My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope [Paperback]

L. Paul Bremer (Author), Malcolm McConnell (Contributor)

Book Description

Release date: November 21, 2006

As the American diplomat chosen by President Bush to direct the reconstruction of post-Saddam Iraq, L. Paul Bremer arrived in Baghdad in May of 2003. For fourteen danger-filled months, he worked tirelessly to realize the vision he and President Bush share of a free and democratic New Iraq.

MY YEAR IN IRAQ: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope is a candid and vital account of this world-shaping task and the daunting challenges lying in wait. With his unique insider perspective, Bremer takes us from the ancient lanes in the holy city of Najaf to the fires of a looted and lawless Baghdad; from the White House Situation Room to the Pentagon E-Ring; from making the case for more U.S. troops to helping Iraq's new leaders write a liberal constitution to unify a traumatized and divided Iraqi people.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Rife with behind-the-scenes machinations at the highest levels of the administration." -- The Los Angeles Times

"A compelling story of the labor pains of a nation in the throes of rebuilding." -- San Antonio Express News

"Bremer details the treacherous, sweltering days, the obstacles and the historic achievements." -- National Review

"[An] excellent memoir. . . . It is candid, precise, lucid, and honest." -- Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)

About the Author

Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, a career diplomat, was the Presidential Envoy to Iraq from May 2003 to June 2004. During his twenty-three years at the State Department, he served on the personal staffs of six secretaries of state and on four continents. In the 1980s, he was Ambassador to the Netherlands and Ambassador at Large for Counter Terrorism. After leaving government, he was Managing Director of Kissinger Associates. In December 2004, George W. Bush awarded Bremer the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his service in Iraq.

Malcolm McConnell is the coauthor of the #1 New York Times bestseller American Soldier with Tommy Franks and My Year in Iraq with L. Paul Bremer III.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Threshold Editions (November 21, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 141654058X
• ISBN-13: 978-1416540588
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #920,164 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

74 of 80 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Another Self Serving Memoir December 16, 2006

By Andrew Burroughs

Format:Hardcover

Bremer was appointed head of the CPA. Bremer did not speak Arabic, had never served in an Arab country, knew virtually nothing about Iraq (its economy, political structure, ethnic/religious divides, etc.) and perhaps more critically, Bremer had never managed a major program or corporation thus lacking critical management skills. His leadership of the CPA must go down as one of the most disastrous failures in US foreign policy. Many of the problems now facing the USA in Iraq can directly be attributed to decisions made and executed by Bremer. In many ways Bremer reminds one of "Heck-of-a-job" Brown during the Katrina crises. Both were decent men, both took their jobs seriously and both were strikning examples of the "Peter principle"- rising to their respective levels of incompetence.

However, as one of the other reviewers noted, this is a must read for anyone attempting to understand this phase of the US occupation of Iraq. There is no doubt that Mr. Bremer took his role seriously and worked very hard at his task. Sadly, he very conceit and self confidence brought about the disaster of today's Iraq. As Caesar's wife Portia notes..."you are consumed with confidence" when she urges him to forbear going to the Senate. Caesar's over confidence was Rome's tragedy that resulted in endless civil war. Bremer's self confidence has brought a similar result. We know, for example, that he ordered the disbanding of the Iraqi army. In his book, however, he pretends that the order was simply a formality- that the army had self imploded. However, what he does not admit is that key officers of the Iraqi army were already in negotiations to call back their units under US supervision.... Moreover, he then decides not to pay pensions to the disbanded army thereby throwing hundred of thousands of Iraqi families into poverty. He disbands the Baa'th Party without having any understanding that virtually every civil servant, doctor, teacher, etc. was a member of the Party. His actions threw what was left of Iraq's functioning government into absolute chaos. He imposes a parliamentarian system of government on the Iraqis without any appreciation that Iraqi political society has fragmented into sectarian lines. Bremer is a sad figure. He will go down into his history as one of history's great incompetence. Although, General Franks, Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Don Rumsfeld or the current "Idiot-in-Chief" may vie for that spot! Read this work and weep for the more than 25,000 Americans killed and wounded and the several hundred thousand Iraqis needlessly dead today for this travesty that we call "Operation Iraqi Freedom." Read more ›

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A diplomat desperately trying to justify his efforts January 22, 2007

By Thad Beier

Format:Audio CD

I think that this is one of the important books of the Iraq war. Bremer is perhaps the most important figure of the most important part of it, namely, the attempted reconstruction of the country. This book describes his efforts toward that end, and attempts to justify his decisions.

Unfortunately, the effort is a disaster. Bremer really didn't have much experience with this kind of work, and it appears clear from the beginning that right-wing ideology was the driving factor in his decision making -- and most of these decisions suffered for that. For instance, Bremer refused to re-open the state-run businesses, because he thought the private sector should run all business -- this immediately threw tens of thousands of people out of work. Similarly, the draconian de-Baathification forced almost all qualified managers from their jobs. Bremer also, and I think unforgivably, doesn't spend any time comparing this attempted rebuilding to the very successful post WW II efforts. In particular, the de-Baathification seems to have been based on the de-Nazification in Germany, without really looking too closely at what might be different between Iraq and Germany.

Still, it's an interesting book, and a point of view that should be a part of any study of the war. The book could well have been 10 times as long, and it would be interesting to see what parts were edited out. I share others recommendations of "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" as a great companion book.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Barely a first-person source, more like selective telling of the facts December 28, 2006

By MountainRunner

Format:Hardcover

Read this book with Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life to get the full impact of Bremer's story. Pay attention to the details Bremer glosses over, like what Bernie Kerik did (the guy in charge of rebuilding Iraq police). Ignored is the background and selection process of the people who served Bremer and how "loyalists" were more valued over experience and skill.

At times selective in the facts and other times ignorant, this book is useful only in reading the perceptions of reality the viceroy of Iraq held.

29 of 34 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Nicely Written Untruths October 9, 2006

By Tammy S. Zwilling

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Read Woodward's book and then look back at this one. Bremer is an arrogant fool as responsible for the mess in Iraq (if not more so) than the Bush admin (except for Rumsfeld)

32 of 38 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Microcosmic Partial Picture in the First Person February 14, 2007

By Robert David STEELE Vivas HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

I took great care to read this book slowly. See my list on Iraq Evaluations.

Bremer is clearly a decent man, hard-working, totally clueless about Middle Eastern and military affairs, and put in a no-win situation by George Bush and Dick Cheney. Bremer bugged out after a year, and now, two years later, the Administration we have a quagmire and a possible attack on Iran building up.

Quite incredulously, for me at least, Bremer actually sees Iraq as the crux of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and yet is totally oblivious to the fact that we created this battlefield opportunity for Iran and Al-Qaeda. See At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA

Early on the book makes it clear that Iraqis were delighted to be liberated, dismayed at the occupation, and completely unable to agree among themselves about how to achieve a legitimate government capable of stabilizing and reconstructing the country.

This is a very self-serving book, extraordinarily selective in its recollections. A few things that really struck me:

1) This book starts without reference to the path to war paved by lies from the Vice President and other members of the Bush "team." It begins by saying that it was "widely accepted" that Weapons of Mass Destruction were the proper cause of the invasion. BALONEY. See instead Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq and com/Failed-States-Abuse-Assault-Democracy/dp/0805082840">Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy

2) There is ZERO discussion in this book of the massive role played by Halliburton, Bechtel, and others. There is ZERO discussion of the 18 billion dollars he had to work with and managed to lose, completely apart from the contracting. There is ample discussion about the pretense of progress, but ZERO discussion about the thousands of contracting failures, the abysmal failure of the entire reconstruction effort. See Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation And the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq and a host of other books on our failures there, such as Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

3) There is a lot of blame to direct elsewhere, clearly justified but not at all making up for the fact that Bush-Cheney lied to America and the world and created this mess:

a) Chalabi was a constant irritant, obstruction, and general twit. This is the man who was fired by CIA for being a thief and a liar, convicted in Jordan of bank fraud, and still allowed by the US to be very active in Iraq.

b) Wolfowitz's rosy predictions are labeled as "fantasy," and the author on more than one occasion talks about Doug Feith in a manner that is the diplomatic equivalent of General Frank's blunt statement in his own book: "the dumbest bastard on the planet." See Tommy Franks "American Soldier."

c) The Governing Council created early on was lazy, working quarter days four days a week. They simply did not compute the demand for hard serious work.

d) He takes General Jay Garner to task for allowing looting (ultimately 17 of 20 Ministry headquarters buildings were completely looted, as well as electrical and water plants and petroleum pumping stations), and also calls General Garner's 15 May turn-over plan a reckless fantasy. I posit instead that the neo-cons were sucked in by Iranian agent Chalabi and never realized how deep they were into fantasy land. I think Garner was close to getting it right early on.

e) He very properly points out that he inherited a deep structural crisis, a country coming off fifty years of neglected infrastructure, with virtually every sector of society dysfunctional. For context see The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World and The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)

f) The CIA and the Marines shut down his attempt to arrest Muqtada Al-Sadt, the Shi'ite cleric that has since then completely disrupted the country.

g) On more than one occasion the Spanish Army elements refused to fight and refused to follow direction. The Ukrainians also come in for direct criticism from Bremer.

There are a number of absolutely fascinating tid-bits, a few of which are listed here:

1) The Iraqi military had 16,000 generals while the US military (all of it, worldwide) has only 300.

2) The military consisted largely of Sunni officers who abused enlisted Shi'ite soldiers.

3) Saddam Hussein had implemented virtual starvation genocide against the Shi'ites, with severe malnutrition being the norm within that majority.

4) Because of the complete breakdown of all sanitation measures, he estimates that 500,000 tons of human waste each day were dumped into the two rivers.

5) Hussein printed money with inflation up to 100,000 per year--at the same time, 50% of all Iraqis said by the author to be unemployed when he arrived. [On this later point, he does not address the fact that the contractors received billions and instead of employing Iraqis, imported many other nationalities as slave wages.]

6) In his view, there were three sources of instability: looters, die-hard Bathists, and the Mukhabarat paramilitary.

7) Saudi Arabia was known to be egging the Sunnis on and in my view; this makes the Iranian interest in Shi'ite self-preservation completely appropriate. The author also notes that Syria and Lebanon were training and sending in foreign fighters (in the low thousands). Saudi Arabian royalty is EVIL. See See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism and also Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude

8) The author blames the French (and to a lesser degree the Russians) for keeping Saddam Hussein in power, while making no mention at all of the strong support provided by the USA to Saddam Hussein in his genocide against the Kurds and his genocidal chemical war with Iran.

9) On an extremely important point, I found it beyond belief that the author, the "Viceroy" was put into Baghdad without a command & control communications and computing set of vans, tents, generators, and so on. The military incapacitated him with quiet scorn.

The author claims in this book that the insurgency was "largely unpredicted" (page 223) and this is of course not true. However, I do believe him when he says he tried over and over again to get Washington and the military to take the insurgency seriously. His problems with Washington are very similar to those described by General Wesley Clark in Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat

The author has 164 references to Bush and only 26 to Cheney. He really did deal with the President on many matters after the fact, but I credit Dick Cheney will totally trashing our entire global program. See Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency

The author has good things to say about the World Bank (this is prior to Wolfowitz taking it over). They completed 15 assessments in six weeks instead of six months, and were very helpful.

There are only 12 mentions of Iran in this book. That is the epitaph for our failed invasion and occupation of Iraq. Iran wins, we lose. Read more ›