We Done Fucked Up

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The Iraqi government issued a plea on Wednesday to former junior officers in Saddam Hussein's military who were sacked by the U.S. occupiers after his fall to return to the army as it battles a fierce Sunni Arab insurgency.

Six weeks before an election, there may be a political as well as practical security motive behind the move; the loss of army pay has been a major source of discontent among Saddam's fellow minority Sunni Arabs, who dominated the officer corps.

Within weeks of Saddam's fall in April 2003, U.S. administrator Paul Bremer disbanded at a stroke Iraq's 400,000- strong armed forces and security agencies. U.S. officials said it simply formalized the fact that the army had evaporated in the aftermath of the war, with soldiers deserting en masse.

Now, Washington is racing to build up a new Iraqi army to let it bring home American troops who are pinned down in Iraq by insurgents displaying considerable military experience.

Not that they're admitting failure, mind you. We can never do that, after all.

But note the lie above - that the army "evaporated". This is simply false. The army deserted in combat, sure. But Iraqi soldiers eventually resurfaced, looking to serve their government again - that is, to go back to work. Some of the earliest protests by the Iraqis were soldiers wanting to work for a paycheck.

Then Bremer fired them all.

Now, almost three years later, they've finally begun to catch on that it wasn't such a hot idea.