General Pace comments on the issue of "disbanding" the Iraqi army:
First of all, the Iraqi army was not disbanded, it disintegrated. One of the mistakes I made in my assumptions going in was that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi army would welcome liberation; that the Iraqi army, given the opportunity, would stand together for the Iraqi people and be available to them to help serve the new nation. They disintegrated in the face of the coalition first several weeks of combat. So they weren't there. And then the decision was made in country with regard to whether or not they should be recalled, try to regroup or how they were going to do that.
And as I've written, we did hope to use the Baathist-led Iraqi army (in a benign security environment that did not include heavy Baathists resistance) to provide the necessary numbers for stabilizing Iraq and rebuilding.
These were rational assumptions that turned out wrong. But they do not indicate incompetence or lack of planning. Indeed, since using the poor-quality Iraqi army for security under nominally ex-Baathist officers required a benign security environment to work, once Baathists showed they'd fight, such a hold-over army cound never have held up. Elements of it might have defected to the enemy.
So remember, the Iraqi army disintegrated under the pressure of our offensive.
And as far as I'm concerned, that army would have done so again--or worse--in spring 2004 under pressure of the jihadi-Sadrists offensive, if we'd recalled it in summer 2003.
