May 13, 2007
Medal of Freedom Recipients
George Tenent has written a book to defend his reputation. While everybody has focused on some of his attacks on the administration, the Weekly Standard has pointed out that his book speaks much about al Qaeda presence in Iraq, the efficacy of aggressive interrogation procedures and the current threat from Iran. He thinks the Bush administration is discrediting him, but he did receive the nation's highest civilian honor: the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Another recipient takes to his own defense, more credibly and succinctly. L. Paul Bremer has an editorial in the WaPo today, defending both the decision to de-Baathify Iraq and to disband Saddam's Iraqi Army:
Our goal was to rid the Iraqi government of the small group of true believers at the top of the party, not to harass rank-and-file Sunnis. We were following in the footsteps of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower in postwar Germany. Like the Nazi Party, the Baath Party ran all aspects of Iraqi life. Every Iraqi neighborhood had a party cell. Baathists recruited children to spy on their parents, just as the Nazis had. Hussein even required members of his dreaded intelligence services to read "Mein Kampf."Although Hussein and his cronies had been in power three times as long as Hitler had, the CPA decree was much less far-reaching than Eisenhower's de-Nazification law, which affected all but the lowest-ranking former Nazis. By contrast, our Iraqi law affected only about 1 percent of Baath Party members. We knew that many had joined out of opportunism or fear, and they weren't our targets.
I'll confess that I had seen Bremer before the War and was mightily impressed by his apparent intelligence and competence. When he was picked to head the provisional government, I thought it was a great pick. When a then slowly-decaying Andrew Sullivan blamed him for the troubles in Iraq, Colon cancer, and the lack of good parking places in Provincetown, I wondered if I had misjudged.
Bremer admits some failures in judgment but defends himself from the CW.
Hat-tip: Terri at I Think ^(Link) Therefore I Err who points out that the editorial also reminds us of Saddam's depravity.