We should’ve co-opted them and put them on our payroll in the first place, rather than trying to drive them out of government and the old Iraqi Army. Before Eisenhower fired him, Patton was on to something in 1945 when he started running Bavaria with the existing local officials and training his captured German prisoners to fight the Russians.
Of course Bremer firing them from their jobs by the tens of thousands and then telling them they wouldn’t be allowed back because in Bremer wrongly considered everyone in the old army to be Saddam loyalists.
The Fedayeen Saddam were Saddam loyalists that faught for him during the war. The Army by contrast refused to fight for Saddam during the war.