Normal. The war was over. We were out. Let the chips fall where they may. Narrator from the early days of the occupation, to the american withdrawal. Tonight, losing iraq part one of a special twopart frontline investigation. Frontlinis made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. And by the corporation for public broadcasting. Major support for frontliis provided by the john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More information is available at macfound. Org. Additional support is provided by the park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The ford foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide. At fordfoundation. Org. The wyncote foundation. And by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler, and Additional Support from bill and cile hicks. The iraqis had gathered around the statue and were throwing their shoes at it. What struck me was the iraqis couldnt pull it down themselves. It was obvious it wasnt going to happen. It would be a pretty anticlimactic moment if we didnt help. It was a dramatic moment. It was an American Flag that went on it first. Thats almost a metaphor for whats happened since. You know, then, ultimately, well, an iraqi flag was put on it, and enough photographs were taken of iraqis cheering. By the way, that statue was very heavy. The problem was much more involved than i think anyone thought of. It made me worry. Something told me, you know, this isnt going to be quite as easy as we thought. Narrator within days, there was trouble. Iraqis are looting on a grand scale. It is a clear sign that while war might be ending, there is trouble ahead. And all of a sudden, the iraqi people started looting, attacked the ministries, basically created a series of events which didnt stop with that. Less than two u. S. Brigades were in isolated positions in a city of more than five million people, having no idea of what might come next. Narrator in washington, the Bush Administration brushed aside the bad news. I picked up a newspaper today, and i couldnt believe it. I read eight headlines that talked about chaos violence unrest and it just was, henny penny, the sky is falling. Ive never seen anything like it just unbelievable how people can take that away from what is happening in that country. Narrator two weeks later, president george w. Bush landed on the deck of the uss abraham lincoto announce the war was over. My fellow americans, major combat operations in iraq have ended. In the battle of iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. Because of you, the tyrant has fallen and iraq is free. cheering bush never said mission accomplished, but that banner was hanging up right behind his head as he gave that speech. And it really was a premature victory speech that didnt recognize what was going on in iraq. Narrator the administrations strategy was to pull the troops out of iraq and hand over responsibility to an american civilian. In washington, Vice President cheneys office had just the man for the job a littleknown diplomat named l. Paul bremer the third. Well, i was contacted by two people paul wolfowitz, who was deputy secretary of defense, scooter libby, who was the Vice President s chief of staff, both of whom i had known for decades. Narrator in bremer, cheney had a businessman, a diplomat, managing director of kissinger and associates. Heres a guy who had worked for Henry Kissinger but doesnt know a whole lot about the middle east, doesnt speak arabic, doesnt know the region. Today, its my honor to announce that jerry bremer has agreed to become the president ial envoy to iraq. Narrator president bush made it official bremer was now in charge of the occupation. After a twoweek crash course on middle eastern politics, he arrived in iraq to head what was known as the Coalition Provisional authority the cpa. We flew on a c130 into baghdad. The thing that was striking to us was the fact that a lot of the buildings were on fire. Narrator baghdad had been burning for one month. Thered be buildings on fire. The fires would just have to burn themselves out because there was no fire department. There was no government. There were no police. The army was gone. Narrator bremers headquarters were in a heavily fortified area of baghdad called the green zone. The green zone became the emerald city, walled off from the rest of iraq. The rest of iraq, electricity is intermittent at best, sewage problems, dusty, dirty, potholes. Inside the green zone, its calm, its quiet. Narrator as bremer settled in, he knew he would have to deal with iraqs complicated sectarian politics. This is one of the most fractious places you could have picked, with more problems in terms of. Its right on the shia sunni divide. It has the kurds. It has 20 years of dysfunctional government. Narrator Saddam Hussein and his sunnidominated baath party had brutally controlled the countrys majority shiites and the kurds. Now, bremer was determined to change that. The idea is youd remove saddams agents from the government or people loyal to him, make room for shiites and kurds, who it was assumed would Work Together in some sort of collegial way. Narrator and bremer had a plan to remake the Iraqi Government. Bremer hadnt been there very long, literally a day, and these papers were coming out of his briefcase. I was in the office, outside of the front office and began reading them, and so on. Narrator cpa order number one. It would end sunni domination of the government and bring in rival ethnic and religious groups, the kurds and the shiites. Im walking down the hallway and ambassador robin raphel says, have you seen this . She has a piece of paper. I said, no, what is it . She says, debaathification order. I said, wow. So i read it real quick, there in the hall. I said, this is too deep. Narrator retired general jay garner was one of the few americans who knew his way around iraq. Hed worked there before. He was very, very, very angry. And jays very personable. His head was down. He was walking fastpaced all over. I could tell he was very upset about it. I walked down, and the cia guy, a great guy, was coming across the hall, and i said, hey, charlie, have you read the debaathification . And he said, yeah, thats why im here. I said, well, lets go in and talk to the ambassador. Narrator garner was worried that bremer seemed not to understand how things worked in iraq. So we went in and we talked to ambassador bremer for a few minutes. And i said, you know, this is too deep. I said, give charlie and i about 45 minutes to an hour. Let us digest this thing, and then let us recommend some changes to you and come back here, and well get on the phone with rumsfeld to see if we cant soften this a bit. And bremer kind of says, look, you dont understand. Im not asking you, im telling you. This is what im going to do. Im not asking for your advice. And they argue a bit more. And finally, bremer says, look, i have my orders. This is what im doing. And so i said, well, charlie, what do you think . And to the best of my memory, charlie said, well, if you do this, youre going to drive 30,000 to 50,000 baathists underground by nightfall. And the numbers closer to 50 than it is 30. Narrator ambassador bremer says he does not recall the conversation with general garner and the cia officer. He may have come in and spoken to me at great length about it. I just dont remember it, honestly dont remember it. You dont remember these guys coming in. Doesnt mean it didnt happen. And saying this is 30,000 to 50,000 people, and my god, what are you doing . I just. You know, i was working 20 hours a day in that period, as well. This wasnt the only thing on my list of things to do the first five days i was there. I had a lot of other things to do. But this is a big one, right . There were a lot of big things that first five days. There were a lot of big things the first 48 hours. So i dont remember every meeting. I dont say it didnt happen. I knew there were concerns. I knew the agency made the assessment that there were about 20,000 people to be thrown out of work. And i judged in the end that that was a risk we were worth. We were willing to take. And those who were on high before, in particular the baathists, who used their power to repress the iraqi people, will be removed from office. I think, frankly, there wasnt a Single Person in the cpa who understood what order number one meant. It created a climate where people could be expelled as University Teachers or grade school teachers, not simply people who had some kind of tie to the senior structure. Two reasons we wanted to keep the Baathist Party intact. One, the only folks who have experience running the government, so we needed to keep them. Number two, the sunnis need to have a voice. And if you dont give people a voice, they have relatively few options. And what the middle eastern history and middle eastern. What it tells you is their next option is violence. Narrator with the debaathification order, bremer made a decisive statement. In doing so, he gave the cpa staff, the military and the iraqis the first indication of who he was. Tough, could get things done. Anybody who was Henry Kissingers righthand man had to have a certain amount of steel in his personality. Narrator and then seven days later, another decisive and controversial announcement. Cpa order number two the decision to dissolve the iraqi military. I think the decision not to recall saddams army, from a political point of view, is the single most important correct decision that we made in the 14 months we were there. Narrator it was a decision that had been quietly authorized by the civilian leadership at the pentagon, in spite of the fact that just nine days before the war began, the president had agreed to keep the iraqi army. The briefing recommended that the regular iraqi army be maintained as an institution because we believed that it would be dangerous to put 300,000 men on the street with guns, without jobs. Narrator the u. S. Commanders, desperate for boots on the ground, had been counting on a pacified iraqi army to do the grunt work. We actually had people negotiating with iraqis to bring them back, and there were a lot of iraqis saying, okay, we can bring back units. They were clearly anticipating, at least as late as 9 may, of having available iraqi forces for us to use in a reconstruction effort. Narrator cpa order number two went into effect. Now you have a couple hundred thousand people who are armed because they took their weapons home with them, who know how to use the weapons, who have no future and have a reason to be angry at you. Who knows how many folks who got disgruntled and went to the other side . I will tell you this 72 hours after the decision was made, the first major attack from the airport road took place. And that two of our military police were killed. And its been downhill from there. In iraq, its been another violent day. Two car bombs. There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring em on. We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation. There has been another spasm of violence in iraq. We were in a state of denial. A car bomb killed at least five iraqis in the center of baghdad. We were looking on these as sort of a small group of isolated diehards that we could largely ignore. Narrator then, a defining moment. It began with a car bombing at the Jordanian Embassy. August 2003 is when the real war for the future of iraq began. August 7, the Jordanian Embassy gets blown up; a few days later, the u. N. Gets blown up. I am in ambassador bremers front office. We get the news, and then we go into his office and. Thats where things take off. Narrator the United Nations top envoy, sergio de mello, had been killed. It was a very emotional situation for everybody involved. We will leave no stone unturned to find the people who did this. With this new kind of attack, how can you secure this city and this country . Just to do our best to find these people before they attack and to deal with them. And we will. Narrator to the experts, it was clear america was still at war. I knew for absolute certain when they had the series of bombings the police station, the Jordanian Embassy, the red cross and the u. N. That was clearly a campaign to drive out all of the elements that could help the United States govern the country. Narrator in september 2003, the secretary of defense boarded a c17 globemaster to go see iraq for himself. Impatient, he kept asking all of the brass that traveled with him the same question. When are you going to get this thing wrapped up . Is the phrase i heard rumsfeld use. When are you going to get this thing wrapped up . Narrator rumsfeld also took a hard look at what paul bremer had been doing. He told bremer the Defense Department had decided it wanted iraq given back to the iraqis as soon as possible. The policy side of the pentagon was saying, the best way to cut all of this short is simply to hand over power to some iraqis. Find us some iraqis. Give them authority. Well end the occupation. Well get out of here. Narrator bremer had no idea who to hand the government to. He had formed a governing council of various iraqi leaders, but had no confidence in them. And i told secretary wolfowitz, who was pushing this idea of early sovereignty, just handing sovereignty over, i didnt think the governing council was up to this. They couldnt organize a twocar parade. They were simply not able to make decisions in a timely fashion, or any decisions. Narrator bremer was given until june 2004 to form a Coalition Government and wind down the American Occupation. And basically, the new policy is three words were outta here. Narrator but bremers efforts to form an Iraqi Government were threatened that spring up in the sunni heartland. In fallujah, four American Contractors were murdered. Dragged around and hung off the bridge. Two of the bodies are hung off the bridge. This creates a we must do something response. Narrator the president wanted revenge. For the first time, he reached directly into the process and ordered the marines to retaliate. Marines understand an order. So, they shaved off their mustaches, fixed bayonets and went in and did what marines do best. Fallujah becomes kind of an iraqi alamo. Only in this case, the defenders survive. Americans were moving into the city. They were killing people. Al jazeera was showing images of, you know, mosques on fire and civilians being injured and killed. The impression is portrayed that the americans are going in and wantonly killing civilians along with the insurgents. And it was unsustainable for the iraqi leadership, which at the time wasnt elected, to continue. Narrator bremer appealed to the president to stop the marines. The president pulled back. The marines were now ordered to simply surround fallujah and contain the insurgents. This is a double loss. The americans look indecisive. They look incompetent. They also look inhumane in the eyes of a wide number of people in the middle east. Narrator but with the pullback from fallujah, bremer managed to push through an interim constitution, form a new government, and hand iraq back to the iraqis. Sincerely, l. Paul bremer, exadministrator of the Coalition Provisional authority. men chuckling narrator it was time to go home. But they were worried about surfacetoair missiles. So we had to devise a way to get out that didnt involve a c130. And we had to keep, of course, all of it secret. Narrator for the cameras, bremer appeared to leave on this airplane. And we pulled up the stairs and we just sat in the c130. We sat there for about 15 minutes while the press and everybody went away, and then we went off, out over the cargo that was in the c130, in the back, and flew on a helicopter to another part of the airport. And instead of going out on a c130, went out on a government plane, a Smaller Government plane to jordan, safely. It says a lot about the security in the country by the time we did turn over sovereignty that that is the way that we had to leave. It was sort of an ignominious departure. It was yet another metaphor. Narrator bremer left behind 140,000 american troops and a war that really had just begun. Theres been another spasm of violence in iraq. Chaos returned with a vengeance. 14 young men abducted, tortured. It is possible that iraq could move toward civil war. The insurgents have stepped up their attacks since an interim Iraqi Government was installed late last month. Innocent victims of car bombings, and insurgents and terrorists. Narrator the summer of 2004 was the height of the political season. The president was running for reelection. The insurgency was still raging. The last thing the white house wanted was any more bad news from iraq. Top military officer in iraq is being replaced. The pentagon is expected to replace. Narrator it was time to try a new general. Rumsfeld reached into the pentagon bureaucracy for a fourstar general and found george casey. Hes a secondgeneration army general. His father was a general who died in vietnam. He goes out to iraq, yet hes never led troops in combat. Heres a guy in charge of the biggest american war since vietnam, and nobody knows who he is. Narrator casey was ordered to minimize american casualties, to train and shift responsibility to the iraqi army asap. The objective is to get iraq under control at a basic level, train up Iraqi Security forces, turn over responsibility to the government and leave. Narrator the plan was to prepare iraq for elections. The political strategy was to stand up a representative democracy, a Representative Government as quickly as possible. Narrator that summer, general casey put rumsfelds plan into action. They called it the light footprint. The American Force would retreat to large bases and o