on sunday morning, at a press gaggle after his appearance on abc's this week, secretary rumsfeld said this about the iraqi army:
By the time they got to Baghdad there was resistance in Baghdad but no fortress Baghdad and in fact, many of the Iraqi troops just disappeared into their homes and threw down their weapons and left because it was clear they were going to be defeated. So the Iraqi Army effectively disbanded itself what was left after the battles coming up from the south.
disbanded itself? um, no. paul bremer disbanded the iraqi army on may 23rd. that's why they're always complaining about not having work. but this whole 'disbanded itself' line has been used before whenever this move is criticized. 'but they went home and didn't fight, blah blah blah.' yeah, because we told them to do that with our numerous pamphlets, and then we fired them all.
of course, many people warned that doing this was a bad idea. not having work for a bunch of soldiers might lead to, oh, you know, stuff. jay garner was going to have them rebuild infrastructure to put them to work, but apparently that wasn't going to happen since he got canned after being over there for a month.
does anybody have any idea what the fuck they're doing over there? it seems there's a pattern that occurs:
and now they're all, 'oh, we've always been wanting to use the army.' maybe you should have done that before you managed to disgruntle a bunch of them. who do you think was able to have that day long firefight against american forces?
Posted by kilgore at November 3, 2003 03:29 AM | TrackBack