Word: bremer
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...security deteriorated last year--U.S. military fatalities rose from one a day last summer to four a day by November--Bremer came under heavy pressure from Washington to put a plan in place that would return sovereignty to the Iraqis sooner rather than later. Bremer was summoned back to Washington last November. He returned to Iraq with a significantly different game plan, one that would eliminate his job as proconsul years ahead of schedule. (The last American in a comparable position, Douglas MacArthur, ran Japan for six years.) The White House, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy...
...Sistani's intransigence and insistence on the U.N.'s involvement forced Bremer to rip up his plans. In mid-January, Bremer flew to New York and met in the basement of the United Nations building with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Greenstock and several members of the Governing Council. Annan became convinced the Americans would defer to the U.N. on the transition to Iraqi sovereignty. Annan assigned his envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, to go to Iraq to help piece together the interim government and figure out whether direct elections were really feasible in 2004. Brahimi and U.N. election expert Carla Perelli...
Critics say Bremer did not come to know many Iraqis outside the Governing Council--and that he managed to alienate even council members with his brisk manner, as a CPA source puts it. His defenders say that keeping council members in line--and maintaining momentum for the handover of power--consumed most of Bremer's energy. As a result, Bremer spent much of his time playing an inside game, forgoing meetings with the Iraqi public and allowing the day-to-day governance in much of the country to be carried out by either U.S. troops or local militia that rushed...
That said, he can point to some undeniable successes. On March 1, Bremer and the council worked until the wee hours of the morning on the so-called Transitional Administrative Law, a document that, while only temporary, may provide the basis for a new Iraqi constitution...
...Bremer says he will ultimately be judged not for the violence and mismanagement that marred his administration but for the political arrangements set in place during his 13 months in Baghdad. But he can't escape questions about his political judgment--in particular the decision in late March to close the newspaper affiliated with the radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. At the time, Bremer said the paper was inciting anti-Americanism and endangering U.S. troops. Adnan Pachachi, then a Governing Council member, says that no one was consulted when Bremer decided to shut the paper down. In response...