SCRATCH THAT, REVERSE IT

Talk about being called to heel. This op-ed by Paul Bremer reads like he had Dick Cheney standing over him, hand firmly grasping his shoulder (and Bush probably sprawled upon a nearby couch, fiddling with a Rubik's Cube) as he wrote.

In recent days, attention has been focused on some remarks I've made about Iraq. The coverage of these remarks has elicited far more heat than light, so I believe it's important to put my remarks in the correct context.

...It's no secret that during my time in Iraq I had tactical disagreements with others, including military commanders on the ground. Such disagreements among individuals of good will happen all the time, particularly in war and postwar situations. I believe it would have been helpful to have had more troops early on to stop the looting that did so much damage to Iraq's already decrepit infrastructure. The military commanders believed we had enough American troops in Iraq and that having a larger American military presence would have been counterproductive because it would have alienated Iraqis. That was a reasonable point of view, and it may have been right. The truth is that we'll never know.

The correct context? This is nearly a full reversal, and an unconvincing one at that. That we had too few troops in the immediate aftermath of the Iraq invasion is now pretty much accepted wisdom, even by much of the conservative press. Bremer's main excuse for his gaffe (which is what they call it when a politician accidentally says what he really thinks) is the lame "well, reasonable people can differ."

One has to respect Bremer for taking on a difficult and largely thankless job in the worst possible circumstances, i.e. under the direction of an administration that wanted to vindicate its own ideology more than it wanted to actually do the job right, but I find Bremer's suggestion that a larger post-invasion troop presence would have alienated Iraqis more than has an extended occupation, especially since that occupation hasn't come close to providing real security, rather silly.

Also very revealing was Bremer's immediate excuse for his candor: that he didn't know that his remarks would be recorded. That's thinking on your feet.

What he meant to say was that, of course, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.