This is interesting:
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has called for officers from Iraq's mostly-Sunni north and west who served under now-executed dictator Saddam Hussein to be reinstated as long as they have no Iraqi blood on their hands.
His call is seen as a pragmatic bid to damp violence in areas which remain among Iraq's least stable, but also a strategy to boost the popularity of Maliki, who is from the country's Shiite majority, ahead of provincial and national polls in 2013 and 2014.
Nine years after the invasion, many higher ranking officers would be too old to serve, I'd guess. But younger officers less likely to have been committed Baathists loyal to Saddam could be a resource. The only two officers cited were former majors in the Iraqi army under Saddam. When I spoke of de-Baathification after the invasion, that was my personal cut off for retention: at that rank or below, allow them the opportunity to stay (where needed) unless they are proven to have blood on their hands; above that rank, fire them unless they can be proven not to have blood on their hands--then consider retaining them, if needed.
I had no doubt that de-Baathification was necessary lest the Baathists try to undermine a green army trying to beat down well-armed and well-financed insurgents and terrorists. I don't buy the idea that the Sunni Arabs resisted Shia- and Kurdish-led rule because we "disbanded" the already self-disbanded Iraqi army.
But after 9 years of building a new Iraqi army, the armed forces are more solid and battle hardened. The former Saddam officers won't be tigers amongst the kittens. My guess is that the Iraqi military is now strong enough to absorb these officers as long as they aren't supporting the insurgents. And they'd help lock in more Sunni Arabs to oppose the strengthening al Qaeda in Iraq, rather than looking away from hope or fear.
But there is a risk if the move is more desperation, and if screening isn't done in order to achieve political objectives and the restored officers come in determined to reverse what they see as their world turned upside down--Shias at the top of Iraq's political order--this could cause problems for stability.
I'd sure be calmer if we had 25,000 troops in Iraq to establish limits on what Iraqi political factions will do to hold power.
