Decision ‘08

I Think I’ve Had The Wrong Fall Guy

I always assumed the occupation of Iraq went south so quickly because of a shoddy job by Jay Garner in the initial aftermath of the fall of Hussein, but if even half of what the Woodward book says is true, Garner is the wrong culprit:

On January 20, 2003, President Bush signed a secret National Security Presidential Directive, NSPD-24. The subject: setting up an “Iraq Postwar Planning Office” within the Defense Department for the expected invasion of Iraq. Rumsfeld picked Jay Garner, a 64-year-old retired three-star general and defense industry executive to head the postwar office. Six weeks later, Garner went to the White House, mid-morning on Friday, February 28, 2003, to meet President Bush for the first time. In the Situation Room, Garner passed around copies of his handout, an 11-point presentation, and dove right in. He said four of the nine tasks his small team was supposed to be in charge of in Iraq under Bush’s NSPD-24 were plainly beyond their capabilities, including dismantling weapons of mass destruction, defeating terrorists, reshaping the Iraqi military and reshaping the other internal Iraqi security institutions.

The president nodded. No one else intervened, though Garner had just told them he couldn’t be responsible for crucial postwar tasks—the ones that had the most to do with the stated reasons for going to war in the first place—because his team couldn’t do them.

The import of what he had said seemed to sail over everyone’s heads.

Garner next described how he intended to divide the country into regional groups, and moved on to the interagency plans.

“Just a minute,” the president interrupted. “Where are you from?”

“Florida, sir.”

“Why do you talk like that?” he asked, apparently trying to place Garner’s accent.

“Because I was born and raised on a ranch in Florida. My daddy was a rancher.”

“You’re in,” the first rancher said approvingly. His brother Jeb was governor of the state, and the president visited regularly.

One of Garner’s talking points was, “Postwar use of Iraqi Regular Army.” He said, “We’re going to use the army. We need to use them. They have the proper skill sets.”

How many from the army? someone asked.

“I’m going to give you a big range,” Garner answered. “It’ll be between 200,000 and 300,000.”

Garner looked around the room. All the heads were bobbing north to south. Nobody challenged. Nobody had any questions about this plan.

“Thank you very much,” Bush said when Garner was done. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice started talking about something else, so Garner figured he was dismissed. As he started to walk out of the room, the president caught his eye.

“Kick ass, Jay,” Bush said.

Garner waited for Rumsfeld outside. Soon, Bush and Rice came out and walked three or four steps past Garner. Suddenly Bush turned back.

“Hey, if you have any problem with that governor down in Florida, just let me know,” he said.

Shortly after the invasion, while Garner was in Kuwait waiting to move into Iraq, Rumsfeld chose L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer, a 61-year-old terrorism expert and protégé of Henry Kissinger, to effectively replace Garner, but as a presidential envoy. On Garner’s first day in Iraq, April 22, he signed on to an agreement to set up an interim Iraqi advisory group, made up of prominent Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis, many of them expatriates, to put an Iraqi face on the postwar occupation government. Two days later, Rumsfeld called to tell him Bremer was coming over, and said he wanted Garner to stay on as well.

“It doesn’t work that way,” Garner said. “You can’t have the guy who used to be in charge and the guy who’s now in charge there, because you divide the loyalties of the people. So the best thing for me is just to step out of here.”

Rumsfeld convinced Garner to stay temporarily, and the retired general and Bremer clashed, as Bremer quickly unveiled a plan to ban as many as 50,000 members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party from government employment.

“Hell,” Garner told him, “you won’t be able to run anything if you go this deep.”

The next day, Bremer revealed a second draft order, disbanding the Iraqi ministries of Defense and Interior, the entire Iraqi military, and all of Saddam’s bodyguard and special paramilitary organizations. Garner was stunned. The de-Baathification order was dumb, but this was a disaster.

“We have always made plans to bring the army back,” he insisted. This new plan was just coming out of the blue, subverting months of work.

“Well, the plans have changed,” Bremer replied.

Bremer then met with the Iraqi advisory group Garner had agreed to work with. “One thing you need to realize is you’re not the government,” he told them. “We are. And we’re in charge.”

The next day, the group went home.

Now, I realize that Garner was undoubtably the source for all this…but the excerpts provided thus far have been very damning to Donald Rumsfeld. And somebody please explain to me what the hell Bush and company were doing taking advice on how to run a war from Henry Kissinger?…There’s your first problem, right there…

13 Responses to “I Think I’ve Had The Wrong Fall Guy”

1 The Commissar Says:
October 2nd, 2006 at 8:26 am
Three other books on the subject that I’ve read: Fiasco, Cobra II, and Life in the Emerald City, all lay the bad decisions on Rumsfeld, Bush, Bremer, Franks, et al. Garner was told he’d just have to do some relief-type work and then go home. He soon realized it would be more than that, but by then Bremer had come in. And did what he did.

Lotsa blame to go around on this, but less on Garner than on many others.
2 fiskhus jim Says:
October 2nd, 2006 at 10:23 am
I don’t think you had the wrong fall guy - you just failed (like all Republicans have failed) to notice that the folks running the show are criminals.

That’s right! Criminals! Criminals out do do nothing but line their own pockets at taxpayer’s expense - Cheney and Rummy are evil and venal, and Henry the K is the model for everything you have failed to notice.
3 Dmac Says:
October 2nd, 2006 at 10:31 am
Once again, another parody of the moonbat is put in sharp relief here.
4 Mark Says:
October 2nd, 2006 at 10:33 am
I’m convinced, aren’t you, Dmac?…
5 iaintbacchus Says:
October 2nd, 2006 at 11:30 am
I think you’re too hard on fiskhus. It’s just wishful thinking on his part that the Bush regime is crooked instead of incompetent. If they were only dishonest that could be taken into account and we’d eventually figure out what they were after. But these are people who don’t know what they’re doing and refuse to listen to those who do. You can’t reason with a true believer.
6 Dmac Says:
October 2nd, 2006 at 11:52 am
Mark - well, one can always hope, can’t one?

“I think you’re too hard on fiskhus.”

…said Fiskhus’s sock puppet.
7 Settembrini Says:
October 2nd, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Everytime I read insider accounts of this White House I become more bewildered. The president is being told that his post-war plans are inadequate and cannot be handled by his post-war planning chief, including the most important aspects of the planning, and he’s concerned about the man’s accent? Nobody in the war room has any questions or response? We know Bush is notoriously uncurious, but shouldn’t the experts he surrounded himself with ask something? Whose idea was it to replace Garner with Bremer as soon as Garner got there? Were Bremer’s decision cleared by Bush? Rumsfeld?

Each revelation about the rampant incompetence of our nation’s top officials is more disturbing than the next. The sloppiness of these people is staggering.
8 Mark Says:
October 2nd, 2006 at 12:33 pm
Settembrini, I assume you’re coming from the left, and I’m pretty much on the right…but we can agree on this: the allegations from this book are very, very troubling…Bush can’t totally escape responsibility, but all signs are pointing towards Rumsfeld…
9 Settembrini Says:
October 2nd, 2006 at 2:55 pm
Yes, I am coming from the left, but I’m just trying to figure out how this WH is run. From Suskind’s latest book I learned the Cheney is making many of the decisions, including limting what Bush himself knows (input from Scowcroft, the purpose of a meeting with the Saudi gov’t, intel queries and responses re: WMD from VP office to CIA, etc), but Cheney seems absent from a lot of the inner-workings. Now we have these warnings about the lack of post-war planning, (previous books, including Fiasco, detailed the plans coming from the State Dept. that were tossed aside) and Bush just sitting there making jokes. I’m almost beyond outraged and into fascinated at this point.

Also disturbing from Woodward’s book - a July 2001 meeting between Tenet, Black (ctc) and Rice warning of al qaeda attacks in the U.S., a meeting Rice did not mention before the 9/11 commission.
10 doug Says:
October 2nd, 2006 at 8:28 pm
I just don’t understand, I go away for a couple of days and the world turns upside down. Maybe you guys should go read atrios and kos archives to catch up on what has been happening for the last 5 years.
11 Mark Says:
October 2nd, 2006 at 8:30 pm
Doug, I did just that: Kos said Lieberman sucked 2,383 times, but never found a way to express support for Israel.

Atrios: “Open Thread”

What was I supposed to learn?…
12 fiskhus jim Says:
October 20th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
You are wrong about the Bush administration’s incompetence - oh, sure, they are, indeed, so incompetent that allowing them to continue in office borders on malfeasance.

However, you really should get out and read more widely. George Bush is, after all, a person even his own mother describes as “stupid like a fox.” That characterization, coupled with the President’s own assurances that “everything is going according to plan,” leads us all to no other conclusion than the conslusion that Bush’s only goal in occupying the White House is to enrich himself.
13 Mark Says:
October 20th, 2006 at 1:46 pm
Yes, brilliant, thank you for that scintilating analysis…now it’s back to the Keith Olbermann show for you, someone still needs to write tonight’s episode…