it was astounding. thank you for taking this honor. i m proud of you. right away, within a few day s on the ground, bremer issued two o orders widely considered to be the most calamitous mistakes of the iraq war. they were disastrous. and the first was to bar all of saddam s baath party from holding the government skw jobs. the baathists who used their power to remove the iraqi people from office. and several hundred thousand iraqis who were the most advantaged and who had the best education, and all of these people lost their jobs. and then bremer fired saddam s army. a huge force of young iraqi men, mostly sunnis and turned out into the chaotic streets. of course, they still had their guns. this is a huge concern. general david petraeus was
images over and over again with some boy walking out with a vase and saying, oh, my goodness, you didn t have a plan. that s nonsense. they know what they are doing and doing a terrific job and it s untidy and free people are free to make mistakes. but the biggest mistake was this. despite rumsfeld s assurances, it was clear. the united states did not have a plan for post-war iraq. as the chaos grew deeper, so did the divide between iraq sunni s and shiites. with no one in charge, iraqis clung more tightly to what they knew, to members of their own clans and sects. other muslims began to look like the enemy. the seeds of civil war were sown. our country will be sending one of our best citizens and to paul bremer. two months after toppling
fighting the iraqi insurgency. i said that your policies are killing our troops, and you are casting them out of the one institution that was respected in iraqk and now they have no future. many critics have pointed to brem bremer s two orders as the reason for the iraqi insurgency. some say, they even led to isis. many of the people who are today with the islamic state on the military side are people are from that army. who approved the order? for years members of the bush administration have pointed fingers at each other. but for the first time paul b m bremer gave me a clear answer to the question. white house officials have variously pinned the blame on you. not the president. not the president. no, the president hasn t. yeah, well, he approved them. he approved them? yes. and george bush has never
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take even clear responsibility, but bremer says that the idea to fire baath party members came from this man, doug fit, a key aide to the president. doug fit showed me the draft, and say we are going to do this. paul bremer says that de-baathification was your idea. no, it was discussed interagency for months. and obviously, bremer did set it up. but it seems that a lot of people are blaming you. it does, but it is not true.