Garner was doing a pretty decent job when he was axed out of nowhere. Bremer by contrast screwed up--didn't deal with al-Sadr, disbanded the Iraqi military, etc.
"Garner was doing a pretty decent job when he was axed out of nowhere."
So why did it happen, then?
........
"No amount of troops on the ground was going to change that unless we completely sealed the borders. Which I don't understand why we didn't do."
Yeah, I couldn't understand that, either. How hard is it to seal a border? The East Germans, Soviets, Albanians, etc. managed to do it quite efficiently for several years. And they KNEW Syria and Iran weren't that friendly to the invasion!
Sometime in the future, there will be a VERY interesting recounting of the whole Iraq invasion story ....