Bremer: The Iraqi Insurgency Was a Surprise to Us

Posted on January 6, 2006

Paul Bremer reveals that the Iraqi insurgency was a total surprise to him and the Bush administration. Bremer headed up the U.S. civilian authority which ran Iraq after the 2003 invasion. He has a new book out and -- lo and behold -- now he's ready to talk. And talk. And pass the buck right back to the White House.

Bremer, interviewed by the network in connection with release of his book on Iraq, recounted the decision to disband the Iraqi army quickly after arriving in Baghdad, a move many experts consider a major miscalculation. When asked who was to blame for the subsequent Iraqi rebellion, in which thousands of Iraqis and Americans have died, Bremer said "we really didn't see the insurgency coming," the network said in a news release.
The network, which did not publish a transcript of the interview, added that Bremer's comments suggested "the focus of the war effort was in the wrong place." The book, My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope, is due for release on Monday. The interview will air on "Dateline NBC" on Sunday night. Bremer also said he was deeply concerned about fighting insurgents and "became increasingly worried about the Pentagon's push to downsize the number of U.S. forces in Iraq by spring 2004," the network said.
Bremer said he raised his concerns about the numbers and quality of forces with President George W. Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and senior military officials. But he told NBC "there was a tendency by people in the Pentagon to exaggerate the capability of the Iraqi forces and I felt it was not likely we would have professionally trained forces to allow us to withdraw American forces in the spring of 2004." Asked if he believes he did everything he could do in Iraq, Bremer replied, "I believe I did everything I could do ... The president, in the end, is responsible for making decisions," the network reported.

Didn't see it coming, eh? If only he had read President George Walker Herbert Bush's book, A World Transformed (Knopf) in which former President Bush and Brent Scowcroft discuss winning the Gulf War, the difficulties of urban warfare and why they didn't march to Baghdad to remove Saddam Hussein.

While we hoped that popular revolt or coup would topple Saddam, neither the U.S. nor the countries of the region wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi state. We were concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head of the Gulf. Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome. [Empahsis added]

That pretty much sums it up.