Paul Bremer: "We had remarkable progress in the political and economic side"

[sabra]

http://www2.csoonline.com/exclusives/column.html?CID=32657

<snip>

CSO: Today is the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and we’re wondering when occasions like this come up, how do you reflect on that?

Bremer: Well, I have sort of two reactions. One is, of course, continued concern for the situation on the ground in Iraq because I believe very strongly we did a noble thing in liberating the Iraqis and that it’s proven to be more difficult than we thought it was going to be, but it was the right thing to do, and I see the difficulties that they still have and talk to my Iraqi friends about it and so forth. And of course, I have a lot of friends in Iraq who’ve fought hard, some of them have died for this. So I have kind of a mixture there.

And then when I think back on how did we do during our 14 months there, I reach the conclusion that I discussed this morning. The conventional wisdom that somehow we bungled the occupation is just wrong. We had remarkable progress in the political and economic side, and which were the two areas for which the Coalition Provisional Authority was primarily responsible. I did not have authority or responsibility over the security side. That was really a military (responsibility) and I was not in the military chain of command. And on the security side, we obviously have still got problems.

So Bremer is blaming the US military?

[Kerrytravelers]

1. Must be running out of people to point their finger at.

[Jacobin]

2. "liberated"

Paul's a comedic colonialist I see.

[youngdem]

3. It was the people blowing up we had a tough time with

[LSK]

4. did he come up with that de-Baathication order by himself

Or did Chalabi tell him to do it???

Bremer is as much to blame for us still being there as anyone.

[sabra]

6. The de-Baathication was one of the worst ideas besides invading of course...

[aquart]

5. Oh, dear. He's setting himself up as an expert.

No. Just no.

[annabanana]

9. No one should ask his opinion on ANY damn thing... He oversaw

all the little hot house flower think-tank wannabees that they put in positions where people should, you know, know stuff, and stuff. .

[sandnsea]

7. Unilateral

We had a problem because Iraq didn't want to be occupied. This was not the right thing to do - regardless - the occupation was worse than the invasion. If Bush hadn't insisted the USA is #1 and we would show the rest of the world how it's done - this would have been an international affair and a very different result. Bottom line. Republican USA arrogance is to blame, all the way around.

[radfringe]

8. ""We had remarkable progress in the political and economic side"

yeah...right... good for them... sending jobs over there so we won't have them over here

sorry if I'm not hooting and hollaring for joy - but I was just laid off today

[Hamlette]

10. he must be talking about Imperial Life in the Emerald City when he says

some say he failed. You can't read that book and think the Bush admin and Bremmer were anything but complete imcompetents.

The GOP thinks government is the problem. No, it's republicans running the government that is the problem. They prove it time and time again even in Iraq where they should have wanted it to work.

[LSK]

11. maybe he means the Economics from Halliburtans point of view

:shrug:

[Coexist]

12. do the Iraqi's still refer to them as "Bremer Walls" in his (dubious) honor?

I wonder.

[Jacobin]

13. Hey, Bremer. Take the medal of Whatever and shove it up

your %&**$^

[Javaman]

14. Of course he blames the military...

they couldn't fix his colossal fuck up of cutting loose the 200,000+ military and police force who turned into rebels.