NYT,pg1: Debate Lingers on Dissolving Iraqi Military (US military opposed)

'CATASTROPHIC SUCCESS'
Debate Lingering on Decision to Dissolve the Iraqi Military
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

Published: October 21, 2004


....More than a year later, (Paul) Bremer's disbanding of the Iraqi Army still casts a shadow over the occupation of Iraq. The American military had been counting on using Iraqi soldiers to help rebuild the country and impose order along its borders. Instead, as a violent insurgency convulsed the nation, United States forces found themselves deprived of a way to put an Iraqi face on the occupation.

While Mr. Bremer soon reversed himself on paying salaries to the ex-soldiers, his decision to formally dissolve the Iraqi military and methodically build a new one, battalion by battalion, still ranks as one of the most contentious issues of the post-war.

(Walter B. Slocombe, an adviser to L. Paul Bremer III) argues that the move was necessary to establish an Iraqi military that was not tainted by corruption and was acceptable to ethnic groups that had long been repressed by Saddam Hussein's military. He also says that it was the only possible course because so many Iraqi soldiers had fled their posts and drifted back into the population and military bases had been picked clean by looters.

But senior American generals were privately urging a much different approach, according to interviews with military and civilian officials. Top commanders were meeting secretly with former Iraqi officers to discuss the best way to rebuild the force and recall Iraqi soldiers back to duty when Mr. Bremer arrived in Baghdad with his plan.

"It was absolutely the wrong decision," said Col. Paul Hughes of the Army, who served as an aide to Jay Garner, a retired three-star general and the first civilian administrator of Iraq. "We changed from being a liberator to an occupier with that single decision,'' he said. "By abolishing the army, we destroyed in the Iraqi mind the last symbol of sovereignty they could recognize and as a result created a significant part of the resistance."...


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/21/international/21war.html?oref=login&pagewanted=all&position=

It was dumb then, and we said so.
It's still dumb, and pretty much everybody says so.
:puke: