For example, in March 2003, Douglas Feith presented to the president
plans to reshape the Iraqi military as an apolitical and more representative
force. Feith warned against dismantling the military completely, other
than the Republican Guard. Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II , 162–63.
Ricks, Fiasco , 158–60; Pfi ff ner, “Decision Making in the Bush White
House,” 377. Later, when the consequences became clear, no one involved
wanted to claim “ownership” of the order. Bremer and Feith blamed
each other; Rumsfeld claimed the order came from above, while others
maintained it originated in the Pentagon. Like so much else in the Bush
administration Iraq policy, the order never went through a proper inter-
agency process. Woodward, State of Denial , 194, 197–98.
Ricks, Fiasco , 161–64.
Pfi ff ner, “Decision Making in the Bush White House,” 378–79.
Woodward, State of Denial , 197. Bremer’s action may have been the cor-
rect step to establish the United States under law as an occupying power
with certain responsibilities.
Ricks, Fiasco , 254–55.
Hess, Presidential Decisions for War , 2nd ed., 268–69.
Bensahel, “Mission Not Accomplished,” 463–64. Th e problem was never
remedied, either. In 2006, after Bush appealed to the cabinet to enlist
personnel from all agencies to go to Iraq and assist, a total of forty-eight
volunteers stepped forward. Woodward, War Within , 53.
Where in Western democracies the military typically has eight to ten
times the personnel of the combined personnel of ministries of foreign af-
fairs and international development, in the United States government the
ratio of personnel in the armed forces (1.8 million) to those in the State
Department (6,000 Foreign Service Offi cers) and Agency for Interna-
tional Development (2,000 personnel) is 210:1. Th e mismatch in budgets
is even larger, 350:1. Tore Nyhamar, “Accidental Vacuum or Counterinsur-
gency Logic? Th e Making of American Iraqi Surge Strategy 2007,” paper
prepared for the ECPR Stockholm, September 8–11, 2010, 21–22.
Ricks, Fiasco , 203–5, 207–8; Dobbins, “Who Lost Iraq?” 66–67. For a full
account of the CPA experience, see Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life
in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
2006).
As an indicator, Iraqi confi dence in the CPA declined from 47 percent
expressing some confi dence in it in November 2003 to a mere 14 percent
in March 2004. Ricks, Fiasco , 326. For a somewhat more positive view of
the CPA record, see Rose, How Wars End , 249–50.
