Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

According reports from U.K. and U.S. forces, we dropped nearly 32 million leaflets in the run up to the invasion and after the CPA took charge. Dropping psy-ops (psychological operations) leaflets is a smart tried-and-true tactic, and probably saved countless lives during the invasion.

Why then, after the relatively easy time we had during the invasion, did someone decide to completely disband the Iraqi army and police forces, after they had been promised jobs once the regime had fallen? Iraqi soldiers and police showed up in droves, asking where they should report for duty, and they were turned away. Hundreds of thousands of former military, police personnel, and civil servants were told that they were no longer welcome, could not have their old jobs back, and had to face the prospect of not being able to feed themselves or their families. No jobs, no health care, no dignity, and no hope. What else could anyone have expected but for many of these people to become insurgents?

Further, by summarily dismissing the military and police forces, the United States left Iraq's borders wide open and throughout Iraq left huge weapons caches unguarded. U.S. and British forces were undermanned, and could not secure the borders or ammo dumps. This allowed foreign fighters to swarm across the border and allowed anyone with a rucksack or a truck to load up on munitions that were left unguarded, with the help of the disenfranchised and angry former Iraqi military and police pointing out exactly where literally tons of explosives were stored. Where does President Bush think the explosives for the infamous IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) that have killed and maimed so many of our troops came from?

Every expert, Republican and Democrat, has now conceded that one of the biggest mistakes made at the early stages of this conflict was the dismissal of the former Iraqi military and police. Thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have paid for that mistake with their lives, yet no one has accepted responsibility for that mistake.

If the president didn't expect the military to melt away, then someone wasn't telling him about the psy-ops leading up to the invasion. Nor did anyone tell him that Jay Garner believed firing the military and police was one the coalitions most fatal mistakes. Either the president is not getting the right information, or he is getting the information, and he either doesn't understand it or he's lying about it. Neither scenario is encouraging.

Given President Bush's refusal to hold anyone accountable for this debacle, it is up to the Congress to sort it out. And while President Bush said in his press conference that in the end, he's the one responsible for decisions made about Iraq (not Donald Rumsfeld), there's only one body that can hold him to account, and that is the Congress.

President Bush didn't expect the Iraqi military to melt away. He didn't expect the New Orleans levees to breech. And he says he doesn't expect the Democrats to take over either house of Congress. Let's hope his track record of expectations stays the course.

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Craig Wiesner is a veteran of the United States Air Force, where he served as a Korean linguist between 1979 and 1987. He is the co-founder of Reach And Teach, a peace and social justice learning company, and is on the board of Multifaith Voices for Peace and Justice.