The result was a largely incapable operation—the Coalition Provisional Authority headed by the imperious L. Paul Bremer. On May 23, Bremer, with Bush’s approval—but without consultations with the State Department or the Pentagon, who knew far more about the war and the larger issues driving on the ground in Iraq than Bush did—disbanded the Iraqi army. The decision, The Time’s military reporter Michael Gordon wrote, all but ensured that “American forces would face a growing insurgency led by embittered Sunnis who led much of the army.”
The insurgency even then was brewing. Fifty-two coalition soldiers were killed between April 9, when Baghdad fell, and May 22, when Bremer issued his order. Twenty-eight of those soldiers were killed after Bush declared, after his flight-suited landing on the deck of the USS Abraham, Lincoln on May 1, that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”
On July 16, 2003, the commander of coalition forces in Iraq, Gen. John P. Abizaid, said fresh troops serving year-long tours, rather than six months, might be needed to fight the insurgency. It was the first official concession that the war wasn’t going as planned. It only got worse from there.
