Hmmm. Maybe firing all of them might have been a mistake.

[mburbank]

U.S. Moves to Rehire Some From Baath Party, Military

By Robin Wright, Washington Post Staff Writer

The United States is moving to rehire former members of Iraq 's ruling Baath Party and senior Iraqi military officers fired after the ouster of Saddam Hussein , in an effort to undo the damage of its two most controversial policies in Iraq, according to U.S. officials.

The U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, proposed the policy shifts to broaden the strategy to entice the powerful Sunni minority back into the political fold and weaken support for the insurgency in the volatile Sunni Triangle, two of the most persistent challenges for the U.S.-led occupation, the officials say. Both policies are at the heart of national reconciliation, increasingly important as the occupation nears an end.

"Iraq has a highly marginalized Sunni minority, and the more that people of standing can be taken off the pariah list, the more that community will become involved politically," said a senior envoy from a country in the U.S.-led coalition.



Sooo, then, Bremmer's wholesale firing of all of them (especially while they were still armed) was a bad move right? A mistake? And this is policy change to correct that mistake. Because that's what you do when you make a mistake, you correct it, admit it, and try to fix it.

[ziggytrix]

Never admit a mistake. Or if you have to, call it a misunderstanding or an oversight. Mistake is a dirty word.

[mburbank]

Well, let me predict the next pahse of the missunderstanding then.

Instead of a sober vetting of Baath military we reinstall, we just go with what we can find who say they're willing. Then when they start shooting at us, or just walking away, like a large number of the police we trained we say "SEE?! We told you were were right about firing them all! Reinstituting some of them was a missunderstanding!"

[Buffalo Tom]

The U.S. post-war reconstruction efforts in Iraq seem to be just as effective as using Krazy Glue to fix a Ming vase.

I think what Powell said to Dubya when he was informed of the latter's decision to invade Iraq will be the epitaph of this whole mess: 'If you break it, you've bought it'.

[kellychaos]

I've never seen any member of our current administration apologize for anything or admit a mistake. I might respect them more if they did.

[mburbank]

It all depends on how you define 'mistake'. Look:

Bremer Says 'Baathist' Policy Poorly Applied
1 hour, 53 minutes ago
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By Alistair Lyon

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq 's U.S. administrator Paul Bremer said Friday a policy to root out members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party had been unjustly applied.

He announced changes to its implementation that he said would allow thousands of teachers sacked for holding party cards to return to work and thousands more to receive pensions.

"The de-Baathification policy was and is sound," he said in a speech on U.S.-funded Iraqiya television. "It does not need to be changed ... but it has been poorly implemented."

"There is no room in the new Iraq for Baathist ideology, for Baathist criminals," Bremer stressed.

He said Iraqi complaints that the de-Baathification policy had been applied unevenly and unjustly were "legitimate." An appeals process for those sacked would be speeded up.


See, now, the 'Policy' which was Bremers, was not a mistake. It was the 'application' of the 'policy'.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Well, one problem I see with allowing Baathists into the military is that their party could essentially become the "military wing" of the nations. I'm sure these are the kind of concerns Bremer had, you see it in Syria and Lebanon. Allowing an already established party, one that operates in various nations, seems like an unfair advantage, perhaps.

Point of order-- the military should be citizen based, it should be slighlt unprofessional at this point, and it should be diversified, religiously, ethnically, and ideologically, me thinks.

[mburbank]

While I appreciatte your excellent example of what a devil's advocate would do if they were doing it well, I think in this case you miss the point of the post.

which is:

Bremmer made a sweeping, all inclusive judgement. That judgement (like almost any that's sweeping and all inlusive) worked out badly. Now he wishes to make an adjustment to it, which I actually think is good. What I'm complainig about is
A.) That he even needed to make the first step (in a sweeping nature which anyone could have told you wouldn't work) and B.) That having done so he excercises the Bush Behavior Code of insisiting that his original action was flawless and that it only needs to be adjusted because other people screwed it up and the fact that he only just now noticed is not his fault as administrator, and that everything is going to plan and these are just planned for adjustments to fix things that didn't go wrong with plan that wasn't flawed.

[kellychaos]

Aaaaah ... and there we have the difference between flawless and foolproof. Somebody just remembered that the military were the ones implementing the flawless plans.