Membranophonist’s Ramblings

In an interview with the BBC’s Today programme a year after the capture of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Mr. Yawar called the current security situation in Iraq terrible.

The interim president blamed some of the present difficulties on the American decision to break up Saddam Hussein’s entire security apparatus as soon as they had toppled the dictator last year.

By a scratch of the pen, he said, many men with a clean record were forced out of the security forces along with the villains.

It left a vacuum which is proving hard to fill as new forces are slowly assembled.

It has cost Iraq much needed time, he said.

But the president did acknowledge that Iraqis on their own could never have toppled Saddam.

Iraq’s interim president is confident that the country’s own security forces will gain a sufficient grip to allow British and American troops to start pulling out within a year.

BBC News, World Edition

Within a year? I’m betting al-Yawar $5 that it won’t be that soon.

It’s a good thing that L. Paul Bremer is being held responsible for idiotically disbanding the Iraqi military.

The Washington Post has an article from November 2003 that provides some more detail about the decision, which was made by Bremer in late May of that year.