Blame Cheney and Rumsfeld For Iraq Today

Informed Comment:

Former British Home Secretary David Blunkett has revealed that the idea of dismantling the Baath-dominated Iraqi army and bureaucracy in May of 2003 came from US Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. (It is often blamed on proconsul Paul Bremer, but it has all along been obvious that he was ordered to do it by higher-ups). A precise timeline for the development of this policy (which had been ruled out at the Pentagon as late as March 15) and a precise account of where it came from has never been published.

It would be important to know what the role of the Likudniks was in this regard: Irv Lewis Libby and John Hannah in Dick Cheney's office, and Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and the neo-plumbers of the "Office of Special Plans"-- i.e. Abram Shulsky, David Wurmser, Michael Rubin and others at the Pentagon. The decision was clearly against US interests, but an Iraq without an army may well have had a special appeal to Rightwing Zionists and their Chalabist allies among the Iraqi expatriates.

Blunkett further reveals that the British cabinet, including presumably Prime Minister Tony Blair, thought that this dissolution of the skeleton of the Iraqi government was absolutely insane and tried as hard as they could to stop it.