New Iraq Documentary: CPA had 100,000 signatures of former soldiers who were ready to re-enlist

[sabra]

http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/3694/New_Iraq_Doco_Opens_Friday

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Hughes directed the Strategic Policy Office at ORHA, then CPA, and was in charge of efforts to reorganize the Iraqi army before Paul Bremer ordered it disbanded entirely. As an adviser to the CPA, Slocombe oversaw the creation of the new Iraqi army.

With frustration palpable in his tone, Hughes recounts how he had been working with former Iraqi officers on a plan to reconstitute the army when one day he heard on the news that the order had been given to disband it.

Slocombe stumbles over a few half-hearted objections before acknowledging that he may not have asked the person tasked with reformulating the Iraqi army his opinion on the recommendation to disband it--or even informed him when the decision was taken.

Garner says if he'd been asked, he would have advised strongly against the decision, but he didn't hear about it until Bremer made the announcement.

Hughes' anger arises from the disappointment of lost opportunity. Just before Bremer issued CPA order #2, Hughes said the group of former Iraqi military officers--the "Independent Military Gathering" as they called themselves--had collected more than 100,000 signatures of former soldiers who were ready to re-enlist as part of the new army.

His account contradicts L. Paul Bremer's commentary in the Washington Post last May about "What We Got Right in Iraq." According to Bremer, "By the time I arrived in Iraq, there was no Iraqi army to disband....For starters, the draftees were hardly going to return voluntarily to the army they so loathed; we would have had to send U.S. troops into Shiite villages to force them back at gunpoint."