Unlike many, I really liked Rummy. I thought if we had just pulled out after capturing Saddam and taking Baghdad, he would have gone down as a very successful SecDef, even without WMDs. The occupation, not the invasion, is what hurt.
Rumsfeld backed Bremer, a wrong guy to administer the Coalition Authority. He disbanded the Ba'athist Party so everyone with guns went home and had no jobs. Of course, they led the uprising.
We needed to find a way to keep the Sunni in the government without alienating the Shi'ites (and the Kurds). But that may not had been possible.
Unfortunately, it was just one of a long line of errors in the Middle East going back to the divisions at the end of World War I. Other than for Israel, trying to impose an American or any civilized Representative Republican or Parliamentary Democracy on Mohammadan states simply doesn’t work. Until that ideology is purged, most require a brutal strongman to keep any semblance of order.
Yeah, I said at the time… US is better at breaking things, UN is better at babysitting the clean up after. Each should own its strengths.