L. Paul Bremer Says: Bush Is a Liar

Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach him now:

Envoy’s Letter Counters Bush on Iraq Army: EDMUND L. ANDREWS WASHINGTON: President Bush was told in advance by his top Iraq envoy in May 2003 of a plan to “dissolve Saddam’s military and intelligence structures,” a plan that the envoy, L. Paul Bremer, said referred to dismantling the Iraqi Army. Mr. Bremer provided the letters to The New York Times on Monday after reading that Mr. Bush was quoted in a new book as saying that American policy had been “to keep the army intact” but that it “didn’t happen.”

The dismantling of the Iraqi Army in the aftermath of the American invasion is now widely regarded as a mistake that stoked rebellion among hundreds of thousands of former Iraqi soldiers and made it more difficult to reduce sectarian bloodshed and attacks by insurgents. In releasing the letters, Mr. Bremer said he wanted to refute the suggestion in Mr. Bush’s comment that Mr. Bremer had acted to disband the army without the knowledge and concurrence of the White House. “We must make it clear to everyone that we mean business: that Saddam and the Baathists are finished,” Mr. Bremer wrote in a letter that was drafted on May 20, 2003, and sent to the president on May 22 through Donald H. Rumsfeld, then secretary of defense. After recounting American efforts to remove members of the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein from civilian agencies, Mr. Bremer told Mr. Bush that he would “parallel this step with an even more robust measure” to dismantle the Iraq military. One day later, Mr. Bush wrote back a short thank you letter. “Your leadership is apparent,” the president wrote. “You have quickly made a positive and significant impact. You have my full support and confidence.” On the same day, Mr. Bremer, in Baghdad, had issued the order disbanding the Iraqi military....

In an interview with Robert Draper, author of the new book, “Dead Certain,” Mr. Bush sounded as if he had been taken aback by the decision, or at least by the need to abandon the original plan to keep the army together. “The policy had been to keep the army intact; didn’t happen,” Mr. Bush told the interviewer. When Mr. Draper asked the president how he had reacted when he learned that the policy was being reversed, Mr. Bush replied, “Yeah, I can’t remember, I’m sure I said, “This is the policy, what happened?’ ”

Mr. Bremer indicated that he had been smoldering for months as other administration officials had distanced themselves from his order. “This didn’t just pop out of my head,” he said in a telephone interview on Monday, adding that he had sent a draft of the order to top Pentagon officials and discussed it “several times” with Mr. Rumsfeld. A White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House is not commenting on Mr. Draper’s book, said Mr. Bush indeed understood the order and was acknowledging in the interview with Mr. Draper that the original plan had proved unworkable. “The plan was to keep the Iraqi Army intact, and that’s accurate,” the official said. “But by the time Jerry Bremer announced the order, it was fairly clear that the Iraqi Army could not be reconstituted, and the president understood that. He was acknowledging that that was something that did not go as planned.”...

On Monday, Mr. Bremer made it clear that he was unhappy about being portrayed as a renegade of sorts by a variety of former administration officials. Mr. Bremer said he sent a draft of the proposed order on May 9, shortly before he departed for his new post in Baghdad, to Mr. Rumsfeld and other top Pentagon officials. Among others who received the draft order, he said, were Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense; Douglas J. Feith, then under secretary of defense for policy; Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, then head of the American-led coalition forces in Iraq; and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mr. Bremer said that he had briefed Mr. Rumsfeld on the plan “several times,” and that his top security adviser in Baghdad, Walter B. Slocombe, had discussed it in detail with senior Pentagon officials as well as with senior British military officials. He said he received detailed comments back from the joint chiefs, leaving no doubt in his mind that they understood the plan...

Comments

[save_the-rustbelt]

Anyone surprised?

The idea that Bremer, as a member of the Bush/Cheney/Rove administration, would fly solo was always a little far fetched.

[Ginger Yellow]

"A White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House is not commenting on Mr. Draper’s book"

Isn't it wonderful that we don't even bat an eyelid at this sort of formulation any more?

[Charles]

And now that that's settled, on to Iran.

[kharris]

The idea that, if Bremer had been flying solo, the dissolution of Iraq's army was irrevocable once Bremer ordered it, is also a little far fetched.

If, "by the time Jerry Bremer announced the order, it was fairly clear that the Iraqi Army could not be reconstituted," then we are in a different situation than has generally been described to the public. Why could a bunch of guys who wanted to keep being paid, and continue providing goodies to their families, not be held together? If it was apparent that turning a bunch of soldiers lose in a weapons-rich environment without a paycheck was a really bad idea (and it was - ever hear of the White Company?), then what is it that make it "clear that the Iraqi Army could not be reconstituted" as a matter of policy?

Bremer could have been overturned. The army could have been held together, with enough money and effort. Having 20% of the army leave is better than sacking everybody. The whole episode sticks, and so does everybody who is trying to make it somebody else's fault.

[Jim]

There is really little point to arguing over the tactics that followed the invasion of Iraq. The invasion itself was an imperialist enterprise that would sooner or later have excited native rebellion against it. The idea that if we had just "done it right" we would be sitting in Iraq with our military boots on their necks and the natives loving it is pure crap. Why keep up this nonsense?

[Bruce Webb]

Jim this isn't a debate over the tactics of 2003, it is a struggle to define the post-war narrative for 2008 and beyond. The Bushies are desperately trying to frame this in such a way that all blame is shifted away from their doorstop.

That Iraq was always going to be a disaster was more or less clear to a lot of people, for a variety of reasons it was near impossible to get that message out, the other side had near full control of the interMEDIAry information flow. This Bremer/Iraqi Army flap may not be that important in the historical sense, what is done is done. The important thing is who gets to define and control the message going forward.

In cruder terms this is part of the effort to get people to figure out that to know whether the Bushies are lying you just have to look and see if their lips are moving.

[howard]

my favorite part of this whole dust-up is that the best-case scenario (to the bush-enablers, that is) is that somehow an action occurred contrary to policy and bush didn't do a damn thing about it.

[Jim]

http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/latimesB79.html

Bush "can't remember". The age-old excuse of liars of all types. Of course we should have known he was a congenital liar from way back. I would suspect his lying began at Yale, about his studies, about his drinking, about most of what he did. As far as the message going forward, I marvel at the respectful attention he gets from the US media. Open derision would be entirely appropriate when interviewing him but the cowardly media refuses to use it.

[Jim]

A bit more: Bush's Neocons were running the show for him. You'd have to ask them why the army was disbanded. You wouldn't get a straight answer today, but I can make a good guess. Israel didn't want the army to stay around; Israel wanted Iraq neutralized or reduced to chaos. Keeping the army intact would not have produced the result the Neocons or Israel wanted. Hence it was disbanded. Have you heard Israel complaining about the mess in Iraq? I haven't. For Israel the mess there is just fine and dandy.

[robertdfeinman]

I'm one that thinks the Bush doesn't lie. To be a liar one needs to be aware of what the truth is. Bush lives in a bubble where information that he is exposed to is carefully controlled. In addition he lives in his own fantasy bubble. This is how he copes with his mental disability. He ignores, forgets or pays no attention to anything which goes against his worldview.

It's a self protective mechanism. He suffered some sort of mental breakdown, perhaps as a result of 9/11 or perhaps before and he has been in a fragile state ever since. One can see some of the effects by watching Dave Letterman's nightly Bush excerpts. He frequently blanks out in the middle of a sentence and has no idea of what he was saying. When he recovers he finishes in an inappropriate fashion. This is a sign of some underlying mental problem.

The same isn't true of his handlers. Cheney, for example, is a sociopath. He doesn't care what the truth is. His aim is to advance his goals of the moment and he will say anything to do it. He will even contradict himself from one day to the next, if he thinks it will further his cause. The concept of truth and falsity doesn't exist for this type of person.

One can see a similar situation with Saddam. Before he was overthrown he also lived in a bubble. His staff was unwilling to tell him the truth when it contradicted his beliefs, so they made things up that he wanted to hear. In his case they were afraid of being shot, but the effect was the same. The leader lived in a fantasy world.

Bush may have "signed off" on the plan to dissolve the Iraqi army but that doesn't mean he was aware of what he was signing, or that he even wrote it.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

"A White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House is not commenting on Mr. Draper’s book...."

Ginger Yellow beat me to the punch about the ridiculousness about this formulation, but I'll add that even if the unnamed White House official said this to Edmund L. Andrews of the New York Times, the Times did not have report it this way.

[wkwillis]

It is the House that has the job of deciding whether or not to go to war.
The Republican Party controlled the House in 2003.
It is they, not Bush, who had to decide whether or not to go to war.
It's they, not Bush, who need to justify their management of the Iraqi occupation.
It's they, not Bush, who need to distance themselves from their mistakes.

[Jim]

I would agree that Bush believes his lies. What he says nonetheless are, objectively considered, lies. I would also agree that Bush has some mental problems. Whether these were there at birth or perhaps the result of the years of drink and drugs I can't be sure.

[bigTom]

"The idea that Bremer, as a member of the Bush/Cheney/Rove administration, would fly solo was always a little far fetched."

IMHO I'm not so sure. If Bremer came up with the idea for that mega-blunder, Bush&Co may not have been thinking to that way, but may have said well what the heck, and simply approved it. I.E. it may well have been possible for a mid level official to have his half-baked ideas approved.

Jim, while I agree that the imperialistic adventure was not going to be a cakewalk even if we hadn't made major blunders, it still seems possible, if not probable, that we could have left the country in a state of only minor chaos.

[low-tech cyclist]

Can you imagine how loud the ruckus would be, how damaging to his/her cred, if a Dem President had been caught in such a lie?

Yet with Bush, it seemingly makes no difference. Ho hum, just another day at the MSM office.

[John M]

Bush is not lying. Remember the memorable George Costanza line: "Its not a lie, if you believe it". He truly believes he has never made any mistakes or did anything wrong, facts be damned.

Bush's entire adult life and thus his presidency is an exercise of this maxim. He is not lying when he says Iraq invasion was the right call, or when he thinks history will vindicate him, or any other countless examples. He truly believes his delusions.

[John M]

Bush is not lying. Remember the memorable George Costanza line: "Its not a lie, if you believe it". He truly believes he has never made any mistakes or did anything wrong, facts be damned.

Bush's entire adult life and thus his presidency is an exercise of this maxim. He is not lying when he says Iraq invasion was the right call, or when he thinks history will vindicate him, or any other countless examples. He truly believes his delusions.

[ogmb]

Obviously Bush is not lying. He had no fecking clue what was going on and rather spent his time in Crawford, knowing that Bremie did a heck of a job.

The Buck Stops Elsewhere Administration.

[Grumpy]

Who should be more embarrassed: Bush, for giving a medal to the guy who (some might argue) created the insurgency, or Robert Draper, for printing Bush's statement without checking whether "This is the policy" was true or not?

[sglover]

Bremer's just had a brush with that famous Bush "loyalty". Happens to most of the underlings, sooner or later....

[Jim]

There are various definitions of a lie. One of them is: "an untrue...statement that may or may not be believed true by the speaker" (Wesbster's New Collegiate Dictionary, p. 663). Bush's believing his untrue statements does not mean they are not lies.

[JH]

"Bush is not lying"

Of course he is, and he knows it. Just like Blair knew he lied. They lie like bankers chasing bonuses, the pair of them.

Bush thinks he's right in everything he does.

He also thinks the general public may be too stupid or slow to understand what is right, so he sees nothing wrong with lying to them in order that they learn what is right, and end up being happy with the right result of his rightly legitimate ventures.

"Bush is not lying" - that's a good one!

[Jim]

Bush "cries a lot." What a hoot. Not, doubtless, for the hundreds of thousands whose deaths are due to him, but most likely because the poor boy thinks he is "misunderstood" and mistreated. I don't know if Hitler cried, but I suspect he had better sense than to do so.

http://www.charlotte.com/nation/story/263361.html

[Jim]

The US should reduce its troop presence in Iraq so as not to appear an "occupying force", a key 20-member US security commission has recommended.

Really. Why not just remove them so you don't need to fake it? Why occupy Iraq at all? Well, I suppose if we didn't Israel would get mad at us. Couldn't have that, could we?

[Who]

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."
A. Lincoln

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, and those are pretty good odds."
Bret Maverick

[Chris]

http://rawstory.com//news/2007/In_Bushs_world_hes_been_in_0907.html

It's pretty clear his brain got damaged at sometime in the past. At Yale? Later?

[Aaron]

as for the why: my personal favorite theory is that the original plan was to keep the army together and then install chalabi who then suggested that it wouldnt have been loyal to me, and lo and behold that became the impetus to disband the army.