So About That Iraqi Army We "Disbanded"

I've long complained that we did not disband the Iraqi army after we captured Baghdad and deposed the Baathist regime. Further, even if the army existed, it should have been disbanded since we could not trust it. I shudder to think of what could have happened in spring 2004 during the twin jihadi and Sadr uprisings if Baathist-dominated Iraqi army units had been around. We could have had a real Sepoy Mutiny and would have faced Iraqi army units defecting to the enemy. We would have wished that the Iraq army had disintegrated as they did in fact.

So while going through a pile of old magazines this morning (I've been working the last half year to reduce my pile of old military journals that have piled up over the last three or four years), I ran across an article in the January 2004 issue of Army. Written by General Edward Atkeson (who I met, actually, about ten years ago), the relevant portion (pg. 27) states:

What happened to the Iraqi army last April? Did it stand and fight? Not really. For the most part it sought small engagements of American supply trains in which it could inflict casualties and disrupt the momentum of the U.S. assault to some extent. And then what? The Iraqi army evaporated. There were no large pockets of prisoners to round up, as in the 1991 war. Most of the Iraqis simply went home, taking their individual weapons with them.

The general goes on to speculate that this means that the insurgency was planned. Information since that time clearly shows that the Iraqis didn't plan an insurgency on the assumption they'd be defeated. Saddam assumed he'd hold at Baghdad at worst if we invaded, and that jihadis and Baathists would harass our rear until we withdrew under pressure from France and Russia (bribed by Oil-for-Food). Scattered arms depots were to counter our air power and make sure weapons were available to reconquer the Shia south. This was in reaction to Saddam's lessons of 1991 when he had trouble reasserting control of the south. Reconquering the south would need to be done even if Iraq faced only a Desert Fox II air-only attack.

The important thing is that the author recounts that there were no Iraqi army units sitting around in their barracks wondering if they could work for the new management. They went home.

Sure, you can argue that we should have reconstituted the Iraqi army as it was organized and led, but then you have to answer my second objection that keeping that army would have been a huge error.

And you have to remember that we recruited new soldiers and civil defense units (which eventually were rolled into the army) from the ranks of the old army because they had some training. So we did in fact employ some of those soldiers.

The fact is that a hard core of Baathists were determined to regain power and no stipends would have deterred them from trying to bomb their way back into the palaces. They were determined not to be the generation of Sunni Arabs to lose to the hated and despised Shias after four centuries of ruling them as God clearly intended.

So there. We did not disband the army. With this basic situation being questioned now as a so-called error, it is difficult for me to argue against it since it has been internalized for so long that I don't even remember where I originally got that information. So an article written not long after the campaign is useful to see what was assumed. I really should delve into this more thoroughly, but until I do, an article I chanced to come across will have to do.