ANNOUNCER: Tonight, FRONTLINE investigates Losing Iraq.
Col. BRIAN McCOY, USMC (Ret.): The Iraqis had gathered around the statue and were throwing their shoes at it.
RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN, Author, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: What struck me was the Iraqis couldnt pull it down themselves
Col. BRIAN McCOY: It was obvious it wasnt going to happen. It would be a pretty anti-climatic moment if we didnt help.
BARBARA BODINE, Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance: It was a dramatic moment. It was an American flag that went on it first. Thats almost a metaphor for whats happened since. You know, then, ultimately, well, an Iraqi flag was put on it and enough photographs were taken of Iraqi cheering.
STEVEN W. CASTEEL, Advisor to Interior Ministry: By the way, that statue was very heavy. The problem was much more involved than I think anyone thought of.
RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: It made me worry. Something told me, you know, this isnt going to be quite as easy as we thought.
NARRATOR: In those early days, there was great optimism.
Col. R. ALAN KING, U.S. Army: People were justpure exhilaration. At that point in time, you think, This might just work. And I remember seeing a guy with acarrying a huge couch on his back. And he turns and says, Yay, America! You know?
JOHN BURNS, The New York Times: There were flowers. There were shouts of joy. There were people clambering on the tanks and kissing the tank crews. But by the time this happened, and within a matter of an hour of the Marine tanks coming up the Canal Expressway, of course, the looting had begun.
ANTHONY CORDESMAN, Ctr. for Strategic and Intl. Studies: And all of a sudden, the Iraqi people started looting, attacked the ministries, basically created a series of events, which didnt stop with that. Less than two U.S. brigades were in isolated positions in a city of more than five million people, having no idea of what might come next.
NEWSCASTER: Iraqis are looting on a grand scale. It is a clear sign that while war might be ending, there is trouble ahead.
NARRATOR: In Washington, the Bush administration brushed aside the bad news.
DONALD RUMSFELD, Secretary of Defense: I picked up a newspaper today, and I couldnt believe it. I read eight headlines that talked about Chaos! Violence! Unrest! And it just was, Henny Penny, the sky is falling. Ive never seen anything like it! Its just unbelievable how people can take that away from what is happening in that country!
NARRATOR: But behind closed doors, some of Rumsfelds generals were worried.
Gen. JACK KEANE, Army Vice Chief of Staff, 1999-03: In 03, from a military perspective, from the time we took the regime down, we never made a commitment to secure the population. And we never had enough resources to do it.
NARRATOR: General Jack Keane was acting Army chief of staff.
THOMAS RICKS, Author, Fiasco: General Keane is really highly admired across the Army. Hes kind of a soldiers soldier. And he had argued in the tank before the invasion of Iraq, Dont invade Iraq."
NARRATOR: Looking back, Keane says that the war plans drafted by Secretary Rumsfeld and commanding general Tommy Franks did not include adequate plans for securing the country.
Gen. JACK KEANE: I think its driven, in part, by my own failures when I was there as a senior military leader contributing to General Frankss plan, that we never even considered an insurgency as a reasonable option.
NARRATOR: On the ground, even as tensions were rising, General Franks had a surprise announcement.
MICHAEL GORDON, Co-author, Endgame: A very striking thing happened. General Franks gave guidance that his commanders should be prepared to withdraw all American forces, except for a little more than a division which would remain, by September 2003
NARRATOR: More than 110,000 troops were told to prepare to leave. A division, about 30,000, would handle Iraq.
RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: There was this power vacuum. Nobody quite knew what was the plan. The soldiers thought they were all going home.
NARRATOR: It was a message the president delivered personally when he flew 30 miles off the coast of California to reassure the world that the major combat phase of the war in Iraq was over
[May 1, 2003]
Pres. GEORGE W. BUSH: My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. Because of you, the tyrant has fallen and Iraq is free. [cheers]
THOMAS RICKS: Bush never said mission accomplished, but that banner was hanging up right behind his head as he gave that speech. And it really was a premature victory speech that didnt recognize what was going on in Iraq.
NARRATOR: The administrations strategy was to pull the troops out of Iraq and hand over responsibility to an American civilian. In Washington, Vice President Cheneys office had just the man for the job, a little known diplomat named L. Paul Bremer III.
Amb. L. PAUL BREMER III, Administrator, CPA: Well, I was contacted by two people, Paul Wolfowitz, who was deputy secretary of defense, and Scooter Libby, who was the vice presidents chief of staff, both of whom I had known for decades.
RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: Bremer is old friends with Scooter Libby, who is Cheneys chief of staff, and Libby put Bremers name forward. And Bremer was sort of the right kind of conservative.
NARRATOR: In Bremer, Cheney had given Secretary Rumsfeld a businessman, a diplomat, managing director of Kissinger and Associates
.
THOMAS RICKS: Heres a guy who had worked for Henry Kissinger, but doesnt know a whole lot about the Middle East, doesnt speak Arabic, doesnt know the region.
Amb. JAMES DOBBINS, Fmr. Asst. Secretary of State: What he lacked was the practical experience, and it was that lack of experience that commended him, in large measure, to the Bush administration.
Pres. GEORGE W. BUSH: Today, its my honor to announce that Jerry Bremer has agreed to become the presidential envoy to Iraq.
NARRATOR: President Bush made it official. Bremer was now in charge of the occupation. After a two week-crash course on Middle Eastern politics, he arrived in Iraq to head what was known as the Coalition Provisional Authority, the CPA.
L. PAUL BREMER: We flew on a C-130 into Baghdad. The thing that was striking to us was the fact that a lot of the buildings were on fire.
NARRATOR: Baghdad had been burning for one month.
MICHAEL GORDON: Thered be buildings on fire. The fires would just have to burn themselves out because there was no fire department.
Amb. CLAYTON McMANAWAY, Amb. Bremers Deputy: Theres no government. There were no police. The army was gone.
NARRATOR: As they drove into the city, Bremer made a decision and promptly announced it to his new staff.
L. PAUL BREMER: I did one thing that wasnt very smart, which was suggest to the staff meeting that I thought we should shoot the looters, that our military should have authority to shoot the looters, which they did not have at that time.
DAN SENOR, Sr. Advisor to Amb. Bremer: His point was you only needed to shoot a few of them to make that point and the looting would stop.
L. PAUL BREMER: It wasnt very smart to do because somebody on the staff immediately told the press that I had suggested shooting the looters, and we had a problem.
NARRATOR: Military commanders refused to go along with Bremers idea.
Col. H.R. McMASTER, U.S. Army: Well, of course, its against our code of honor. There just is not sufficient justification to shoot somebody because theyre carrying a computer out of the old Ministry of, you know, Education building.
NARRATOR: And so ended Paul Bremers first day in Iraq.
THOMAS RICKS: And I think one thing Bremer found out that day was that he had no command over the military.
NARRATOR: Bremers headquarters were in a heavily fortified area of Baghdad called the Green Zone.
THOMAS RICKS: The Green Zone became the Emerald City, walled off from the rest of Iraq. The rest of Iraq, electricity is intermittent at best, sewage problems, dusty, dirty, potholes. Inside the Green Zone, its calm, its quiet.
NARRATOR: As Bremer settled in, he knew he would have to deal with Iraqs complicated sectarian politics.
Col. THOMAS X. HAMMES, Military Strategist, CPA: This is one of the most fractious places you could have picked, with more problems in terms ofits right on the Shia/Sunni divide. It has the Kurds. It has 20 years of dysfunctional government.
NARRATOR: Saddam Hussein and his Sunni-dominated Baath Party had brutally controlled the countrys majority Shiites and the Kurds. Now Bremer was determined to change that.
MICHAEL GORDON: The idea is, you would remove Saddams agents from the government or people loyal to him, make room for Shiites and Kurds, who it was assumed would work together in some sort of collegial way.
NARRATOR: And Bremer had a plan to remake the Iraqi government.
Amb. ROBIN RAPHEL, Reconstruction Coordinator, CPA: Bremer hadnt been there very longliterally a dayand these papers were coming out of his briefcase. I was in the office, outside of the front office, and began reading them, and so on.
NARRATOR: It was called CPA Order Number One. It would end Sunni domination of the government and bring in rival ethnic and religious groups, the Kurds and the Shiites.
Gen. JAY GARNER (Ret.), Dir., Office of Humanitarian Assistance: Im walking down the hallway, and Ambassador Robin Raphel says, Have you seen this? She has a piece of paper. I said, No. What is it? She says, De-Baathification order. I said, Wow. So I read it real quick there in the hall. I said, This is too deep.
NARRATOR: Retired general Jay Garner was one of the few Americans who knew his way around Iraq. Hed worked there before.
Col. THOMAS M. GROSS (Ret.), Office of Humanitarian Assistance: He was very, very, very angry. And Jays very personable. His head was down. He was walking fast-paced all over. I could tell he was very upset about it.
Gen. JAY GARNER: I walked down, and a CIA guy, a great guy, was coming across the hallway. And I said, Hey, Charlie, have you read the de-Baathification? And he said, Yeah, thats why Im here. I said, Well, lets go in and talk to the ambassador.
NARRATOR: Garner was worried that Bremer seemed not to understand how things worked in Iraq.
Gen. JAY GARNER: So we went in and we talked to Ambassador Bremer for a few minutes. And I said, You know, this is too deep. I said, Letgive Charlie and I about 45 minutes to an hour. Let us digest this thing, and then let us recommend some changes to you and come back here, and well get on the phone with Rumsfeld to see if we cant soften this a bit.
THOMAS RICKS: And Bremer kind of says, Look, you dont understand. Im not asking you, Im telling you this is what Im going to do. Im not asking for your advice. And they argue a bit more. And finally, Bremer says, Look, I have my orders. This is what Im doing.
Gen. JAY GARNER: And so I said, Well, Charlie, what do you think? And to the best of my memory, Charlie said, Well, if you do this, youre going to drive 30,000 to 50,000 Baathists underground by nightfall. And the numbers closer to 50,000 than it is to 30,000.
