We were out. Let the chips fall where they may. When the last american troops leave, maliki begins a pretty concerted crackdown on the sunni population. Narrator tonight, frontline investigates losing iraq. Frontlinis made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. And by the corporation for public broadcasting. Major support for frontliis provided by the john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More information is available at macfound. Org. Additional support is provided by the park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The ford foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide. At fordfoundation. Org. The wyncote foundation. And by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler, and Additional Support from bill and cile hicks. The iraqis had gathered around the statue and were throwing their shoes at it. What struck me was the iraqis couldnt pull it down themselves. It was obvious it wasnt going to happen. It would be a pretty anticlimactic moment if we didnt help. It was a dramatic moment. It was an American Flag that went on it first. Thats almost a metaphor for whats happened since. You know, then, ultimately, well, an iraqi flag was put on it, and enough photographs were taken of iraqis cheering. By the way, that statue was very heavy. The problem was much more involved than i think anyone thought of. It made me worry. Something told me, you know, this isnt going to be quite as easy as we thought. Narrator in those early days, there was great optimism. People were just in pure exhilaration. At that point in time, you think, this might just work. And i remember seeing a guy carrying a huge couch on his back, and he turns and says, yay, america you know . Thank you very much thank you very much there were flowers, there were shouts of joy. There were people clambering on the tanks and kissing the tank crews. But by the time this happened, and within a matter of an hour of the marine tanks coming up the canal expressway, of course, the looting had begun. All of a sudden, the iraqi people started looting, attacked the ministries, basically created a series of events which didnt stop with that. Less than two u. S. Brigades were in isolated positions in a city of more than five million people, having no idea of what might come next. Iraqis are looting on a grand scale. It is a clear sign that while the war might be ending, there is trouble ahead. Narrator in washington, the Bush Administration brushed aside the bad news. I picked up a newspaper today, and i couldnt believe it. I read eight headlines that talked about chaos violence unrest and it just was, henny penny, the sky is falling. Ive never seen anything like it its just unbelievable how people can take that away from what is happening in that country. Narrator but behind closed doors, some of rumsfelds generals were worried. In 03, from a military perspective, from the time we took the regime down, we never made a commitment to secure the population, and we never had enough resources to do it. Narrator general jack keane was acting army chief of staff. General keane is really highly admired across the army. Hes kind of a soldiers soldier. And he had argued in the tank before the invasion of iraq, dont invade iraq. Narrator looking back, keane says that the war plans drafted by secretary rumsfeld and commanding general tommy franks did not include adequate plans for securing the country. I think its driven, in part, by my own failures when i was there as a senior military leader contributing to general frankss plan that we never even considered an insurgency as a reasonable option. Narrator on the ground, even as tensions were rising, general franks had a surprise announcement. A very striking thing happened. General franks gave guidance that his commanders should be prepared to withdraw all American Forces, except for a little more than a division, which would remain, by september 2003. Narrator more than 110,000 troops were told to prepare to leave. A division about 30,000 would handle iraq. There was this power vacuum. Nobody quite knew what was the plan. The soldiers thought they were all going home. Narrator it was a message the president delivered personally when he flew 30 miles off the coast of california to reassure the world that the major combat phase of the war in iraq was over. My fellow americans, major combat operations in iraq have ended. In the battle of iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. Because of you, the tyrant has fallen and iraq is free. cheering bush never said mission accomplished, but that banner was hanging up right behind his head as he gave that speech. And it really was a premature victory speech that didnt recognize what was going on in iraq. Narrator the administrations strategy was to pull the troops out of iraq and hand over responsibility to an american civilian. In washington, Vice President cheney had just the man for the job a little known diplomat named l. Paul bremer the third. Well, i was contacted by two people paul wolfowitz, who was deputy secretary of defense, scooter libby, who was the Vice President s chief of staff, both of whom i had known for decades. Bremer is old friends with scooter libby, who is cheneys chief of staff. And libby put bremers name forward. And bremer was sort of the right kind of conservative. Narrator in bremer, cheney had given secretary rumsfeld a businessman, a diplomat, managing director of kissinger and associates. Heres a guy who had worked for Henry Kissinger but doesnt know a whole lot about the middle east, doesnt speak arabic, doesnt know the region. What he lacked was the practical experience, and it was that lack of experience that commended him, in large measure, to the Bush Administration. Today, its my honor to announce that jerry bremer has agreed to become the president ial envoy to iraq. Narrator president bush made it official bremer was now in charge of the occupation. After a twoweek crash course on middle eastern politics, he arrived in iraq to head what was known as the Coalition Provisional authority the cpa. We flew on a c130 into baghdad. The thing that was striking to us was the fact that a lot of the buildings were on fire. Narrator baghdad had been burning for one month. Thered be buildings on fire. The fires would just have to burn themselves out because there was no fire department. There was no government. There were no police. The army was gone. Narrator as they drove into the city, bremer made a decision and promptly announced it to his new staff. I did one thing that wasnt very smart, which was suggest to the staff meeting that i thought we should shoot the looters, that our military should have authority to shoot the looters, which they did not have at that time. His point was you only needed to shoot a few of them to make that point and the looting would stop. It wasnt very smart to do because somebody on the staff immediately told the press that i had suggested shooting the looters, and we had a problem. Narrator military commanders refused to go along with bremers idea. Well, of course, its against our code of honor. There just is not sufficient justification to shoot somebody because theyre carrying a computer out of the old ministry of education building. Narrator and so ended paul bremers first day in iraq. And i think one thing bremer found out that day was that he had no command over the military. Narrator bremers headquarters were in a heavily fortified area of baghdad called the green zone. The green zone became the emerald city, walled off from the rest of iraq. The rest of iraq, electricity is intermittent at best, sewage problems, dusty, dirty, potholes. Inside the green zone, its calm, its quiet. Narrator as bremer settled in, he knew he would have to deal with iraqs complicated sectarian politics. This is one of the most fractious places you could have picked, with morproblems in terms of. Its right on the shia sunni divide. It has the kurds. It has 20 years of dysfunctional government. Narrator Saddam Hussein and his sunnidominated baath party had brutally controlled the countrys majority shiites and the kurds. Now, bremer was determined to change that. The idea is youd remove saddams agents from government or people loyal to him to make room for shiites and kurds, who it was assumed would Work Together in some sort of collegial way. Narrator and bremer had a plan to remake the Iraqi Government. Bremer hadnt been there very long, literally a day, and these papers were coming out of his briefcase. I was in the office, outside of the front office and began reading them, and so on. Narrator it was called cpa order number one. It would end sunni domination of the government and bring in rival ethnic and religious groups, the kurds and the shiites. Im walking down the hallway and ambassador robin raphel says, have you seen this . She has a piece of paper. I said, no, what is it . She says, debaathification order. I said, wow. So i read it real quick, there in the hall. I said, this is too deep. Narrator retired general jay garner was one of the few americans who knew his way around iraq. Hed worked there before. He was very, very, very angry. And jays very personable. His head was down. He was walking fastpaced all over. I could tell he was very upset about it. I walked down, and the cia guy, a great guy, was coming across the hall, and i said, hey, charlie, have you read the debaathification . And he said, yeah, thats why im here. I said, well, lets go in and talk to the ambassador. Narrator garner was worried that bremer seemed not to understand how things worked in iraq. So we went in and we talked to ambassador bremer for a few minutes. And i said, you know, this is too deep. I said, give charlie and i about 45 minutes to an hour. Let us digest this thing, and then let us recommend some changes to you and come back here, and well get on the phone with rumsfeld to see if we cant soften this a bit. And bremer kind of says, look, you dont understand. Im not asking you, im telling you. This is what im going to do. Im not asking for your advice. And they argue a bit more. And finally, bremer says, look, i have my orders. This is what im doing. And so i said, well, charlie, what do you think . And to the best of my memory, charlie said, well, if you do this, youre going to drive 30,000 to 50,000 baathists underground by nightfall. And the numbers closer 50 than it is 30. Narrator ambassador bremer says he does not recall the conversation with general garner and the cia officer. He may have come in and spoken to me at great length about it. I just dont remember it, honestly dont remember it. You dont remember these guys coming in and saying, this is 30,000 to 50,000 people, and my god, what are you doing . I just. You know, i was working 20 hours a day in that period, as well. This wasnt the only thing on my list of things to do the first five days i was there. I had a lot of other things to do. But this is a big one, right . There were a lot of big things that first five days. There were a lot of big things the first 48 hours. So i dont remember every meeting. I dont say it didnt happen. I knew there were concerns. I knew the agency made the assessment that there were about 20,000 people to be thrown out of work. And i judged in the end that that was a risk we were willing to take. And those who were on high before, in particular the baathists, who used their power to repress the iraqi people, will be removed from office. I think, frankly, there wasnt a Single Person in the cpa who understood what order number one meant. It created a climate where people could be expelled as University Teachers or grade school teachers, not simply people who had some kind of tie to the senior structure. Two reasons we wanted to keep the Baathist Party intact. One, the only folks who have experience running the government, so we needed to keep them. Number two, the sunnis need to have a voice. And if you dont give people a voice, they have relatively few options. And what the middle eastern history and middle eastern. What it tells you is their next option is violence. Narrator with the debaathification order, bremer made a decisive statement. In doing so, he gave the cpa staff, the military and the iraqis the first indication of who he was. Tough, could get things done. Anybody who was Henry Kissingers righthand man had to have a certain amount of steel in his personality. Narrator and then seven days later, another decisive and controversial announcement. Cpa order number two the decision to dissolve the iraqi military. I think the decision not to recall saddams army, from a political point of view, is the single most important correct decision that we made in the 14 months we were there. Narrator it was a decision that had been quietly authorized by the civilian leadership at the pentagon. But just nine days before the war began, the president had agreed to keep the iraqi army. The briefing recommended that the regular iraqi army be maintained as an institution because we believe that it would be dangerous to put 300,000 men on the street with guns, without jobs. Narrator the u. S. Commanders, desperate for boots on the ground, had been counting on a pacified iraqi army to do the grunt work. We actually had people negotiating with iraqis to bring them back, and there were a lot of iraqis saying, okay, we can bring back units. They were clearly anticipating, at least as late as 9 may, of having available iraqi forces for us to use in a reconstruction effort. Now you have a couple hundred thousand people who are armed because they took their weapons home with them, who know how to use the weapons, who have no future and have a reason to be angry at you. Who knows how many folks who got disgruntled and went to the other si . I will tell you this 72 hours after the decision was made, the first major attack from the airport road took place. And i got two of my military police killed. And its been downhill from there. Narrator and for commanding general tommy franks, it was just one more reason to retire. All the recommendations that we were making werent being taken by bremer or rumsfeld. So thats when franks said, im done. They said, well, you can be chief of staff of the army. He said, no, im done. What would i do . President asked him, nope. Narrator and then, the top military commanders in iraq all left. So across the board, its almost like people are wiping their hands, saying, great job, fellas. You know, you guys play the next game. Were out of here. Narrator but even as the generals left, the fighting was far from over. What would become known as the insurgency had begun. The military had been disbanded. The sheiks were telling me that the insurgents were paying them money, paying them up to 500 per operation. If they could videotape to show that they had killed someone, they got a bonus. Its got a military spin on it. Now you werent seeing looting, criminal things, as much as you were seeing grenades off of bridges, all types of things. In iraq, its been another violent day. Two car bombs. There are some who feel like the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring them on. Weve got the force necessary to deal with the security situation. There has been another spasm of violence in iraq. We were in a state of denial. A car bomb killed at least five iraqis in the center of baghdad. We were looking on these as sort of a small group of isolated diehards that we could largely ignore. In iraq, difficult work remains. Coalition forces have captured now some 32 out of 55 of the most wanted. Theyre making progress against the deadenders who are harassing Coalition Forces. Narrator then, a defining moment. Any debate about whether there was an insurgency was settled. It began with a car bombing at the Jordanian Embassy. August 2003 is when the real war for the future of iraq began. August 7, the Jordanian Embassy gets blown up, and a few days later, the u. N. Gets blown up. I am in ambassador bremers front office. We get the news, and we go into his office and thats where things take off. Narrator the United Nations top envoy, sergio de mello, had been killed. It was a very emotional situation for everybody involved. We will leave no stone unturned to find the people who did this. With this new kind of attack, how can you secure this city and this country . Well do our best to find these people before they attack and to deal with them. And we will. Narrator to the experts, it was clear america was still at war. I knew for absolute certain when they had the series of bombings the police station, the Jordanian Embassy, the red cross and the u. N. That was clearly a campaign to drive out all of the elements that could help the United States govern a country. explosions narrator the pentagons plan to send more than 100,000 troops home by the end of the summer was now out of the question. Narrator in september 2003, the secretary of defense boarded a c17 globemaster to go see iraq for himself. Impatient, he kept asking all of the brass that traveled with him the same question. When are you going to get this thing wrapped up . Is the phrase i heard rumsfeld use. When are you going to get this thing wrapped up . Narrator rumsfeld spent a couple of days looking around and realized his commanding general, ricardo sanchez, didnt know what was happening. They had absolutely no intelligence. Sanchez said, no intelligence. He said, thats not a term of art. We had no intelligence on the enemy. We didnt know who we were fighting. We didnt know what resources they had. We had no strategy for fighting this enemy. And the demand from washington was for intelligence. Narrator sanchez, desperate, pushed his commanders hard. Thousands of iraqis were swept up in raids that fall. It was their reality that, you know, we had these dragnet arrests. Youd go into a village and just arrest everybody. siren blaring narrator sanchez needed a place to hold and interrogate the prisoners. There was one not far from baghdad Saddam Husseins mostfeared prison, abu ghraib. Abu ghraib became the de facto boot camp for the insurgency. The biggest single tactical mistake was to stuff abu ghraib w