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Fri 23 Apr, 2004 03:23 pm
For the week of April 23, 2004
By Michael Miner
Chicago Reader.com
9/11: He Saw It Coming
Paul Bremer, the American viceroy in Baghdad, was asked the other day by Meet the Press's Tim Russert to whom he'd be turning over the keys to Iraq on June 30. Bremer couldn't say. But that's when Iraq supposedly gets its sovereignty back and Bremer can go home.
Once Bremer's time is his own again, the 9/11 commission should bring him in to testify. The question that haunts the commission today -- what should the U.S. have been doing before September 11, 2001, to prevent a terrorist attack? -- preoccupied him for years.
Before 9/11 the nation wasn't blind to the peril it was in. In 1998 Congress told the Clinton administration to conduct a study of the nation's ability to defeat terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction. An advisory panel that became known as the Gilmore commission was assembled and issued a series of annual reports. Its second, released in December 2000, asserted that "the United States has no coherent, functional national strategy for combating terrorism. . . . The organization of the Federal government's programs for combating terrorism is fragmented, uncoordinated, and politically unaccountable." The commission recommended that "the next President should develop and present to the Congress a national strategy for combating terrorism within one year of assuming office."
A career diplomat, Bremer was President Reagan's ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism. A decade later he sat on the Gilmore commission. In 1999 another congressionally mandated panel, the National Commission on Terrorism, began a six-month study of America's capacity to prevent and punish acts of terrorism. "Seriously deficient," it would conclude. Bremer chaired this commission.
On February 26, 2001, the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation opened a three-day conference on the theme "Terrorism: Informing the Public" at Cantigny, the colonel's estate in Wheaton. Bremer, who gave the keynote speech, recalled his work on the National Commission on Terrorism.
"We concluded that the general terrorist threat is increasing," Bremer said, "particularly because of a change in the motives of terrorist groups. . . . We have seen a move from narrow political motivation to a broader ideological, religious, or apocalyptic motive for many terrorist groups -- groups that are not attacking because they are trying to find a broader audience, but are acting out of revenge or hatred, or simply out of an apocalyptic belief that the end of the world is near." The new terrorists, he said, weren't interested in killing just enough innocent people to get noticed. For them it was the more dead the better.
The Bush administration had been in power just about a month at this point, but Bremer had already seen enough to draw some conclusions about it. He told the many journalists invited to the Cantigny conference to hold the White House's feet to the fire: "It is the media's responsibility, and an important one, though very uncomfortable for people in government, to put a very strong spotlight on the government's policies and practices on terrorism, especially given the current disorganization of the federal government's fight against terrorism. In this area, the federal government is in complete disarray. There's been remarkably little attention to the major recommendation the Gilmore Commission made for a substantial reorganization of the government's approach to terrorism. Journalists shouldn't let politicians get away with that.
"The new administration seems to be paying no attention to the problem of terrorism. What they will do is stagger along until there's a major incident and then suddenly say, 'Oh, my God, shouldn't we be organized to deal with this?' That's too bad. They've been given a window of opportunity with very little terrorism now, and they're not taking advantage of it. Maybe the folks in the press ought to be pushing a little bit."[/color]
Bremer's remarks, somewhat abridged, survive in Terrorism: Informing the Public, the McCormick Tribune Foundation's book-length report on the conference. By the time it was published, in 2002, that window of opportunity had slammed shut.
Paul Bremer admits Iraq mistakes
Bremer announces moves to reinstate some former Baathist members
Fri Apr 23, 4:26 PM ET Add Mideast - AFP to My Yahoo!
BAGHDAD (AFP) - The US civil administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer announced steps to reinstate some former members of Saddam Hussein's disbanded Baath party in the new army, as well as in schools and universities.
Bremer made the announcement in a rare televised address to the nation that appeared aimed at rallying Iraqi support as the US-led coalition battles a dogged insurgency by both Sunni and Shiite Muslim militants.
Amid mounting concern over the poor performance of Iraqi security forces during recent attacks, the US overseer said more former members of Saddam's military would be allowed to join the ranks of the new army.
He also announced measures to speed up the reinstatement of thousands of teachers who lost their jobs because they were once Baathists, even though they were often forced to join the former dictator's party.
Bremer has come under fire for disbanding Saddam's former army in March last year to form new US-trained security forces whose performance the top US military brass says has fallen far short of expectations.
Bremer said interim defense minister Ali Allawi planned to meet "with vetted senior officers from the former regime next week to discuss how best to build the new Iraqi military establishment.
"More of these officers with honorable records -- from the former army and elsewhere -- will serve in the months ahead as your new army grows."
"Over 70 percent of all the men in the Iraqi army and (the para-military) Iraqi Civil Defense Corps served honorably in the former army," said Bremer.
He pointed out that the first three generals of the new Iraqi army were appointed on Sunday.
As the coalition struggles to rebuild a country shattered by years of war and mismanagement, the "debaathification" policy, which Bremer admitted was at times "unjust", has also left Iraq with an acute shortage of teachers.
The debaathification of Iraq was the first measure signed Bremer signed last May, just after the fall of Baghdad.
He did so under pressure from Ahmad Chalabi, a Pentagon favorite and head of the Iraqi National Congress who became head of the debaathification commission.
The order dissolved the Baath party and excluded from government former members of the top layers of the Baath party's hierarchy.
Reacting to Friday's move by Bremer, Chalabi said on the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya news channel: "The rehabilitation of Baathists threatens democracy."
But coalition spokesman Dan Senor insisted the move was not a departure from policy that bars former top Baath party members from taking senior government or military positions.
He said the plan had been all along to recruit senior officers after lower-ranked soldiers. All need to be cleared to ensure they were not involved in torture or other crimes the Saddam regime has been accused of, he said.
Senor also insisted that speeding up the rehiring of teachers did not constitute a change of policy either.
Bremer said "the debaathification policy was and is sound," but he conceded that numerous complaints it had been applied "unevenly and unjustly" were legitimate.
He announced that any teacher cleared by local committees but not yet at local level, could return to work, or receive their pensions immediately, and that pending appeals will be adjudicated within 20 days.
Earlier this month, visiting special UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi criticized the manner in which the policy was being implemented, saying thousands of teachers, university professors, doctors and other sorely-needed personnel had been dismissed and the appeals process was painfully slow.
Some 30,000 civil servants have already been purged from government and another 30,000 are expected to be excluded at the end of the process, according to the national debaathification commission.
To date, of 7,000 appeals filed, at least 800 have been processed and only a dozen rejected, according to Mithal Al-Alusi, one of the officials who run the debaathification commission.
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