THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
May 2003
Week Three
Bremer disbands Iraqi Army, crippling the US's ability to ensure Iraq's security
- May 15: New Iraqi administrator Paul "Jerry" Bremer issues the second
Iraq war and occupation
of his new marching orders for Iraq society, "Order No. 2," ordering the immediate disbanding of the Iraqi Army, disbanding the Ministries of Defense and the Interior, and all of Hussein's bodyguards and special paramilitary organizations. (Reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn give the date as May 23.) - Outgoing reconstruction chief Jay Garner is dumbfounded. This is worse than yesterday's de-Ba'athification order, he thinks. Garner's entire plan to ensure Iraq's security depended on the use of the Iraqi military -- at least 200,000 to 400,000 troops -- as the backbone of a corps to rebuild the country and provide security. Garner had briefed Bush, Rumsfeld, and the NSC on the plan many times. The CIA and members of Garner's staff were in the process of arranging for the reconstitution of the Iraqi military, with thousands of military officers and men making more and more overtures, waiting and hoping to come back in some form. "We have already made plans to bring the army back," Garner argues to Bremer. This new plan undoes months of work. "Well, the plans have changed," Bremer replies. "The thought is that we don't want the residuals of the old army. We want a new and fresh army." "Jerry, you can get rid of an army in a day, but it takes years to build one," Garner retorts. It isn't just about a soldier in the field or getting a bunch of riflemen. "Any army is all the processes it takes to equip it and train it and sustain it and make it last." Bremer refuses to listen. Garner then says, "You can't get rid of the Ministry of the Interior. ...You just made a speech yesterday and told everybody how important the police force is." Bremer says, "It is." Garner continues, "All the police are in the Ministry of the Interior. If you put this out, they'll all go home today." This is news to Bremer. Bremer rescinds the order to disband Interior in order to keep Iraq's police force on the job, but the order to disband Iraq's military stays.
- Overnight, huge, spontaneous protests by now-unemployed Iraqi military members take place outside the gates of the CPA, protesting what one banner calls the "humiliation to the dignity of the nation."
- Like the de-Ba'athification order, the demobilization order had been drafted by the neoconservatives in Douglas Feith's office in the Pentagon. State Department advisor David Phillips later writes that by dissolving the Iraqi army, the Bush administration had "committed one of the greatest errors in the history of US warfare: It unnecessarily increased the ranks of its enemies." CIA official John Maguire, fresh from Operation Anabasis (see earlier items) and now setting up the CIA's Baghdad station, recalls that the dissolution of the army "disenfranchised people with guns, and it got rid of the technocrats -- the people who ran the society -- because it was a militarized society. It was a cataclysmic mistake."
- In his 2006 book, My Year in Iraq, Bremer omits his discussions with Garner, but says he believed the Iraqi army had "self-demobilized." Signing the order abolishing the Iraqi military "would not send home a single soldier or disband a single unit," he writes. "All that had happened weeks before." Bremer is telling a tremendous lie. He also writes that he feared the Kurds, who hate and fear the old army, would secede from Iraq if the Iraqi military were not disbanded. But over the next year, every one of the sergeants and officers who will make up the new Iraqi army come from the old military.
- A senior White House source later tells New York Times reporter James Risen that Bush was never consulted about the disbanding of the Iraqi army -- "the most fateful decision of the postinvasion period." Risen writes in 2006 -- and indeed, Bush had no idea that it was going to happen until Bremer made his announcement. The decision, made by Feith and almost certainly coordinated with Donald Rumsfeld, contradicted the recommendations of an interagency planning group chaired by the NSC as well as the State Department's Future of Iraq project. (Bob Woodward, James Risen, Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
Lynch "rescue" exposed as PR stunt
- May 15: The BBC publishes a damning expose of the US Army's attempt to portray the "rescue" of Private Jessica Lynch as a heroic rescuing of the damsel in distress, when the reality is quite different.
Iraq war and occupation
According to the BBC report, the "story is one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived." Contrary to Army claims that Lynch suffered gunshot wounds while fighting against savage Iraqi gunmen, the reality, according to her Iraqi doctor and later confirmed by the Army and Lynch herself, is that she broke her arm and her thigh when her vehicle crashed. "There was no [sign of] shooting, no bullet inside her body, no stab wound -- only road traffic accident," explains the doctor who treated her, Harith al-Houssona. "They want to distort the picture. I don't know why they think there is some benefit in saying she has a bullet injury." Two days before her "rescue," Iraqi doctors had actually tried to return her to an American unit; when the doctors' vehicle approached a US checkpoint, they were fired upon, forcing their return to the hospital. - Instead, the US devised, staged, and executed a "rescue" as elaborate, and as false, as any scene ever shot for a movie. The BBC reports, "When footage of Lynch's rescue was released, General Vincent Brooks, the US spokesman in Doha, said, 'Some brave souls put their lives on the line to make this happen, loyal to a creed that they know that they'll never leave a fallen comrade.' The American strategy was to ensure the right television footage by using...images from their own cameras, editing the film themselves. The Pentagon had been influenced by Hollywood producers of reality TV and action movies, notably the man behind Black Hawk Down, Jerry Bruckheimer. Bruckheimer advised the Pentagon on the primetime television series Profiles from the Front Lines that followed US forces in Afghanistan in 2001. That approach was taken on and developed on the field of battle in Iraq." According to the BBC investigation, the Iraqi doctors at the hospital were prepared to cooperate with the Americans when they saw the helicopters approach the building. Witnesses were amazed when US special forces teams, who knew there were no Iraqi soldiers in the hospital, leapt out of the helicopters shooting at nothing. A doctor tells the BBC, "We were surprised. Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the hospital. It was like a Hollywood film. They cried, 'go, go, go,' with guns and blanks without bullets, blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show for the American attack on the hospital -- action movies like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan."
- Psyops specialist Colonel Sam Gardiner realized quickly that the entire event was staged for propaganda purposes upon hearing the attack described as an ambush and how Lynch was being held captive by "terrorist death squads." "It's not an ambush when you drive a convoy into enemy lines," he says. (Lynch's convoy had gotten lost and driven into an Iraqi position; the Pentagon claimed that Lynch's convoy was ambushed.) Gardiner learned later that the references to "terrorist death squads" came directly on order from either Donald Rumsfeld or the White House. Gardiner was further amazed to learn that as soon as Lynch was airlifted from her hospital bed, the first call from the special forces "rescuers" went, not to their military commander, but to Jim Wilkinson, the public relations chief of CENTCOM and head of American military propaganda in the region. "This is very strange for a military operation," Gardiner later writes. "When I tell military friends, they often respond, 'Do you suppose they staged it?'"
- The story is further tainted by the method in which the Washington Post obtained exclusive sources of information -- or rather, misinformation -- from unnamed but highly placed officials at the Pentagon. The Post, which will later contradict its own initial sensational accounts of Lynch's "rescue," failed to question the sources, and instead bought the entire story, hook, line, and sinker, in its April 3 story and the follow-ups that it published. Post ombudsman Michael Getler will be forced to write three separate crow-eating retractions, and later says tellingly, "This was the single most memorable story of the war, and it had huge propaganda value. It was false, but it didn't get knocked down until it didn't matter quite so much."
- The Post was not the only major media outlet to feed blindly at the trough of government disinformation. CBS will try everything it can to obtain an exclusive interview with Lynch, using all the resources its parent company, Viacom (owners of, among other properties, MTV and Paramount Pictures), can muster, including the offer of a television movie, a book deal, and a concert in Lynch's hometown to feature either Ja Rule or Ashanti. "Maybe that went over the line," CBS chairman Leslie Moonves later says. "That was not respecting, possibly, the sanctity of CBS News." NBC also tries for exclusive access to Lynch, and later airs a movie, Saving Private Lynch, in November 2003, retelling the disinformation account of Lynch's "daring rescue." (The TV movie deliberately apes the title of the Oscar-winning Steven Spielberg movie about World War II, Saving Private Ryan.) Iraqi lawyer Mohammed Odel ah-Rehaief writes a tell-all book supposedly telling the daring story of his own successful attempts, at risk of life and limb, to inform the Americans of Lynch's capture and whereabouts. Al-Rehaief is granted asylum in the US, given $300,000 by Rupert Murdoch's Harper-Collins to write the book, and given a lucrative job at the Livingston Group, a powerful DC lobbying firm run by Bob Livingston, the Republican who formerly served as Speaker of the House. The book, Because Each Life is Precious: Why an Iraqi Man Came to Risk Everything for Private Jessica Lynch, will be promoted by Livingston Group colleague Lauri Fitz-Pegado. Fitz-Pegado is best known for her work at the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, where in 1990 she promoted the appearance of a 15-year old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah, who testified before Congress that she witnessed Iraqi soldiers throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators to die on the cold floor of the hospital she supposedly worked at. Her testimony shocked many members of Congress, and propelled the resolution to go to war with Iraq, which only passed the Senate by six votes. It is later revealed that the entire testimony was staged; Nayirah turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US, and her entire testimony was scripted. Another book will be written about the Lynch rescue, by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Bragg. Titled I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story, is, like the TV movie, a shameless propagandizing of the entire incident, virtually devoid of truth and reality, but a tremendous coup for US propagandists. The entire story, though false, helps to sell the war to the American public, and in that sense can be considered a major success. (Amy Goodman and David Goodman, Earth Island/Rense)
- May 15: Ron Martz, a journalist embedded with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, writes,
Conservative media slant
"There must have been two wars in Iraq. There was the war I saw and wrote about as a print journalist embedded with a tank company of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized). Then there was the war that many Americans saw, or wanted to see, on TV. I saw and wrote about a war that was confusing and chaotic, as are all wars. ...It was a war in which civilians died and were horribly wounded. It was a war in which soldiers questioned the intelligence they received, the logistics lines that had trouble supplying them with water and spare parts, and the reasons they were fighting the war. Apparently that is not the war the TV-viewing and occasional newspaper-reading public wanted to see or thought it saw. The war they saw, or thought they saw, on TV was meticulously planned, flawlessly executed -- and not a single member of the armed forces had a complaint or problem. Few civilians died in that war. ...When I wrote in one story about 'bloody street fighting in Baghdad,' it appeared the morning TV viewers were seeing jubilant Marines and Iraqi civilians tearing down statues of Saddam Hussein on the eastern side of the Tigris River. Some readers, believing all of Baghdad was like that, were livid. They did not grasp the fact that, on the western side of the river, pitched battles were still taking place. Because they did not see it on TV, it was not happening. And it did not fit their view of the war. Many who wrote me questioned not only my patriotism but my ancestry and my sexual orientation. Many fell back on the old canard that all media are left-wingers. 'Ron, if it's going so badly, why don't you just join the other side and cheer for them instead?' wrote one. 'Millions of patriotic Americans are just sick and tried of the constant hate the military, hate Bush, hate America drivel you spew forth masquerading as 'good' journalism,' wrote another. ...When I voiced complaints from soldiers about lack of mail, water, and spare parts, they were called 'whiners' and 'crybabies' [by viewers]. And when I quoted one soldier who had been under fire almost daily for four weeks complaining about faulty intelligence, one reader suggested he be stripped of his uniform and sent home in disgrace." (Editor and Publisher) - May 15: House GOP leader Tom DeLay storms out of a Washington, DC restaurant
GOP's contempt for democracy
after being asked not to smoke cigars in a building owned by the federal government. When informed that smoking is illegal in federal buildings, DeLay snarls, "I am the federal government." (DCCC)
- May 16: This afternoon, outgoing reconstruction chief Jay Garner meets with General John Abizaid, who is slated to take over command of all US military forces in Iraq from the retiring Tommy Franks.
Iraq war and occupation
Both are worried about the combat continuing in the areas north of Baghdad; though the Iraqis still fighting are ill-equipped for the contest and are being slaughtered, they continue to fight a hopeless battle. Both agree that the quick installation of a new Iraqi government will encourage the fighting to come to a close, but that isn't happening. Garner then turns to the topic of de-Ba'athification, a policy ordered by new administrator Paul Bremer (see above items). "John, I'm telling you. If you do this it's going to be ugly. It'll take ten years to fix this country, and for three years you'll be sending kids home in body bags." "I hear you, I hear you," Abizaid says, and asks Garner to remain in Iraq. Garner says, "I can't stay." - That evening, Bremer and John Sawers, Britain's ambassador to Egypt who is in Iraq as the top UK representative to Bremer's nascent CPA, host a dinner meeting with the Iraqi leadership group Garner had put together in April (see previous items). Bremer initially refused to attend the dinner because he wants to impress upon everyone that he, not Garner, is now in charge. Bremer, supremely self-confident, tells the Iraqis his prime job is fighting terrorism, to the point where he considers the problems of the Iraqi people and their society virtually irrelevant. "One thing you need to realize is that you're not the government," he states. "We are. And we're in charge." Garner is dismally certain that the imperial takeover he had feared for months is now a reality. (Bob Woodward)
- May 16: Bush officials say they have evidence that recent bombings in Saudi Arabia, and other attacks still in the planning stages, were planned and carried out by senior al-Qaeda operatives who have found safe havens in Iran. Two of Osama bin Laden's key lieutenants, Saif al Adel and Mohammed al Masri, are known to be in Iran. Al Adel was once bin Laden's chief of security and al Masri ran the al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. Both men played key roles in the 1998 bombing of two American embassies in Africa and have risen to the senior ranks of al-Qaeda as more and more of its leaders are killed or captured. Officials say Iran is not serving as a base for al-Qaeda the way Afghanistan once did; there are no al-Qaeda training camps in Iran and no rank-and-file fighters. But a few senior al-Qaeda leaders are using Iran as a sanctuary, according to Bush officials. The Iranian government denies knowing anything about them; an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman says, "The repetition of such baseless claims cannot portray them as valid and credible." The Iranians say if they learn about any such al-Qaeda operatives inside Iran, they will arrest the terrorists immediately. As for Bush's part, the rhetoric is predictable: "The best way to defend the homeland, the best way to secure the future of the American people is to find the killers before they strike us. And that's exactly what we're doing now inside of Saudi Arabia," he says. (AP/CBS News)
- May 16: The carefully crafted, polished presentation made by President Bush aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln is just the latest example of the groundbreaking efforts by the administration to promote the Bush presidency.
Media manipulation and marketing by GOP
CNN writes, "Officials of past Democratic and Republican administrations marvel at how the White House does not seem to miss an opportunity to showcase Mr. Bush in dramatic and perfectly lighted settings. It is all by design: the White House has stocked its communications operation with people from network television who have expertise in lighting, camera angles and the importance of backdrops." In a speech promoting his economic plan in Indianapolis a few days ago, White House officials asked people in the crowd behind Bush to remove their ties so that they would look "more like the ordinary folk the president said would benefit from his tax cut." Michael Deaver, Ronald Reagan's chief "image maker," says "They understand the visual as well as anybody ever has. They watched what we did, they watched the mistakes of Bush I, they watched how Clinton kind of stumbled into it, and they've taken it to an art form." The administration has spent lavish amounts on its self-promotion. For the prime-time television address that Bush delivered to the nation on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the White House rented three barges of giant Musco lights, the kind used to illuminate sports stadiums and rock concerts, sent them across New York Harbor, tethered them in the water around the base of the Statue of Liberty, and then blasted them upward to illuminate all 305 feet of America's symbol of freedom. It was the ultimate patriotic backdrop for Bush, who spoke from Ellis Island. For a speech that Bush delivered last summer at Mount Rushmore, the White House positioned the best platform for television crews off to one side, not head on as other White Houses have done, so that the cameras caught Bush in profile, his face perfectly aligned with the four presidents carved in stone. And for remarks Bush made promoting his tax cut plan near Albuquerque, the White House unfurled a backdrop that proclaimed its message of the day, "Helping Small Business," over and over. The type was too small to be read by most in the audience, but just the right size for television viewers at home. - Scott Sforza is Bush's main image-maker, who created the White House "message of the day" backdrops and helped design the $250,000 set at the United States Central Command forward headquarters in Doha, Qatar, during the Iraq war. Former NBC cameraman Bob DeServi, described as a master at lighting, works closely with Sforza. To stage a Bush speech in Bucharest's Revolution Square, DeServi rented Musco lights in Britain, had them shipped across the English Channel and driven across Europe to Romania, where they lighted Bush and the giant stage across from the country's former Communist headquarters. Greg Jenkins, a former Fox News producer, is Bush's director of presidential advance. Jenkins manages the enormous staff who move days ahead of Bush and his entourage to set up the staging of all White House events. As for the "Mission Accomplished" speech, media strategists noted afterward that Sforza and his aides had choreographed every aspect of the event, even down to the members of the Lincoln crew arrayed in coordinated shirt colors over Mr. Bush's right shoulder and the "Mission Accomplished" banner placed to perfectly capture the president and the celebratory two words in a single shot. The speech was specifically timed for what image makers call "magic hour light," which cast a golden glow on Mr. Bush. "If you looked at the TV picture, you saw there was flattering light on his left cheek and slight shadowing on his right," says former Clinton media advisor Joshua King. "It looked great." Chris Carlson, an ABC cameraman, says of the Bush administration, "They seem to approach an event site like it's a TV set. They dress it up really nicely. It looks like a million bucks." (CNN)
- May 17: A coalition of neoconservatives, pro-Israel organizations, and Iranian monarchists is pressing the White House to escalate its "cold war" with Iran.
War with Iran
Bush has publicly encouraged the Iranian people to replace their Islamic theocracy with a more democratic and representative government, but privately he and his aides are known to be keenly interested in more direct methods of toppling the Iranian government. Several knowledgeable observers say that the alliance of warhawks seems to be winning the debate. "There is a pact emerging between hawks in the administration, Jewish groups and Iranian supporters of Reza Pahlavi [the exiled son of the former shah of Iran] to push for regime change," says Pooya Dayanim, president of the Iranian-Jewish Public Affairs Committee in Los Angeles and a supporter of US action against Iran. - According to Forward magazine, "[t]he emerging coalition is reminiscent of the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, with Pahlavi possibly assuming the role of Iraqi exile opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi, a favorite of neoconservatives. Like Chalabi, Pahlavi has good relations with several Jewish groups. He has addressed the board of the hawkish Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and gave a public speech at the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, and met with Jewish communal leaders. Pahlavi also has had quiet contacts with top Israeli officials. During the last two years, according to a knowledgeable source, he has met privately with Prime Minister [Ariel] Sharon and former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as Israel's Iranian-born president, Moshe Katsav." And like with the prewar debate on invading Iraq, the State and Defense Departments are at loggerheads over the idea of striking Iran. "The president, the vice president and, even more so, the Pentagon support regime change," says a knowledgeable source. "But State does not want to meddle in Iran, so you have a big fight right now within the administration."
- Influential neoconservatives like the Weekly Standard's William Kristol are fueling the debate by calling for forcible regime change inside Iran. On the other side of the debate, advocates of a more restrained policy say that the disappointing performance of the Iranian reformists have undercut their efforts to promote diplomatic outreaches towards Iran. "Some people at the Pentagon have concluded that the reformists are just mullahs with smiling faces and that regime change is the only way," says Gary Sick, director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University and an advocate of engaging Iran diplomatically. "They believe that Iran is ripe for revolution, but I think this is highly questionable." Neocon Daniel Pipes even goes so far as to deny that MEK is a terrorist organization, writing on May 20, " It used terrorism decades ago, when its members attacked Americans. For the last 15 years, however, the MEK has been organized as an army, and its only violent actions have been directed against the Iranian regime. ...[T]he MEK really has foresworn this barbaric tactic," and therefore is worthy of being used by the US."
- Within the administration, the most vocal advocates for striking at Iran to topple the theocracy are Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Rumsfeld's deputies, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. Feith has recently added Iran expert Michael Rubin to his "Office of Special Plans," the outfit set up to create intelligence justifying the invasion of Iraq. The OSP thusly appears to be now working on Iran. Previously a researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East policy, Rubin has vocally advocated regime change in Tehran. Intelligence sources say that, like its product about Iraq, the OSP is producing highly colored, slanted, and perhaps fabricated intelligence about Iran. "The office of special plans has been interviewing people and gathering intelligence on Iran in order to be ready to support democracy," says one pro-war advocate. "They have spent much more time doing that than the State experts on Iran."
- In Congress, Republican senator Sam Brownback has introduced legislation that would set aside $50 million to fund Iranian opposition television and radio stations in Los Angeles -- most of which promote a restoration of the shah's monarchy -- as well as human rights and pro-democracy groups. Supporters of the shah's son, Pahlavi, have been supporting Brownback's amendment, known as the Iran Democracy Act. So has the main pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). "We support efforts to encourage the people of Iran to cut the regime's ties to terrorism and its pursuit of nuclear weapons," says Rebecca Dinar, a spokeswoman for AIPAC. But AIPAC's support for Pahlavi and the Iranian monarchists has so far been under the table. "The Jewish groups are telling Reza that they will give him private support and help arrange meetings with US officials," says a source. Iranian Jews tend to support Pahlavi, in part because he is seen as the most recognizable opposition figure among immigrants and in part because they perceive the reign of the Shah as a "golden era" for Jews. While Pahlavi says he supports democracy, he has called for a referendum to restore the monarchy.
- A key Pahlavi supporter is the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Ledeen, who has long, if murky, ties with Iran, and was a player in the Reagan-era Iran-Contra scandal. Ledeen has long said that the time is ripe for overthrowing the Iranian government. Ledeen has joined with fellow neoconservatives such as former CIA director James Woolsey, former Reagan official Frank Gaffney, and Iranian-American oil consultant Rob Sobhani, along with former Democratic senator Paul Simon, to set up a group called the Coalition for Democracy in Iran. Ledeen told a crowd in Los Angeles last month that with $20 million, there could be a "free Iran," and he knew how to use the money. Asked about the possibility of covert action, a member of the Pentagon-linked Defense Policy Board answers with one word: "Maybe." (Forward/Information Clearinghouse, Daniel Pipes)
- May 17: Outgoing chief of Iraqi reconstruction Jay Garner, a retired Army general, hosts a final meeting with Generals John Abizaid, David McKiernan (the ground commander of US forces in Iraq), and the flag officer-civilian teams dealing with his top ten issues of rebuilding Iraqi society.
Iraq war and occupation
Paul Bremer's offices are across the courtyard. As the meeting begins, Bremer has Abizaid summoned from the meeting to discuss something in his offices. "As soon as we finish this meeting," Abizaid tells Bremer's envoy, Clay McManaway. "Now," McManaway says. Garner tells Abizaid to go ahead and report to Bremer. Minutes later, McManaway comes back and tells McKiernan he needs to report to Bremer. Garner tells McKiernan to leave. Another general asks Garner if they should even bother having the meeting. Garner continues, thinking that the issues on the table -- the Iraqi ministries, back pay, police, water, electricity, sewage, fuel, food, governance, health, and security -- are just the essence of Iraq's future. Who could give a sh*t? he muses. Garner's deputy Ron Adams later recalls that he was "disgusted" by Bremer's obvious tactics. "We were being marginalized," he later says. After the meeting, Garner storms into Bremer's office and, exerting restraint, does not slam the door. "Don't you ever do that to me again," he orders. Bremer feigns ignorance. "What do you mean?" Garner snaps, "If you ever have me in a meeting and you start pulling people out of it --" Garner cuts himself off and then says, "You give me more respect than that. I'll tell you what. I'll make it easy on you, Jerry. I'm going home." Bremer leaps out of his seat. "You can't go home," he retorts. "I can't work with you," Garner says, "and I'm leaving. What you just did in there -- I've never had anybody do something like that to me before, and I'll never let you do something like that again." "I didn't know what was going on," Bremer protests. "That's bullsh*t," Garner snaps. "You knew exactly what was going on." An apparently contrite Bremer finally convinces Garner to stay, but Garner warns him, "I'll work on a day-to-day contract with you. The next time you piss me off, I'm gone. There's a couple of things that I'd like to finish, and I don't think it'll take me long. And once I finish with these things then I'll come shake your hand and leave." - Bremer, having gotten Garner to acquiesce to stay for a while longer, then asserts his authority again. "You've got to make the staff available to me" to help me finish my work, Garner says, but Bremer retorts, "I don't think I can do that." Bremer says he and Garner will give conflicting guidance. "I don't think I can get anything accomplished if I don't have a staff," Garner says, but Bremer merely promises to think about it. Bremer later writes that he considers Garner's staff full of "leakers" to the press -- Bremer blames Garner's staff for informing the media of his initial plans to have US troops indiscriminately fire on looters -- and writes, "I wanted Jay's expertise in logistics, but I wouldn't be sorry to see the leakers go." Bremer would end up retaining most of Garner's staff for his own organization, the CPA.
- The bad blood between Garner's staff, mostly retired flag officers and civilians with decades of experience in the various private sectors, and Bremer's staff of energetic 20-somethings was already plain. Garner's group had nicknamed themselves the "Space Cowboys," after the Clint Eastwood movie about four retired astronauts getting back together for one final mission. Garner's group nicknamed Bremer's staff the "Neocon Children's Brigade," and, in a play on the CPA's initials, "Children Playing Adults." (Bob Woodward)
- May 18: IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei says that he is "frustrated" by
Iraq war and occupation
the US's refusal to let UN and IAEA weapons inspection teams back into Iraq. He and the UN's head weapons inspector Hans Blix (ElBaradei's predecessor as chief of the IAEA) have found themselves at odds with the US over the issue of Iraq's so-called WMD programs. The IAEA refused to bow to pressure from the US to declare Iraq in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. (Guardian)
- May 19: CPA administrator Paul Bremer signs the order disbanding Iraq's military forces.
Iraq war and occupation
In the days after the order, vehicles traveling the road between Baghdad and the airport begin regularly coming under attack. Large crowds gather to protest the order. "We demand the formation of a government as soon as possible, the restoration of security, rehabilitation of public institutions, and disbursement of the salaries of all military personnel," one protester, former major general Sahib al-Musawi, says. "If our demands are not met, next Monday will mark the start of estrangement between the Iraqi army and people on the one hand and the occupiers on the other." Colonel Paul Hughes, the member of Jay Garner's staff working on disbursing his proposed $20 emergency payments to the now-fired military soldiers, is told by the spokesman for the group of Iraqi military officers he has been working with, "We have men who have families. They have no food. We need to do something." Hughes promises he will try to get them the payments. (Bob Woodward)
"First, let me make it very clear, poor people aren't necessarily killers. Just because you happen to be not rich doesn't mean you're willing to kill." -- George W. Bush, May 19
- May 20: In a report to Congress, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) officially changes the name of John Poindexter's "Total Information Awareness" project to the
Domestic spying
"Terrorism Information Awareness" program, apparently feeling that such a name change will soothe the worries of angry citizens and groups who have protested against the prospect of surrendering large amounts of Constitutionally mandated privacy to TIA. The document says in part, "Previously known as Total Information Awareness, this name created in some minds the impression that TIA was a system to be used for developing dossiers on American citizens. This is not DoD's interest in pursuing this program. Rather, DoD's purpose in pursuing these efforts is to protect U.S. citizens by detecting and defeating foreign terrorist threats before an attack. To make this objective absolutely clear, DARPA has changed the program name to Terrorism Information Awareness." Congress suspended funding for the program in February 2003 pending a DoD review of its privacy implications. (DARPA, Electronic Privacy Information Center)
