General Pace's Wonderland

(Originally posted at The Motley Patriot)

The Charlotte (NC) Examiner has an article authored by Rowan Scarborough about General Peter Pace. This statement by General Pace shows just how large of a betrayal the Iraq war has been for both American and Iraqi:

“One of the mistakes I made in my assumptions going in was that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi army would welcome liberation, that the Iraqi army, given the opportunity, would stand together for the Iraqi people and be available to them to help serve the new nation,” Pace said.

He said the Iraqi army more or less “disintegrated.” The Bush administration made a much-criticized decision in 2003 to disband the army rather than reorganize it, beginning the long process of building a new force from scratch.

Pace said if he could have foreseen the Iraqi army’s lack of cooperation, “I probably would have made a different recommendation about the total size force going in.”

Rowan correctly notes that the Iraqi Army did not merely "disintegrate", but, in fact, it was disbanded by the Bush Administration and Paul Bremer in May, 2003; two months after our invasion.

General Pace was the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He would be one of the few who would have known the Iraqi Army was being disbanded by Paul Bremer prior to the decision being made. He would have had to be informed so that the commanders on the ground could plan for it militarily. General Pace claims in February, 2004, that that wasn't so:

The Joint Chiefs of Staff were not consulted on the US decision to disband the Iraqi army shortly after the end of major combat operations in Iraq last May, General Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said.

Pace said Paul Bremer, the head of the coalition provisional authority in Baghdad, ordered the army disbanded on his own authority.

"Those of us in Washington did not second guess those who were on point," he said at a question and answer session here at the Council on Foreign Relations. "We were not asked for a recommendation, or for advice."

Pace said he did not know what input Bremer received from military officials in the Iraq theater, but it was never specifically addressed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

So, according to General Pace in 2007, the Iraqi Army merely disintegrated in May, 2003, when Paul Bremer disbanded it despite the fact he placed the blame for disbanding the army on Bremer three years ago? So, according to General Pace in 2007, the Joint Chief's had zero input or even knowledge of the decision despite the fact that they would have had to coordinate our military response to such an action?

In the June 2003 statement to Congress given by General Pace, there was no mention of the disbanding of the Iraqi Army. In the July 2003 statement to Congress given by General Tommy Franks, there was no mention of the disbanding of the Iraqi Army, or, that there were adverse effects from that act. I bring this out to show that if our commanders had indeed been blindsided by the act of disbanding the Iraqi Army, if they indeed had been forced to rethink their entire plan at the last moment, there should have been some statement to this effect. There is not one that I can find.

It wasn't until February 2004 that suddenly, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army became an issue. Why would that be you ask? Days prior to General Pace blaming Bremer and disavowing all knowledge that the Iraqi Army would be disbanded, the center where new Iraqi officers were being trained was bombed killing 23 people and, suddenly, everyone magically realized there was no security in Iraq; something Iraqi's knew all to well.

So, not only do we know that the General has zero integrity, but, that he lives with Alice in Wonderland: he assumed that the Iraqi's would welcome liberation and that the Iraqi Army would cooperate prior to being disbanded!

In the September 2003 Congressional testimony given by Paul Bremer, he stated:

Most Iraqis welcomed us as liberators and we glowed with the pleasure of that welcome. Now the reality of foreign troops on the streets is starting to chafe. Some Iraqis are beginning to regard us as occupiers and not as liberators. Some of this is inevitable, but faster progress on reconstruction will help.

Of course, we know how well reconstruction went under Paul Bremer! But, Mr. Bremer did mention the disbanding of the Iraqi Army when he stated that the second key goal was Iraqi "National defense" and "—a new [Iraqi] army and civil defense system."

Now, if we put 2 and 2 together (Greenspan's statement on oil and Bremer's above statement) we see exactly why disbanding the Iraqi Army was a necessary goal for the Bush Administration; once Iraqi's realized we planned to occupy their country, the Iraqi Army would have been a major force used against us.

It is now September, 2007, and the Iraqi reconstruction effort abandoned. It is now almost five years after we invaded Iraq and the reconstitution of Iraqi security forces has been abandoned. The Iraqi people see exactly what our goal is, and was, when we invaded;

- destabilize their entire country
- disband their ability to defend themselves
- force Iraq to depend on the United States for security
- force Iraq to open the oil industry to private oil firms

The fact is that all of the the rats, like General Pace, are jumping ship and trying to blame everybody else for the Iraq war; meanwhile, our troops continue to die in Iraq for oil.