The Foreign Service Journal, March 2004

tions were Spartan: the most senior people shared four-man trailers, oth- ers were packed into available empty spaces that resembled troopship bays in their crowding and lack of privacy. After the Rashid Hotel was bombed, some of its refugees kept mattresses in broom closets, and at night slept on CPA office floors. Yet despite the external threats, a 14-hour or more work day, and a 6.5-day workweek, we knew we had an opportunity to try to do something important for our coun- try — one that might not come again. (That said, I would have been happy to see even more State Department Arabists hasten to be “present at the creation.”) As for the WMD issue, frankly, it seemed non-ger- mane to us. We all wished the estimable David Kay good luck, but were ourselves fully busy with each day’s crises. And as our devoted human rights investigators brought forth fuller accounts of Saddam’s mass graves, “Operation Iraqi Freedom” was seen by us as necessary, justified and even overdue. Siamese Twins Central to the CPA experience and its ultimate success will have been the Authority’s “Siamese twin” relationship with the U.S. military. Our military headquarters (Joint Task Force 7) were co-located in the palace with Ambassador Bremer. Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez sat immediately to Bremer’s left at the daily staff meeting. Speaking as a former draftee into the infantry, and as an FSO who has worked closely with the U.S. military in several assignments, it would exhaust the Oxford English Dictionary to describe my admiration for the soldiers with whom I worked. Our officers and enlisted personnel were smart, proficient, enterprising, disciplined, stoic and enduring. In the early morning, I’d see them load up into their solar ovens, aka Humvees, and head off for a 12-hour day of patrols. In mid-June, our office temperature hit 100 F, while outside it reached 122 F in the shade! When I asked a senior officer how our people could endure these conditions, he laconically answered, “They’re young, strong, drink a lot of water, and adapt.” Our female soldiers were great “change agents.” The sight of a female soldier, behind a 40-mm. grenade launcher, her blonde pony tail show- ing under a Kevlar helmet, made a wordless but eloquent statement about the U.S.A. Once, coming out of a meeting with a local ayatollah, I found the female MP in my security detail surrounded by a worshipful crowd of Iraqi girls. Had Iraq been a Catholic country, word might have spread: “Our Lady of Fatima has been sighted in northwest Baghdad.” At night, the enlisted men would use my “enabled phone” for calls to the United States. Only a stone could remain unmoved by these conversa- tions. I’ll never forget the sergeant who broke the news to his wife that his unit’s duty had been extended for six months. Her distress was audible throughout the office. His mild response, was, “Honey, you don’t have to shout. I hear you just fine.” Then he listened for a long while. Finally, he said gently, and with great seriousness, “Honey, you know what my job is here and I’m going to do it. But don’t worry. We’ve got the best platoon in the company. We look after each other. And, honey, please think of all the money we’re saving. And you know what? When I come home, I’ll buy you that car.” Actions Taken, and Not Taken Jerry Bremer took charge convincingly. Less than a week after his arrival in May 2003 he transformed the future of Iraqi politics by dissolving the Iraqi Army and the Ba’th Party. Of the eleven degrees of “Ba’th-hood,” those members in the top five were excluded from further government employment (with limited opportunities for appeal). Both decisions have been criticized, but such criticism is wrongheaded and ahistorical. First of all, it is worth noting that well before Bremer acted, the Iraqi Army had already doffed its uniforms, (mostly) thrown away its weapons, and melted back into the civilian population. To us at the CPA it would have undercut our own war effort had we immediately called Saddam’s army back to work. And what would the U.S. public have said? In time, matters changed. Since then, we have, first slowly, and now with increasing speed, begun to re-establish an Iraqi security force. To some degree our hand has been pushed by a changing time frame, but the Army’s initial dissolution gave us a chance F O C U S M A R C H 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 31 Jerry Bremer had to reassemble a myriad of ill-fitting, damaged, mutually antagonistic fragments into something resembling a working egg.