Britain 'tried to keep Iraq army'/ BBC

Saturday, 9 December 2006, 17:54 GMT

Britain 'tried to keep Iraq army'


Mr Hoon says Britain did not want to
disband the Iraqi army

Britain tried to stop the US disbanding the army in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, Europe Minister Geoff Hoon has said.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Mr Hoon says British ministers "lost the argument". His comments come after a senior US official described the relationship between the British and American governments as "totally one-sided".

<snip>

Mr Hoon, who was defence secretary at the time, said he and other members of the government tried to persuade the United States not to purge members of Saddam's Ba'ath party from senior positions in the army.

He told the Daily Telegraph: "We would not have disbanded the Iraqi army. "We were very concerned in the final stages of the conflict that the Iraqi army was a force for stability in Iraq and I think we would have preferred for that army to remain intact."


<snip>

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6165223.stm

for telling us now, Mr. Hoon.

too. Garner preceded L. Paul Bremer as U.S. "envoy" and Garner apparently (at least according to Woodward in "State of Denial") wanted to keep the Iraqi army and all but the top Ba'ath party personnel. Bremer sent them all packing -- sent them home with their weapons, their training, their anger, their resentment, their pride. . . . . but Bremer was boooshie's and rummy's boy, and Garner was a bit of a thorn in their side.


There is nothing, absofuckinglutely nothing, this administration has done right. Nothing. And they have done everything wrong.


Tansy Gold

The U.S. did not disband the Iraqi Army. It disbanded itself. The soldiers melted into the populace because they were afraid. The Iraqi Army evaporated.

The post-invasion U.S. policy was incredibly dumb, but there was no policy to actively dissolve the Iraqi Army. U.S. planners should have had incentives and assurances in place for the Iraqi rank and file to remain. Purging the Baathist officers was a no-brainer, but the grunts were conscripts, and could care less about the politics.

Peace.

that was part of the doing it on the cheap.

the Iraqi army is a large part of this insurgency.

Headline May 23, 2003:

U.S. dissolves Iraqi army, Defense and Information ministries

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Sweeping away remnants of pre-war Iraq, Paul Bremer, the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, on Friday dissolved the Iraqi Armed Forces, the ministries of Defense and Information, and other security institutions that supported Saddam Hussein's regime.

An American senior coalition official said the move effectively disbands the Army, the Republican Guard and the Revolutionary Command Council, among others, and cancels any military or other ranks conferred by the previous regime.

"These actions are part of a robust campaign to show the Iraqi people that the Saddam regime is gone and will never return," the official said.

It also puts an estimated 350,000 to 400,000 soldiers out of work, as well as an estimated 2,000 Information Ministry employees.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/05/23/sprj.nitop.army.dissolve/

The context is that for more than a month there had de facto been no Iraqi army. They issued calls for the soldiers to go to the barracks, and got no takers. They asked officers to report--the lower ranks were left unscathed by the de-Ba'thification--and got no response.

Then in mid-May soldiers from the army started organizing protests. They wanted their pay. They wanted pay for no work. Bremer balked, and said, essentially, if they wanted to get paid they'd have to report to their barracks.

After a week or so of protests, Bremer disbanded the army, effectively eliminating the obligation to pay for no work.

Hoon's comments are interesting: the Iraqi Army was viewed by all as a force for stability; the plan was to eliminate the top ranks of the bureaucracies/military/police and keep all the lower echelons in place, doing whatever it was they did. But they all vanished. Some of the bureaucracy came back for pay; the soldiers didn't.

Bremer's edict converted what had been de facto into de jure.

not on passages from Bremer's self serving memoirs:

The shooting came hours after two Iraqis were killed by American gunfire during a demonstration by former Iraqi army soldiers seeking back wages.

A military spokesman said the violence began when protesters threw rocks at a convoy of military police vehicles moving toward the arched gateway of the Republican Palace, Saddam Hussein's former presidential compound that is now the headquarters of the U.S.-led administration.

Two wounded men were evacuated inside the compound for treatment at a military aid station, but both died, spokesman Maj. Sean Gibson said.

About 40 soldiers were holding back the crowd with bayonet-mounted rifles from behind razor-sharp concertina wire, with temperatures soaring toward 113 degrees Fahrenheit.

Accounts of how the violence began varied. Maj. John Washburn of the 1st Armored Division said the convoy came under a barrage of stones, and a soldier "on the vehicle fired shots and used deadly force."

An Associated Press photographer who witnessed the incident said the convoy, which had tried to edge through the crowd, had given up trying to enter the main gate and drove off to another entrance. He said the shooting came later in response to a few stones from demonstrators across the street.

Demonstrations outside the Republican Palace have been frequent since coalition forces captured the Iraqi capital in April, usually over the issue of unpaid wages by civil servants and the army.

LINK

Does that sound like an Iraq army that has dissolved itself?

Had they reported for duty, they'd have gotten paid. And perhaps done something; although the last 4 years tells me that an Iraqi soldier's bravery has more to do with fear of his family being killed and the ME definition of honor and than anything like duty or the western definition of honor.

The problem was, for 6 weeks they didn't report for duty. They spent more time protesting that they wanted free money than actually being soldiers. "Soldier" can be a status ("one bearing the title of 'soldier'") or involve activity ("one who does soldiering"). They were strictly the former.

If the entire US military folk currently in the US all went home, refused to report to base or where they were assigned, and then stayed away for a month, I'd say the US military dissolved itself. I'd also think they didn't deserve to draw pay for the time they were AWOL, and either seek to arrest them (in small numbers) or replace them.

Think of it as a cultural misunderstanding.

please, put down your copy of The Arab Mind and listen closely: the Iraqi army had no one to lead them, they were awaiting orders that was not coming because there were no formal plans for the army. Then Bremer issued his first order to disband the army, which is why they organized in order to collect their pay. You don't need to be an armchair cultural antropologist to know these things.

They weren't hired as part of the reconstruction "team" ... (You know, where the money was)

It did not "disband itself".

to The Decider's tailpipe he could enhance the UKs standing and power worldwide, that he could persuade Bush to incorporate UK proposals, from Iraq to environmental issues.

So how's that been working out for ya, Tony?

have a tad more experience than the greed besotted, religion drunk Americans. But would we listen? No!!!!! God gave us the decider

so as to be influential in private simply didn't work," he (Campbell) said.

Great poodle/master visual.

Adnan Zgair , who took part in the futile efforts to thwart the coalition attack on Baghdad, has not been paid since Saddam Hussein was toppled April 9.
He manned one of the oil-filled trenches that were burned to obscure the Baghdad skies in an attempt to hinder the Iraqi capital's bombing by coalition warplanes.
For his work, this 30-year army veteran says he was paid about $76 a month. During the war, he said he tended the trenches for nearly four weeks.
"Defending one's country is an instinct, it is within every human," says Zgair. "No one can dispute that."
His salary supported his wife and his children. He and his wife recently sold their gold wedding rings to buy food.
"I'm embarrassed to leave my house," he says. "I owe money to the grocer and the butcher."
The Iraqi soldiers were dismissed from the armed forces in May by Bremer and have received no wages for four months.
The longer he and his former colleagues go unpaid, the more dangerous the situation will become for the U.S. troops, says Zgair.
"Under the circumstances that I, and thousands of others like me are facing, don't you think it is natural that we would seek revenge?" he asks.
Correspondents in Baghdad have reported that the situation in the Iraqi capital is tense due to the presence of about 250,000 demobilized soldiers