Who specifically ordered the disbanding of the Iraqi Army?

Who actually did order the disbanding of the Iraqi Army?

It is widely recognized now that, after the initial idiotic decision to invade Iraq in the first place, the worst screw up of the entire Iraqi adventure was the disbanding of the Iraqi Army. The most likely culprits have been George W. Bush himself and L. Paul Bremer. But Bush recently told his biographer that it was not his policy to disband the Iraqi military. He stated that the decision was not according to policy, and he implied that L. Paul Bremer was probably the culprit.

But "Jerry" Bremer came back with his OpEd in the New York Times stating that he was not the person who changed the policy. Bremer says that when he ordered the Iraqi Army disbanded he was following the policy he was given from higher up.

Assuming that both are telling the truth (something I always find difficult to assume about Bush, but maybe I should in this case) who actually did direct the Iraqi Army to be disbanded? Fred Kaplan over at Slate addresses this issue in his article Who Disbanded the Iraqi Army? And why was nobody held accountable?.

Kaplan makes several very interesting points.

1. On March 10, a week before the Iraq invasion, the National Security Council unanimously agreed that only the politically active Iraqi "bad guys" (less than 5% of the government) would be removed from government during the occupation. Bush was Present.


2. On March 12 the same NSC members agreed unanimously that the Iraqi Republcan Guard would be disbanded, but not the regular military. Bush was again present.


3. Bremer issued CPA directive No. 2 his second day on the job in Iraq. He had been given his marching orders before leaving the States.


4. Bremer wrote in his memoire that he was given the directions by by Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy.


5. Feith reported to Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense. Wolfowitz reported directly to Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld.


6. Bob Woodard wrote in State of Denial that Rumsfeld told him the order came from sowewhere else.

So who gave Rumsfeld the order to disband the entire Iraqi military? Kaplan continues:

My guess is it came from Vice President Dick Cheney, if only because his is one of the most leakproof offices in Washington. Had the order originated someplace else, that fact would have leaked by now. It's like the dog that didn't bark in the Sherlock Holmes story; unbarking dogs in this administration, especially at this late date of decrepitude, tend to be the hounds in Cheney's kennel.

But where did Cheney get the idea? A good guess here is that it came from that familiar meddler of the era: the Iraqi exile, chief neocon guru, and suave banker-mathematician, Ahmad Chalabi.

Chalabi, recall, was interested in two things above all, once Saddam Hussein was toppled: removing Baathists from every level of activity in Iraqi politics and society and installing his militia, the Free Iraqi Forces, as the foundation of a new Iraqi army. (Soon after Saddam's overthrow, Wolfowitz arranged for a military transport plane to fly a few hundred of these militiamen to Nasiriya; they vanished almost instantly into the streets. After that, Chalabi had himself briefly appointed to head the official de-Baathification commission.)

In other words, CPA Orders No. 1 and 2 fit Chalabi's twin agendas perfectly.

So Kaplan believes that Dick Cheney is responsible for the disastrous decision to disband the Iraqi military. No one else had the power to override the unanimous decisions of the members of the National Security Council. Cheney's close connections with the convicted embezzler, known NeoCon and suspected Iranian agent Ahmed Chalabi and Cheney's intention to install Chalabi is President of Iraq are well known.

This does rather fit with Dick Cheney's pattern of making disastrous decisions. He has made most of the major foreign policy and military decisions for the White House, and every single one of them has turned out bad.

If it was Cheney who directed the disbanding of the Iraqi military then he apparently failed to tell George W. Bush about his action. If that turns out to be true, then I will have to apologize the Bush for assuming that his failure to recall his directive to disband the Iraqi Army was a symptom of his psychotic mental state.

Instead it is a symptom of Bush's delegation of the day-to-day rule of government to Cheney and Bush's failure to check up on the things Cheney was doing. There is no management school that teaches a form of delegation in which you simply get someone else to do the job for you and never bother to understand or check on what they are doing. That's not management. It's ignorance and laziness. That's simply acting as a figurehead for those who are doing the real management and making excuses for their failures.

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Bremer's CPA orders:

1. Barred members of the Baath Party from all but the lowliest government posts. Issued first day in Iraq.
2. Disbanded the Iraqi army. Issued second day in Iraq.

[h/t to Kevin Drum and to Josh Marshall.]