Fred Kaplan's post here is very odd. How can he write an entire piece on the disbanding of the Iraqi army and not even mention Walter Slocombe? Slocombe is the highly respected former Pentagon official (under Clinton, interestingly), who served as national security adviser to the CPA in 2003 and who acknowledges that the disbanding of the Iraqi army was largely his idea. Bremer's piece in the NYTimes talks about Slocombe's role in detail. When discussing the matter himself, Slocombe never disguises his role - and I don't believe he ever mentions Chalabi as contributing to the decision. Sure, Slocombe didn't have the power to sign the order, or to direct Bremer to do what he did, but for Kaplan to ignore his acknowledged central just seems peculiar.

Kaplan says, "we do not yet know who made this key strategic decision." But Slocombe claims he came up with the idea. Maybe Kaplan doesn't think Slocombe was as big a player in the matter as Bremer and Slocombe claim. But if so, he's got to explain why, since Slocombe is so closely associated with the disbanding decision. Simply ignoring Slocombe's role is a real weakness in Kaplan's post here.

I told BUSH to give the HIGHEST USA Medal for Civilians to Slocomb but he only gave it to BREMER who issued the order. I think you should appeal to BUSH that he should also give the medal to Slocomb for really being the genius behind FIRING the entire IRAQI army.

There was a detailed story in the Washington Post on Nov 20, 2003, that mentions Slocombe's role in this decision as well. As the story said:

The demobilization decision appears to have originated largely with Walter B. Slocombe, a former undersecretary of defense appointed to oversee Iraqi security forces. He believed strongly in the need to disband the army and felt that vanquished soldiers should not expect to be paid a continuing salary. He said he developed the policy in discussions with Bremer, Feith and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz.

"This is not something that was dreamed up by somebody at the last minute and done at the insistence of the people in Baghdad. It was discussed," Slocombe said. "The critical point was that nobody argued that we shouldn't do this."

Slocombe recalled discussing the issue with Wolfowitz on May 8 and with Feith several times, including on May 22, the night before Bremer issued the formal order. Trying to put the army back together at that point, he said, "would've been a practical disaster."

And doesn't it almost seem inevitable that any such epic screwup would, somewhere along the line, have to have involved frickin' Wolfowitz and Feith? Why couldn't they have been insurance brokers, tap dancers, rodeo clowns, crop duster pilots or something like that? Why did they have to become government policy makers? The world could have been so much better off . . .