Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran Page A

there would be no way a democracy would bloom. The INC advocated extending the ban on government employment to the top four levels of the party to include the rank of
udu firka,
or group member. Below that rank were only regular members and cadets. To people in Feith’s office, including
firka
s in the ban comported with the president’s decision to fire top-ranking members.
    When Bremer held his first substantive discussions with Feith and his staff, de-Baathification was on the agenda. As soon as they outlined the policy as they saw it, Bremer seized on it. It was just the sort of bold decision he wanted to implement. He wrote a memo to Pentagon officials noting that he wanted his arrival in Iraq to be “marked by clear, public and decisive steps to reassure Iraqis that we are determined to eradicate Saddamism.”
    Feith’s office drafted a one-and-a-half-page executive order titled “De-Baathification of Iraqi Society.” Not only did it include a prohibition on employing
firka
s and above, but it also banned regular members from “holding positions in the top three layers of management in every national government ministry, affiliated corporations and other government institutions.” The document was shown to Pentagon lawyers and to Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld but not to Rice or Powell, who believed the policy drafted in Feith’s office did not represent the compromise forged at the March 10 war cabinet meeting. The final draft was printed in the Pentagon and carried to Baghdad by one of Bremer’s aides.
    Three days after he arrived in Iraq, Bremer dispatched an aide to Jay Garner’s office with a copy of the de-Baathification policy. It was going to be the viceroy’s first executive order. He planned to issue it the next day.
    Garner read it.
Holy Christ,
he thought to himself.
We can’t do this.
    He contacted the CIA station chief and asked him to meet him in front of Bremer’s office right away. As Garner walked down the hall to the viceroy’s suite, he ran into one of the State Department ambassadors and explained what was happening.
    â€œWe’ve got to put a stop to this one,” Garner said. “It’s too hard, too harsh.”
    Garner and the station chief barged into Bremer’s office.
    â€œJerry, this is too harsh,” Garner said. “Let’s get Rumsfeld on the phone and see if we can’t soften it.”
    â€œAbsolutely not,” Bremer said. “I’m going to issue this today.”
    Garner asked the station chief what would happen if the order were issued.
    â€œYou’re going to drive fifty thousand Baathists underground before nightfall,” he said. “Don’t do this.”
    Bremer politely ended the discussion. That night, he summoned all of the CPA’s senior advisers to a meeting to outline the order. Several senior CPA staffers knew about the proposed de-Baathification policy and they held out hope of softening it. One of them, Meghan O’Sullivan, who would later become a top political adviser to Bremer, wrote a memo recommending a narrower purge.
    After Bremer summarized the order, Steve Browning, the army engineer who by this time was running five ministries, said that Baathists were “the brains of the government… the ones with a lot of information and knowledge and understanding.” If you sent them home, he said, the CPA would have “a major problem” running most ministries.
    Bremer responded tersely that the subject was not open for discussion.
    Another CPA staffer, who had been seconded from USAID, asked Bremer if he understood the impact of the policy, her face growing redder as she spoke. Browning thought she was going to burst.
    Bremer cut her off. The subject was not open for discussion.
    Then he walked out.
    Browning didn’t have to fire anyone. The day after the order was announced, senior Baathists in the Health Ministry stopped coming to work. Eight