Taki's Top Drawer: The Kissinger Connection Kissinger is condemned as the world's biggest living war criminal due to the huge scale of the Indo-china atrocity and the fact Nixon is now dead. But according to this article it turns out he played a key role in the Iraq disaster as well.
Garner drew up detailed plans and, at his first briefing with President Bush, outlined three essential “musts” that would, he asserted, ensure a smooth transition after the war. The first “must”, he said, was that the Iraqi military should not be disbanded. The second “must” was that the 50,000-strong Ba’ath party machine that ran government services should not be broken up or its members proscribed. If either were to happen, he warned, there would be chaos compounded by thousands of unemployed, armed Iraqis running around. And the third “must”, he insisted, was that an interim Iraqi leadership group, eager to help the United States administer the country in the short term, should be kept on-side.
Initially, no one disagreed, according to State of Denial, the new book by the veteran Washington reporter, Bob Woodward. But within weeks of the invasion, Garner’s tenure as head of the post-war planning office was over: he was replaced by Paul Bremer, a terrorism expert and protégé of Henry Kissinger. Bremer immediately countermanded all three of Garner’s “musts”. [My emphasis.] When, eventually, Garner confronted Rumsfeld, telling him: “There is still time to rectify this,” Rumsfeld refused to do so.
There's little doubt that all this is an extraordinary, epic bungle, but the writer's thesis that the bungle is 'deliberate' seems a conspiratorial stretch to me.
Taki's Top Drawer: The Kissinger Connection Kissinger is condemned as the world's biggest living war criminal due to the huge scale of the Indo-china atrocity and the fact Nixon is now dead. But according to this article it turns out he played a key role in the Iraq disaster as well.
Garner drew up detailed plans and, at his first briefing with President Bush, outlined three essential “musts” that would, he asserted, ensure a smooth transition after the war. The first “must”, he said, was that the Iraqi military should not be disbanded. The second “must” was that the 50,000-strong Ba’ath party machine that ran government services should not be broken up or its members proscribed. If either were to happen, he warned, there would be chaos compounded by thousands of unemployed, armed Iraqis running around. And the third “must”, he insisted, was that an interim Iraqi leadership group, eager to help the United States administer the country in the short term, should be kept on-side.
Initially, no one disagreed, according to State of Denial, the new book by the veteran Washington reporter, Bob Woodward. But within weeks of the invasion, Garner’s tenure as head of the post-war planning office was over: he was replaced by Paul Bremer, a terrorism expert and protégé of Henry Kissinger. Bremer immediately countermanded all three of Garner’s “musts”. [My emphasis.] When, eventually, Garner confronted Rumsfeld, telling him: “There is still time to rectify this,” Rumsfeld refused to do so.
There's little doubt that all this is an extraordinary, epic bungle, but the writer's thesis that the bungle is 'deliberate' seems a conspiratorial stretch to me.
Foy: The Kissinger Connection
No comments:
Post a Comment