Buried in a much longer story that lead with action in Anbar Province in which Iraqi security forces killed and captured a number of Al-Qaeda was a story that I found even more interesting:
In Stockholm, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said there would be an announcement in a few days to reintroduce 1,000 mid-ranking officers from the former Iraqi military into the new army as a “sign of reconciliation”.
Clearly, the U. S. made a significant number of errors in the early days of its occupation of Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s government was eliminated but IMO two of the most serious were the disbanding of the Iraqi military and de-Ba’athification. There is a host of reasons that this was a mistake, not the least of which is that since so many people worked for the Iraqi government under Saddam and, implicitly, were, willy-nilly, Ba’athists, that removing them not only paralyzed the government in Iraq but the economy as well.
The Oil Law and revision of the de-Ba’athification Law were two of the milestones for the Iraqi government from the ISG Report so I guess the progress of the Oil Law and this story are good news. I don’t think we should underestimate the complexity of incorporating these member of the old Iraqi Army into the new, however.
The “de Baathificaation” controversy/criticism diverts attention from the reality: the US had no good choices in Iraq, no real friends in significant numbers from Shia or Sunni. Buying off the military rather than disbanding? Buying off their apparant loyalty? Many would have taken the money and still worked with/as insurgents. Nor would the Shia have
been co-operative with what would have been viewed as continued
Sunni rule.There was never going to be a puppet government of the US imposed, regardless of the strategy employed.