links to everything that moved in the air or on the ground. Now Iraqi ministries rely on part-time couriers--that means someone's cousin on a motorbike--to deliver official mail outside Baghdad. "I admit I don't think our communications with average Iraqis have been good," says Bremer, whose frequent travel around the country seems to be an attempt to compensate...