Gen. Georges Sada, in his book 'Saddam's Secrets', says that the Baathist officers should have been dismissed but the enlisted men retained. In his opinion, sending home 500,000 armed, unemployed men, did exacerbate the insurgency.
We sent them home armed ? Or do you mean that they shed their unifoems, took their rifles and ammo, and slipped home to fight another day ?
And these guys, whose loyalty obviously is not to a better life after Saddam, should have been retained by us as the basis of an Iraqi Army ?
What did Gen. Sada say we should have done with them ? My opinion is, we should have used them, like we did the Germans, to clean up the mess caused by Saddam. Remove debris, do the grunt work necessary to create sanitation facilities and the like.