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

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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."

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.

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.

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)

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 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.

Bremer's year in Iraq was the turning point in the Iraq war...a war that was not considered in is consequences by Bush or his cronyies, bomb first, think later if at all! It was a year when both security and economic issues were in desperate need of the best minds possible...instead we got Bremer. It is not that the endless problems that came up were entirely Bremer's fault, except in part..the war architects had not even minimally anticipated what would happen, thus they destroyed central leadership [....], then through bombing destroy resource basis, then through disbanding security forces (Bremer) unleashed competitive violence and underlyng ethnic conflict.amazing thatthey did not see it coming...incompetent and America and the Iraqis pay and pay and pay.........

"I would be the only paramount authority figure - other than dictator Saddam Hussein - that most Iraqis had ever known."

So reflected L. Paul Bremer as an Air Force C-130 began in its spiral descent into Baghdad International Airport on May 12, 2003, the start of his 13-month tenure as presidential envoy to Iraq and administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA.

A year and a half after his departure from Baghdad and the dissolution of the CPA, Bremer has produced a memoir that seeks to recast and rehabilitate his leadership of postwar Iraq. There is a fitting irony in this. The CPA was always a paper universe, a place where orders and diktats flew about with little reference to reality. That Bremer would seek to rewrite his place in history, then, is wholly appropriate.

Despite its self-interest, however, "My Year in Iraq" offers some valuable insights into Bremer's administration. In particular, the book's narrative captures well the twin, contradictory impulses that afflicted so much of U.S. policy under the CPA: a fierce determination to concentrate formal decision-making authority as narrowly as possible and, simultaneously, a glib and confused approach toward actually using it. Much like America in Iraq, Bremer's memoir takes responsibility for everything and for nothing.

Bremer came to Iraq as the consummate Washington insider. A friend of Donald Rumsfeld from his first tour as defense secretary during the Ford administration, Bremer had long experience as a foreign service officer, rising to the rank of ambassador and working in Washington under six secretaries of state.

Given his service in bureaucracy, Bremer's instinct to see "unity of command" as the key to ending the chaos unfolding in Iraq is hardly surprising. Upon his appointment to head the CPA, he swiftly moved to sideline such individuals such as presidential envoy and current U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, whom Bremer feared might meddle in Iraqi affairs or otherwise detract from his authority. "My Year in Iraq" takes pains to make clear that Bremer answered to the Oval Office. "I was neither Rumsfeld's nor Powell's man," he writes. "I was the president's man."

Such attitudes also help explain Bremer's notoriously poor relationship with his U.S. military counterparts, especially Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of the Combined Joint Task Force 7 and the highest-ranking officer in Iraq during Bremer's term in Baghdad. While lauding his decision to co-locate offices with Sanchez for its recognition of the "crucial importance of close civilian-military coordination," Bremer marshals scant evidence of cooperation between the CPA and the U.S. military under his watch - certainly much less than the close tęte-à-tętes that have more recently characterized the interactions of Ambassador Khalilzad and Gen. George W. Casey. Whether Bremer had a clear notion of how the division of power between Central Command and the CPA should work, either going into Iraq or coming out of it, he doesn't say.

In fact, many prominent military officers are notable in Bremer's account largely for their absence. While "My Year in Iraq" includes a picture of its author with then-Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, the book makes no other reference to the former commander of the 101st Airborne Division. It is a telling and problematic omission. Petraeus' division, based in Mosul, was responsible for much of northern Iraq through early 2004, and the animosity that developed between the 101st and the Green Zone was legendary. Petraeus countermanded Bremer's orders on issues ranging from de-Ba'athification to negotiations with neighboring states, attracting media attention that Bremer wanted to monopolize. Similarly, the book's only mention of Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, based in Tikrit, comes when Bremer sends him a congratulatory note on the capture of Saddam.

The diminished profile of Sanchez, Petraeus and Odierno in "My Year in Iraq" is all the more striking given how much emphasis Bremer places on his discussions with a small inner circle of civilian advisers. These were, for the most part, savvy subordinates who realized that the key to success in the CPA was to keep quiet and not challenge their boss. In "My Year in Iraq," they are celebrated as "personable," "cheerful" and "brilliant." Others who occasionally questioned his positions, such as senior British representative Jeremy Greenstock, barely appear in the narrative. Had Bremer welcomed criticism rather than bristled at it, his legacy might be far different.

Bremer is likewise dismissive toward the nascent Iraqi leadership. He derides the Iraqi Governing Council as ineffective on 18 different pages - despite the fact that their squabbling mirrored real political debate and was, in any case, hardly distinguishable from the bureaucratic jockeying that characterized the CPA. Even in retrospect, Bremer is unable to see that Iraqi politicians were not simply maneuvering for their own interests but were often reflecting subtle changes of public mood.

Governing Council members, in turn, bristled at Bremer's self-aggrandizement, balking at demands that they receive him at the airport upon his return from a trip to the United States. "Does he think he is a potentate and we his courtiers?" one Shi'ite politician complained. Bremer describes in great detail his public appearances, apparently unaware of how they antagonized Iraqi pride and attracted ridicule beyond the Green Zone's cement blast walls. In teahouses across Baghdad, Iraqis joked that the CPA stood for "Can't Provide Anything."

Bremer's unwillingness to address difficult decisions in his narrative also detracts from the historical value of "My Year in Iraq." No doubt, the Iraq he inherited was chaotic. Upon his arrival at the palace, he describes a "warts-and-all" briefing in which the staff of his predecessor, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, laid out the situation: little electricity, failing water treatment, schools closed, rampant looting. But rather than discuss prioritization and strategies to regain control, Bremer is glib. After what he depicts as an inspiring pep talk, he counsels, "We all have to avoid arrogance, either individual or institutional." Bremer's subsequent behavior, though, even as depicted in "My Year in Iraq," suggests a failure of introspection and self-perception.

Bremer's lack of vision and analysis is especially frustrating given his unique bird's-eye view of Iraq's reconstruction. He describes various difficulties as they unfold, but too often he fails to offer explanations about either why they emerged or how they might have been avoided. Likewise, in the book's version of reality, problems have a tendency to fade after the CPA holds a meeting and proclaims a solution.

Take looting. "When the American-led forces occupied Haiti in 1994," Bremer relates to his staff shortly after arriving in Baghdad, "our troops shot six looters breaking curfew and the looting stopped." There is little mention of looting after this point in the book, leading the reader to think that the issue had been effectively addressed. It had not. On the contrary, well into the autumn of 2003, looters continued to topple electric pylons to strip copper wire. This was evident to any patrol driving past Musayib, site of a major power station south of Baghdad.

It is possible that Bremer, insulated as he was by his aides, was unaware of the extent to which Green Zone orders failed to translate into Iraqi realities. In October 2003, CPA chief of staff Pat Kennedy refused to put forward telephone calls from Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., who had queries regarding growing infringement on religious freedom. Three months later, members of religious militias still posted themselves in front of public schools, refusing entry to girls who did not conform to their notions of religious dress.

In January 2004, similarly, reports reached Bremer's office that showed the Iraqi-Syrian frontier remained porous. Tire tracks marked breaches in the barbed wire delineating the border. But Bremer's chief of staff dismissed these findings; Bremer had received assurances months before that the border was secure. Bremer's front office also ignored multiple reports, first from staff and then in the open press, detailing Iranian infiltration into southern Iraq.

Bremer's treatment of the April 2004 uprising of Shi'ite firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr is especially superficial. Bremer provides little description of the decision to arrest al-Sadr. "Frustrated with Washington's inaction, I asked General Sanchez if he couldn't round up some of Muqtada's cronies," does not suffice. True, al-Sadr had grown increasingly violent. His Jaysh al-Mahdi militia harassed coalition forces and ordinary Iraqis. But any chronicler could relate the decision. What's lacking from Bremer is reflection. How, for instance, did the Jaysh al-Mahdi militia infiltrate so far and wide outside the notice of provincial CPA teams and the CIA? The sterility of Bremer's account does not appear to be the result of any desire to protect classified information. Pentagon sources say his book's revelation that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had urged Sistani to support al-Sadr's uprising was an unauthorized disclosure.

Despite these faults, "My Year in Iraq" does provide a service in correcting certain false narratives that have achieved popular currency. Bremer reveals, for instance, that it was the State Department and not the Pentagon that dismissed the Future of Iraq Project. "It was never intended as a postwar plan," Deputy Assistant of State Ryan Crocker tells him shortly after he assumes command of the CPA. Bremer also provides an in-depth, and badly needed, review of the state of Iraqi police and military forces upon his arrival, countering the entrenched notion that the dissolution of the old Iraqi Army sparked the insurgency. As he details, the Iraqi Army had disbanded itself weeks before his arrival.

Ultimately, however, Bremer's occasional willingness to dip into frank and honest debate about the more controversial decisions of his tenure makes the book's broader analytic failure to do so all the more frustrating. Bremer presided over the U.S. government's most ambitious reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan, but his lack of introspection, at least as chronicled in "My Year in Iraq," is striking. Events overwhelm and analysis falls short. Institutional and systematic problems within the CPA - including the dysfunctional relationship between Bremer and the U.S. military - go largely addressed. While historians will debate Bremer's record for many years to come, "My Year in Iraq" sheds considerably less light than one otherwise might wish.

Armed Forces Journal, March 2006

"How I Established a Peaceful, Democratic Iraq and Won the Presidential Medal of Freedom," by L. Paul Bremer III.

For serious students of the Iraq war, this is a must-read... a primary source by one who played a key role in the occupation. Get Bremer's view first-hand and compare it to how others have portrayed his decisions and his role in the conflict.

For those who may not have the time or expertise to weigh this book's version of history versus others, I recommend books generally considered more comprehensive and balanced, such as "Assassin's Gate" by George Packer, "State of Denial" by Bob Woodward, or "Fiasco" by Thomas Ricks.

I hope that this book will not be bought by many people.I made the mistake of buying it, and then saw him defending the contradictions between his public statements at the time and the book. He pointed it out that as a public servant he had to "speak the party line or quit" and he decided not to quit. That is bad enough but don't shame yourself and insult your readers by writing a book to justify your failures. Colin Powell should not write a book like this. Silence is second only to genius and Bremer is not a genius.

Absolutely necessary memoir, necessary as in memorable and self-serving for the diplomat-turned-colonial-governor Paul Bremer.

Pulled from the private sector for the unique job of...governing a country we just invaded and that he knew nothing about, Bremer spent a year or so carefully writing mails, putting together presentations, and travelling around with big flak jackets as he carefully managed to wreck a country through a number of 'administrative' actions that probably made a lot of sense in his office. Included is the disbandment of the Iraqi army, which drove Al Qaeda recruiting to record highs and made the multi-gazillion dollar US investment in...an Iraqi army a future milestone to mark in PowerPoint. He tried to do the right thing, but darn it, Iraq was a tough company. Eventually, his software licenses expired and he had to pack it in and head home.

I always knew PowerPoint was dangerous, but to read of it handled with such awesome power that it managed to literally tear apart a country in around a year, I can only imagine what he is doing in whatever job he now has in the private sector.