Outlook: L. Paul Bremer Punches Back at Iraq Critics

De-Baathification, Rebuilding Army Were Right Choices, He Says

Paul Bremer, former administrator of Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority, was often challenged in testimony before a House committee. (By Mark Wilson -- Getty Images)

"These days, everyone 'knows' that the Coalition Provisional Authority made two disastrous decisions at the beginning of the U.S. occupation of Iraq: to vengefully drive members of the Baath Party from public life and to recklessly disband the Iraqi army. ... Looking for a neat, simple explanation for our current problems in Iraq, pundits argue that these two steps alienated the formerly ruling Sunnis, created a pool of angry rebels-in-waiting and sparked the insurgency that's raging today. The conventional wisdom is as firm here as it gets. It's also dead wrong."

L. Paul Bremer, who led the Coalition Provisional Authority from May 2003 to June 2004, was online Monday, May 14 at 3 p.m. ET to discuss his Sunday Outlook article explaining and defending the decisions he made in that capacity.

What We Got Right in Iraq (Post, May 13)

The transcript follows.

Archive: Transcripts of discussions with Outlook article authors

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L. Paul Bremer: Welcome to all of you. I will try to answer as many questions as we have time for.

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Vienna, Va.: In your op-ed you wrote that the order getting rid of the Baath party was presented to you by Under Secretary of Defense Doug Feith and that it was "drafted by the Pentagon." On Charlie Rose's show last week Secretary Rice said that the law was, in retrospect, "far too strict," and that the Iraqis "took the lead" in writing the law. Both of these statements cannot be true unless Feith was consulting with his own Iraqis, such as Mr. Chalabi. Could you explain who in fact took the lead in drafting this "too strict" proclamation?

L. Paul Bremer: I don't know who the Pentagon consulted in drafting the original decree. It is true that the Iraqis consulted by the State Department in their Future of Iraq study were unanimously in favor of outlawing the Baath Party. I agree with Secretary Rice that the implementation of the decree was too strict. As I said in my article, we eventually fixed that.

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Alexandria, Va.: Sir, I remain proud to have served under you as Deputy Comptroller of the CPA in 2004, and very much appreciate your setting the record straight on Iraq. The fact remains that we face ongoing problems in Iraq. The issue seems societal vice strategic -- force, per se, will not win the day. Given that force itself won't work, what should we have done? Removing Saddam is an act of immense generosity toward the Iraqi people (and those I know realize and appreciate it) but are the changes we're attempting simply a bridge too far? Has the world reached the day when force majeure is not the way to bring about massive change?

L. Paul Bremer: First, thank you for your service in Iraq. The situation after the fall of Baghdad was clearly more difficult than our prewar planning suggested. Like you I think we did a noble thing liberating the Iraqis. Historians and political scientists will have to work on the answer to your broader question about the implications for force majeure.

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Silver Spring, Md.: In defending the decision to disband the Iraqi army, you take the position that it was irredeemably committed to the rule of the Baath Party and Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein himself was much more skeptical about the army's loyalty to him. After purging many top Baathist army officers in 1979, he created the Republican Guard in 1980 and made them a better-armed counterweight to the regular Iraqi army, which he had come to distrust. His distrust of the regular army was widely known to Middle East scholars; for example, writing in the Middle East Journal before the war of 2003 (.pdf file), Ahmed Hashim, a scholar at the U.S. Naval War College, talked of the "animosity" between Saddam and the officer corps and pointed out that Saddam saw the army as his "gravest threat." My quotes are from pages 27 and 21. Were you aware of the above when you took the decision to disband the army? And now that many of its former Sunni officers have mounted an effective insurgency, would you make the same decision again?

L. Paul Bremer: You are correct that like most dictators Saddam didn't even fully trust the security forces he used to control his people. He regularly purged them to ensure loyalty. And no doubt some officers served honorably in his Army -- we welcomed them back into the new all-volunteer army. The decision we faced was whether to recall the old army. This would have precipitated Kurdish secession and an immediately larger regional war. In addition it would have sent the Shia, 60 percent of the population, into opposition to the Coalition. So the decision not to recall the army was and remains correct.

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Washington: Mr. Bremer: You argue that there was no reasonable alternative to de-Baathification or to disbanding the Iraqi army right after the U.S. invasion. Let's assume you're right. Does that not mean that there was no realistic plan for the post-invasion Iraq? You effectively destroyed the bureaucracy and the army -- again, I'll accept that it was done for good reason -- but nothing was left in their place. That says to me that the post-invasion was doomed to fail, and so it never should have been attempted. Why isn't that right?

L. Paul Bremer: Let us look at the facts first. We did not destroy the army -- it "self-demobilized" as the Pentagon put it. Nor did we destroy the bureaucracy -- all the top ministers and their deputies already had left their posts before Baghdad fell. They left behind a cadre of experienced, if understandably cautious, civil servants. On the whole these men and women did a good job running the government. All Iraqi ministries were up and running by June 15, 2003.

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Washington: How do you respond to The Washington Post article this morning about Paul Brinkley, which blames you for making unemployment worse (and in turn feeding the insurgency and civil war that ensued) by trying to force free market rules on a people who lived under a highly socialized system? Also, do you think it was realistic of you to assume that venture capitalists would put their money into factories that had just been looted and gutted, not to mention invest in a country that had as much turmoil going on as Iraq did?

washingtonpost.com: Defense Skirts State in Reviving Iraqi Industry (Post, May 14)

L. Paul Bremer: The facts are as follows: The Iraqi economy was dominated by 192 State owned enterprises (SOEs). These were not profitable. They lived off government subsidies. They employed, as his article noted, about 500,000 people. We hoped to be able to convert some of them into businesses that would run on market principles, rather than existing as they had on handouts from the state. All 192 of these firms were closed down when I arrived in Baghdad. Their employees had not been paid for almost 3 months. I immediately ordered them to be paid as we worked with Iraqi advisors to come up with a plan for their future. As it was, we decided that we could not take the step of privatizing these firms because it would have led to increased unemployment. So instead, we consulted the Iraqi government, which agreed that we should continue to pay them their salaries while the sovereign Iraqi government decided what to do about them. The idea of trying to get them going again based on resuming state subsidies, which seems to be the path the article today describes, is a recipe for failure and waste.

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Baltimore: After reading your article, I come away with the impression that you still think that invading Iraq was a good idea and that there were no viable alternatives. Is that true? What do you think the state of the world, the Middle East and the U.S. would be today if we had not invaded?

L. Paul Bremer: I supported the overthrow of Saddam before the war. And I support it today. I believe that we did a noble thing liberating 27 million Iraqis from one of the world's most vicious tyrannies. And I am certain that al-Qaeda is serious when it says its goal is to establish a worldwide caliphate based on its warped version of Islam. And I agree with al-Qaeda that Iraq is the central front of this war that radical Islam has declared on the West. So yes, I believe your security and mine depend on our succeeding in Iraq

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Montreal: Mr. Bremer, has your experience in Iraq changed the way you feel about the core idea of implanting democracy via invasion and occupation?

L. Paul Bremer: I think it is always difficult to develop democracy. We have been at it for almost 250 years (if you count the English experience beforehand, almost 900 years). Democracy is more than elections, which I why I dedicated hundreds of millions of dollars of Iraqi funds to promoting civil society in Iraq. We can and must stand for the advancement of pluralistic societies, and we must be patient about how difficult and time consuming that can be.

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Boston: No matter what you say in your defense, do you fear the judgment of history will not be favorable to you?

L. Paul Bremer: I believe that history will conclude that President Bush did the right thing in overthrowing Saddam, even though we did not find WMD in Iraq. And I am certain that the full record of the occupation will show thousands of men and women from 25 countries did their best to help Iraqis reclaim their country, establish democracy and get their economy moving again.

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Baltimore: A question on your statements here: "These two sensible and moral calls did not create today's insurgency. Intelligence material we discovered after the war began showed that Hussein's security forces had long planned to wage such a revolt." Also: "They're fighting because they want to topple a democratically elected government and reestablish a Baathist dictatorship. The true responsibility for today's bloodshed rests with these people and their al-Qaeda collaborators."

Why would Sunni security forces have planned to wage a revolt before the war? What connection does this intelligence have to the current insurgency? Also, if there was such a small number of true Baathist supporters -- as your article implies -- then how have they gained such a large and high-impact following?

L. Paul Bremer: The intelligence we discovered after the fall of Baghdad, made clear that Saddam's security forces had plans to launch an insurgency in the event of an American attack. And that is what they did. You ask why. Undoubtedly because some of them realized what Saddam apparently didn't: that if we attacked, Iraq's regular forces quickly would be defeated. So resorting to an insurgency was their Plan B.

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Richmond, Va.: The article about the state-owned industries also mentions the continued friction between Defense and the State departments in Iraq. To what extent did you observe this during your time in Iraq and how significant do you believe it to be? Also, would you care to comment on the reports of the administration looking for a "War Czar" to coordinate overall policy for Iraq and Afghanistan?

L. Paul Bremer: Like most Americans not in the government in the 2001-2003 period, I was aware of tensions between State and Defense because it was covered often in news stories. Actually, during my time in Iraq, this was not a major problem. I got excellent support from the State Department, even though I was technically part of the Defense Department. But it is not surprising that these tensions still exist today. They always do, because the roles of the two bureaucracies are different -- and should be different.

I don't really have a considered view on the idea of a so-called War Czar.

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Rockville, Md.: I have read Tom Ricks's report that says the authority hired your inexperienced loyalist Republicans in capacities they did not have the experience or education for. True? If so, why?

L. Paul Bremer: This is another of those many pieces of conventional wisdom where the "wisdom" is not so wise. The CPA had about 3,000 employees. They were from the U.S. and 25 other countries. They were all volunteers working in difficult and exceptionally dangerous circumstances. I noted in congressional testimony in February that it was simply untrue to assert that they were a bunch of inexperienced people, and I attached to that testimony a list of the top 100 CPA officials (I am sure you can find it on line at the House Committee on Government reform). Nobody who reads that list will make such an assertionagain. This is not to say that there were no inexperience people in the CPA -- among any 3,000 people it would surprising if there weren't some. But the people who helped set policy, those 100, were superbly qualified.

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washingtonpost.com: Bremer's Feb. 6 testimony before House oversight committee, including list of top CPA officials (.pdf file)

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Arlington, Va.: During the time that you were the CPA, did you question whether the Department of Defense provided sufficient troop strength so support the occupation?

L. Paul Bremer: Thank you for that question. It is important. Yes, I felt even before I left for Baghdad that we had insufficient forces on the ground. One study I saw suggested we needed about twice as many. When I got to Baghdad my view was confirmed by the unchecked looting. I said then that as the sovereign power in Iraq we had an obligation to provide Iraqis with the most fundamental of government functions: security. When we did not, the terrorists concluded we were not prepared to do everything to stop them. So the Iraqis progressively took matters into their own hands

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Chicago: Who is a greater threat to the stability of the Iraqi government, al-Qaeda or the Shiite militias -- backed by the two of the most powerful parties in the Iraq Government, mainly SCIRI's and Sadr's blocs? Could al-Qaeda actually take over the country? Because you and most supporters of the War make it seem like the militias are a minor problem, when the generals on the ground repeatedly say the exact opposite. Isn't the stated goal of the "surge" to give the sides breathing space to make political decisions? Where does al-Qaeda fit in the political process?

L. Paul Bremer: It is a good question and requires a complicated answer. The threat in Iraq has three dimensions: the al-Qaeda terrorists, as you note; the killers from Saddam's former intelligence and security services; and the militia(essentially here the one that matters is Moqtada al-Sadr's). The Shia militia became a problem after I left largely because al-Qaeda was able to carry out its threat to kill innocent Shia men, women and children. When we could not protect them, the Shia turned to their militia. Now we must deal with all three threats. There are some signs that the surge is having a good effect on reducing some of the sectarian murders, by and of Shia. There will be no place for al-Qaeda in the political process -- in Iraq or anywhere else -- because they explicitly condemn democracy as "un-Islamic."

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Clearwater, Fla.: From your comments, it seems as though the United States should do "noble things" and liberate more people from ... "vicious tyrannies." When and where would it end? Iraq only became the central front in the war on terror after the United States invaded that country.

L. Paul Bremer: It is a mistake I think to assume that we can pursue a "one-policy-fits-all" foreign policy. True there are other regimes today that are ugly and undesirable. The situation in early 2003 was that Saddam was believed to have continued his programs of weapons of mass destruction. He had possessed them and was the only country in the world to have used chemical weapons since they were banned after World War I. Not only did America's intelligence agency conclude he had WMD, so did the intelligence services of France, Germany and Russia (all of whom opposed the war) and of Britain and Israel. So if he did not have the weapons, it was a major intelligence failure, far beyond our own.

It is vital to remember that the Islamic extremists declared war on America 15 years before we went into Iraq. We did not create the terrorists. They chose to fight us, as they brought home dramatically on Sept. 11. Leaving Iraq before it is stable will not keep them away. It only will encourage them and endanger all Americans.

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New York: Given that you don't view de-Baathification or disbanding the Iraqi Army as mistakes, what do you view as your two biggest mistakes?

L. Paul Bremer: One mistake was giving Iraqi politicians responsibility for the implementation of a narrowly defined policy; they instead significantly broadened the implementation to encompass many people who we had not intended to affect. I should have set up some kind of judicial procedure and taken the implementation out of the hands of politicians.

While I raised the question of troop levels often after I arrived in Iraq, I probably should have focused more on the need for the military to develop a clear strategy for defeating the growing insurgency. This was at least as important as the number of troops.

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Rochester N.Y.: Why do you keep comparing Iraq to postwar Germany when the comparison is patently false? Germany had no major ethnic or religious schisms to boil over. Unlike Iraq, the allies had plenty of troops to occupy and pacify Germany.

L. Paul Bremer: Like any historic analogy, the one with Germany has to be taken with care. I raise it because it was a constant theme of Saddam himself. He proudly and publicly expressed his admiration for how Hitler used the party and his secret services to control the Germans. Where the analogy breaks down is this: we began planning for the occupation of Germany a full three years before the end of the war. In Iraq, the three months of prewar planning were not enough and were directed at the wrong problems. Moreover, many Germans in 1945 had a lively memory of a democratic Germany; Iraqis did not have this. Germany, as you note, was not riven by sectarian disputes (or at least had not been for 300 years). And finally, you are right: in Germany we had enough troops for the job at hand .

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Alexandria, Va.: Past is past; we are where we are. How do we stop the "blame game" and focus on how to win the game? Knowing what we know today, how do you define "winning" and do you think this war is still "winnable"?

L. Paul Bremer: That is a question that always comes up, once we get beyond the passions of the day. Yes, I believe we still can succeed in Iraq, but I think it will be difficult and will take time -- more than a few months. Much has to happen in the military sphere there, for without security everything becomes more difficult, which was certainly my experience in 2003 and 2004. Above all, Americans must learn the importance of patience in dealing with difficult international problems. They never are solved overnight.

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Boston: What happened with the $12,000,000,000 in cash you requested and received?

L. Paul Bremer: The money you are referring to was the Iraqi government's funds. These were stored in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for security reasons. The Central Bank of Iraq had been subjected to regular attacks and it was thought wise to keep the money in New York until the Iraqi government needed the funds. From these funds the government paid all Iraqi civil servants and pensions, for example -- alone this was over $250 million per month. All the other operating and capital costs of the Iraqi government were also paid from these Iraqi funds. Some press stories, and some congressmen, leave the impression that this was American taxpayer's funds. It wasn't.

And our challenge was how to pay all these expenses, because Iraq's banks were all closed down. There is no system in the country (still today) for electronic transfer of funds. There were no ATMs, no credit cards, no checking accounts, so all expenses were cash-only.

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Baltimore: You stated: "So did the intelligence services of France, Germany and Russia(all of whom opposed the war)" regarding belief that Iraq had WMD. Those three countries obviously believed there was an alternative strategy for dealing with that threat, why do you believe it was a good idea to reject that strategy?

L. Paul Bremer: My point was that the intelligence was consistent. Those counties had their own reasons for their policy. Russia and France in particular had large oil concessions from Saddam that they wanted to preserve. And they were actively working to have international sanctions on Iraq lifted. So time was not on our side, as some have argued.

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Madison, Wis.: Yesterday's New York Times Magazine's cover story focused on the swelling ranks of educated Iraqi refugees, a lost resource of potential leaders in exile. How will a new government deal with the brain drain and destabilization of losing its most promising citizens?

washingtonpost.com: The Flight From Iraq (New York Times, May 13)

L. Paul Bremer: This is a sad and important dilemma. Clearly the lack of security had forced many Iraqis to change the way they live and even in some cases sent them out of the country. As usual it is the people the country needs most who can afford to leave. The international community should do all it can to help the refugees and make plans for their reentry into Iraqi society as soon as possible.

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L. Paul Bremer: Thank you all for your good questions. Sorry I didn't have time to answer them all.

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