How the 'gang of four' lost Iraq

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As Ferguson alternates between interviews with Hughes and the supercilious Walter Slocombe, senior adviser for national security and defense to the CPA, two competing narratives emerge.

"We didn't disband the army. The army disbanded itself ... There was no army to disband," says Slocombe.

But Hughes is having none of it. "If the military had been kept together and treated with respect, we could have nipped the insurgency in the bud," he says. In fact, he counters, the first incidents of roadside bombing in the Iraqi capital occurred several days after Bremer officially disbanded the Iraqi military.

"I think this decision to disband the army came as a surprise to most of us," says Armitage in the film. "I thought we had just created a problem. We had a lot of out-of-work soldiers."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/II28Ak03.html

[Demeter]

1. Sunday Morning Quarterbacking

There was no way to win this short of genocide, and they still won't admit it (because they are doing the genocide as we speak!).

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2. Nothing will ever be their fault. nt