Book description
"BAGHDAD WAS BURNING."
With these words, Ambassador L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer begins
his gripping memoir of fourteen danger-filled months as America's
proconsul in Iraq. My Year in Iraq is the only senior insider's
perspective on the crucial period following the collapse of Saddam
Hussein's regime. In vivid, dramatic detail, Bremer reveals the
previously hidden struggles among Iraqi politicians and America's
leaders, taking us from the ancient lanes in the holy city of Najaf to
the White House Situation Room and the Pentagon E-Ring.
His memoir carries the reader behind closed doors in Baghdad during
hammer-and-tongs negotiations with emerging Iraqi leaders as they
struggle to forge the democratic institutions vital to Iraq's future
of hope. He describes his private meetings with President Bush and his
admiration for the president's firm wartime leadership. And we witness
heated sessions among members of America's National Security Council
-- George Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, and
Condoleezza Rice -- as Bremer labors to realize the vision he and
President Bush share of a free and democratic New Iraq. He admires the
selfless and courageous work of thousands of American servicemen and
-women and civilians in Iraq.
The flames Bremer describes on arriving in Baghdad were from fires
started by looters. One of his first acts was to request an additional
4,000 Military Police to help restore order in the streets. For most
of the next year, as the insurgency spread, Bremer resisted efforts by
generals and senior Defense Department civilians to reduce American
troop strength prematurely, replacing our forces with ill-trained,
poorly led Iraqi police and soldiers. And he lays to rest the myth
that the Coalition disbanded Saddam's army, a force comprised of
Shiite draftees who had deserted and refused to serve under their
former Sunni officers. Bremer also describes his frustration with
intelligence operations that concentrated on the search for weapons of
mass destruction while the insurgency gathered strength.
Bremer faced daunting problems working with Iraq's traumatized and
divided population to find a path to a responsible and representative
government. The Shia Arabs, the country's long-repressed majority,
deeply distrusted the Sunni Arab minority who had held power for
centuries and had controlled the detested Baath Party. Iraq's non-Arab
Kurds teetered on the brink of secession when Bremer arrived. He had
to find Sunnis willing to participate in the new political order.
Some in the U. S. government pushed for what Bremer would come to
call a cut-and-run policy that would have quickly delivered governance
of Iraq to a handful of unrepresentative anti-Saddam exiles. Bremer
vigorously resisted this ill-conceived course. He takes the reader
inside marathon negotiations as he and his team shepherded Iraq's new
leaders to write an interim constitution with guarantees for
individual and minority rights unprecedented in the region.
My Year in Iraq is required reading for all those interested
in the real story of how America responded to its gravest recent
overseas crisis.
"[An] excellent memoir. . . . It is candid,
precise, lucid, and honest." -- Star Tribune (Minneapolis,
MN)
Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, a career diplomat,
was the Presidential Envoy to Iraq from May 2003 to June 2004. During
his twenty-three years at the State Department, he served on the
personal staffs of six secretaries of state and on four continents. In
the 1980s, he was Ambassador to the Netherlands and Ambassador at
Large for Counter Terrorism. After leaving government, he was Managing
Director of Kissinger Associates. In December 2004, George W. Bush
awarded Bremer the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his service in
Iraq. Malcolm McConnell is the coauthor of the #1 New York
Times bestseller American Soldier with Tommy Franks and
My Year in Iraq with L. Paul Bremer III.
