Posted on 05/13/2007 3:29:48 PM PDT by april15Bendovr
Edited on 05/13/2007 5:27:55 PM PDT by Lead Moderator. [history]
Once conventional wisdom congeals, even facts can't shake it loose.
These days, everyone "knows'' that the Coalition Provisional Authority made two disastrous decisions at the beginning of the US occupation of Iraq: to vengefully drive members of the Baath Party from public life and to recklessly disband the Iraqi army.
(Excerpt) Read more at gulfnews.com ...
Bremer = moron
You say you were suprised that the de-Baathification commission went far far far beyond its origional mandate, which it did and you are suprised?
You J. Paul Bremer packed the de-Baathification commission with pro-Iranian religious scum and you are suprised they went as far as kicking Sunni teachers out of their jobs? Moron.
The nerve of this guy, injecting facts into this debate.
He was an idiot who didn’t see who are natural allies were in Iraq.
Our natural allies were seculars of which there are many in Iraq, but most like Allawi were members of the Baath party at some time so Bremer the idiot that he was saw them all as Nazi’s.
The Saddamists were our enemies in Iraq not the Baathists. There is an overlap between the two, but they aren’t the same. There are two million ex-Baathists in Iraq and only 10-20 thousand Saddamists.
Bremer:
- We did (almost) everything right. Only exception is we let a bunch of representatives of the people (instead of a bunch of judges) try to “implement” what we wanted done.
- Ohhh, on another point. All those ‘insurgents’ you say we had no idea would come out of nowhere and took us by surprise, well guess what? WE KNEW THEY WERE COMING! We had all the intel on it.
SO STFU and live with the mess!
This guy is so clueless, I can’t believe that BUSH picked him. On that note, I suppose that’s where the responsibility ultimately lies, because it’s obvious that’s why Bush (and Republicans) are paying the price now.
Bremer is right to refute these two primary damnations often made against him. However, that is not enough. Not only does he need a much more thorough and documented rebuttal, but even more importantly, he needs to highlight the amazing framework he created for the future of Iraq.
This could be a book as influential to capitalism and economics as has been written since The Wealth of Nations.
Let me explain. When Bremer arrived on the scene, Iraq was the closest thing to a “tabula rasa”, a blank slate, as far as government was concerned. It was reduced to a state not unlike Japan at the end of World War II, when General Douglas MacArthur was in the same role as Bremer found himself.
So what Bremer and his organization of young, energetic experts, not dominated by preconceived notions and old ideas, did, was create the closest thing to textbook perfection of the best of the economic systems that exist on Earth. Learned pragmatism based on known models.
But even more, unlike other economic systems for banking, monetary policy and currency, insurance, stock markets, etc., which evolved through trial and error elsewhere, gathering much baggage along the way, Bremer’s creation was pristine: textbook examples of what *should* be.
On top of that, he personally was responsible for much of the debt relief, the hundreds of billions of dollars of debt piled up by Saddam, that ended up with Iraq now having an excellent credit rating—essential for international economic success.
Already we are seeing the Iraqi Dinar becoming one of the best currencies in the Middle East. The future growth of the Iraqi economy may even be faster than post-war Japan’s, making them an economic powerhouse in the region.
But it was not perfect. I can level two criticisms at Bremer, though he might not be entirely to blame, and not for what was done, but for what wasn’t done.
The first is that he did not abolish the French-style legal system of Iraq, and replace it with the far more efficient and business friendly Common Law legal system. This will slow down their recovery to some extent, and will leave them weaker than if they had the better system of law.
The second is that he did not advance the idea of a Middle East Common Market, modeled after the EU. A confederacy of nations that have embraced democracy and transparency. Had he done so, it would have contributed much to the momentum of democracy in the region.
He may be forgiven for both of these errors, given that they are acts of omission, not commission, and without the understanding of the importance of both, it just represents lost opportunities.
But five, ten or twenty years from now, when we look at Iraq, hopefully as a strong, free, democratic, wealthy and powerful nation, J. Paul Bremer will be remembered like General MacArthur is in Japan.
Bush didn’t pick him.
General Gardner asked Bush who picked Bremer and he said Rumsfield picked him.
Forward Observer: General Garner’s Lament
When it comes to Iraq, Lt. Gen. Jay Garner has been there, done that for 15 years, so his new plan for getting out of the mess there might be worth listening to.
“You couldn’t have gotten the 10 most brilliant men and women in America to design a way for us to fail in Iraq that would have been any better than what we have done on our own,” lamented Garner, whom President Bush dispatched to Iraq to heal the country only to stand aside as Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III gutted the very post-combat pacification program that Garner had gotten the president to approve.
“I was never able to find out,” Garner answered when I asked him where Bremer got the authority to reverse the presidentially approved plan shortly after taking over from the retired three-star general in Baghdad in May 2003.
Garner’s plan called for keeping most of the Iraqi army intact rather than send thousands of troopers home with rifles but no jobs and to allow Iraqi school teachers and other vital professionals to keep working even if they had been forced to join Saddam Hussein’s Baathist party.
“He just did it,” Garner said of Bremer’s scrapping of those two major parts of the general’s master plan for putting Iraq back together again after Saddam fell. “Maybe Bush didn’t know he was doing it.”
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1206/120406cdam2.htm
The thought is crossing my mind that this country is really in trouble internally.
It makes me angry that some Rag Head Camel Jockey in Bumfock Egypt can see the problems the cowardly liberal Democrats and do nothing Republican politicians of this country do not seem to understand.
I can tell you I am really fed up with the shenanigans of many of my Republican party leaders and all those associated with the traitorous left wing fringe Democrats.
The Democrats and their enablers the Maim Stream Media may want us to get a butt kicking by the Middle East Religion of Piece Sand Pounders but that loss should it come may just be the undoing that holds this great country together.
I honestly believe that the only way we can win in Iraq is to take it forcefully to the enemy with no regard to Hoyles rules of finicky engagement as prescribed by the likes of Nancy and Hairy.
For Gods sake Washington get out of the way let our troops fight and then get the hell out.
I would start by removing every embedded reporter and placing them into the Green Zone post haste.
I do not want to read another story about how some asshole jihadists who wants to kill my American boys was not treated with kid gloves.
Political Correctness is destroying us
Political Correctness is destroying us
Absolutely it is killing us.
I remember years ago that we were warned that smut TV would eventually be our undoing.
I believe the fellow who warned us pounded on a desk at the UN with his shoe and was named Nikita K from a little known place called the Soviet Union.
Our goal in invading Iraq was to destroy a hostile regime which was part of a Triad of Middle Eastern terror states as identified correctly by Bush in one of his speeches.
Having destroyed Saddam, we should have moved on to destroy the Ayatollahs and then the Sister Baatist terror state of Syria.
Instead, we let a military operation degenerate into a police operation whose goal was to create a new kind of government in the Middle East. Laudable, but totally impracticable. Had we chosen to run this social experiment AFTER we had eliminated the Iran and Syrian terror governments, it might have had a chance.
It will never succeed as the Iranians will agitate the Shiite majority and the Batthists will stir up the Sunnis. Their goal is to get us out of their and then flight between themselves over the carcass of a geographical expression not a nation sate in the sense that we recognize one.
Bremer is also the guy who Shorted google after its IPO.
In other words they had accomplished more in the time they spent there than the Democrats could ever hope to in New Orleans.
And Rumsfeld has claimed that Bush picked Bremer.
But I can't cite names, etc., at the moment, to support that claim, so take it as you so desire; but, be assured, I didn't just make it up.
“Garner’s plan called for keeping most of the Iraqi army intact rather than send thousands of troopers home with rifles but no jobs and to allow Iraqi school teachers and other vital professionals to keep working even if they had been forced to join Saddam Hussein’s Baathist party.”
Im not so sure I would be willing to give power back to a group connected to terrorism.
Baathist papers confirm Hussein’s terrorist ties
http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=MURDOCK-04-06-06
Winston Churchill's grandson had me a little worried when he stated excluding Baath members was a bad idea when giving a speech to an audience in Ottawa today.
American troops should stay in Iraq: Churchill's grandson Vancouver Sun ^ | Sunday, May 13, 2007 | Charles Enman
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1832876/posts
Look at Damascus Syria? Its government structure is Baathist and they are the international world headquarters for terrorism.
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