Paul Bremer is the State Dept fool Bush put in charge who royally screwed things up in Iraq under Bush. With that said, as another FReeper recently pointed out to me, the buck stops with Bush on that one. And frankly, I am not sure there was any not screwing things up, short of having completely stomped out Islam there as a starting point.
If Obama had doggedly worked out a status of forces agreement with the current Shiite gov. of Iraq and we had American forces there, ISIS would of never become as organized or large enough to be the world peace threat that it is.
Now, in the typical idiotic Democrat inconsistent isolationism, we are facing a major war in the Middle East which we will be dragged into....
Dumbest thing we did in Iraq. Iraq ... if it is to be 1 country ... cannot succeed as a democratic entity because it there is no drive toward unity. Iraq was a geographical convenience invented by England in 1916 and assigned to Britain in 1921 by the League of Nations. The Brits installed their king, and made his brother King of Jordan (both direct descendants of Muhammed!)in exchange for the Hashemite provinces in Western Arabia, which went to The House of Saud.
There literally is no such thing as Iraq. There probably are such things as Mesopotamia ... and Kurdistan. The Iraqi Shiites (The overwhelming majority) probably seek union with Iran. The Kurds want (and probably deserve) their own nation with slices from Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran ruled from Kirkuk or Erbil. They seem to be the only entity in the region capable of self-goverment or self-defense ... and above all some sense of religious tolerance. `
We never should have done anything in Iraq without facing that reality of having to stomp out Islam in Iraq, which alas, is a fool's errand. You cannot change the enemy into a friend unless you change the worldview of the enemy, and that means war on Islam, not terrorism.
I don't see any way out of this without declaring Islam as a totalitarian and supremacist worldview and not a religion. And that it is not welcome here.
Bremer retired from the foreign service in 1989, and mainly managed Kissinger and Associates after that.
"Bremer was appointed By President Bush as Presidential Envoy to Iraq on May 9, 2003. His appointment declared him subject to the authority, direction and control of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld"
The State Dept had very, very little influence in Iraq, which is why both Colin Powell and Richard Armitage resigned.
The NeoCons ran the show, which is why Bremer(NeoCon) got the appointment.
The NeoCons' authority would later diminish:
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith was fired in 2005. Deputy Sec of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was fired in 2006. Sec of Defense Rumsfeld was fired in Nov, 2006.
In 2007, authority over Iraq went to Gen Patreaus, Gen, Allen, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker(who was a State Dept Careerist). Ryan Crocker negotiated and signed the SOFA with the Iraq foreign minister, after which the Iraq Parliament approved it, after which Bush and Maliki signed it.
An interesting tidbit is that in 2010, Obama put the same three men(Petraeus, Allen, & Crocker) in charge in Afghanistan.
This is an old article from 2003 but it describes the problems as they existed in Iraq then:
My son had served in Gulf War 1 with the 82nd for 8 months. In January 2003, when the big blow-up occurred because Shinsecki (sp?) said we needed 350,000 troops for the invasion, I called my son and asked how many he would recommend. He said 450,000. In March 2003, Bush went in with, I think, 170,000. After Bremer’s year was over he said we should have had 500,000.
The problem was that if they were going to do it that spring, then they needed to move with what they had. Summer, the weather would have been too hot, especially with poison gas protective gear. Summer temperatures often hit 115f. Waiting until fall put it too close to the elections a year later. So Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld decided on an inadequate force with no depth for civil control, protection of assets other than oil, etc. etc.