The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 122 - The Iraq War

Episode Date: October 11, 2015

Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds try to be funny discussing the enraging Iraq War. SOURCES TOUR DATES REDBUBBLE MERCH

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History podcast. Each week I read a story to my friend. Gareth Reynolds who has no idea what the topic will be about. I blue it should be American history a story from American history I just said story I could so I could read you anything right now. I thought that's what this is gonna be I was excited to maybe hear something a little less. Would you like to hear Cinderella? I've never knew how it finished. You're gonna about to find out. What happens? She gets a duck. What the fuck? Yeah. Not Gary Gareth. Dave okay. Someone or something is tickling people. Is it for fun? And this is not gonna come to

you. Okay. You are queen fakie of made-up town. All hail queen shit of Liesville. A bunch of religious virgins go to mingle and do what? Fray? Hi Gary. No. Is he done my friend? No. Oh shit. This is it. This is the one people have been waiting for. I wish I could have spent more time on this but I wanted to do it before Marin started. The Iraq War. There we go. Needless to say I don't need I don't need to shout out the date that that all kicked off on. No you can shout at the president who kicked it off. President George W. Bush told his crew to start planning for an invasion of

Iraq just months after 9-11. I already am so pissed. The man who began planning at the Pentagon was named Douglas Fife. He was the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and Ranny. Super double secret office called the Office of Special Plan. The Office of Special Plan? Yep. It was it's kind of a stupid name. It's really a stupid name. It's a terrible name. The Office of Special Plan because it's just singular. It is singular. It should be Office of Special Planning. I mean at least something. Some action. Office of the Iraq Plan. The shroom. This this sounds like a like a I'm the vice vice president of shroom. But this also it's like Happy

Chicken. It's like a right. You like Happy Chicken like it's right. Yeah. Right. It should be this special plan should be on an Asian menu. Yes. Yes. Fife was a big fan of a man named Ahmad Chalabi. Ahmad Chalabi was an Iraqi exile who ran a political organization called the Iraqi National Congress. Chalabi was a mathematician who had attended MIT and was hated at the State Department and the CIA. Interesting. Both considered Chalabi to be corrupt and very unpopular with Iraqis. But Neocons like Fife love Chalabi. He was the shit because he told them everything they wanted to hear. Like that Iraq could be a secular

democracy that it would embrace the West and recognize Israel. We'd be greeted as liberators. Naturally this was the Cheney Rumsfeld Fife dream leader of Iraq once Saddam was gone. Fife's office was very secret. Double secret. Jesus Christ. Super double special secret. He did not coordinate with the State Department or the CIA. I mean just even that right like how is that even possible. He really didn't like focusing on worst case scenarios and that's one of the things the State Department and CIA did. Yeah that really is right. That's basically what they do. That's their job. Yeah. Total negative Nazis those groups.

Yeah really. If you talked about the negatives then people might not want to invade Iraq and we couldn't have that could we. No no no. Fife's office looked at the war as one of to be one of liberation and he believed it would be really easy. Yeah. Super easy. The Iraqis wouldn't need much assistance after Saddam was gone and would quickly take over running the country. God I just I remember just hearing it all. Yeah. All of like hearing all of this being said and you're just thinking like. That doesn't. That just doesn't seem right. But then it turned out to be. But then yeah I did yeah history has judged it

fondly. Two months before the invasion a Fife called Jay Garner a retired Lieutenant General. He asked Garner to run Iraq after the invasion and get things transitioned into Iraqi hands. Sure. Fife told Garner it would take around 90 days. That's just. It's like we're remodeling a kitchen. You can't do anything in 90 days. I mean honestly like you could redo your bathroom. You couldn't even then. No you could. This show would come up and the contractor would have to do fucking you get the wrong pipes. You could get you could go from a 90 days to a nice bathroom in 90 days. 90 days. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I bet you

my brother could do it in 60. Garner accepted the position and his group was called the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitary Assistance or RHA. Garner said about trying to get things ready but Fife did not give him any plans or reports. He did not get any of any of the State Department plans or the analysis from the CIA. He didn't even get the unclassified report written by the military's own National Defense University based on a two-day workshop involving more than 70 scholars and experts. He got nothing. When Garner asked Fife for some documents Fife told them that nothing useful existed. No

there's nothing. We should go in. The guy who needs to fucking do everything you're like no you don't need any paperwork. I need that. What do you need stuff for? Well you're a real bookworm. I'm a writer. I like to read stuff. Just get in there. Get your hands dirty. Get in there. Just say yes. Well there's a yes stamp in there. Just use your yes stamp. Fife figured that with no reports Garner would just end up talking to Chalabi. Which is what happened. Fife also never planned to have American experts ready to run Iraqi ministries. After the war he figured Iraqi civil servants would just jump in and run everything. I just can't. I mean it it is just the clusterfuck of all

clusterfuck. Oh dude and you have no idea where this is going. It's even you're going to have your fucking jaw on the floor when I'm done. So Garner really didn't need that much or any information according to Fife. But Garner got to work putting a team together and making plans. Two days before leaving for Iraq Garner was called to Secretary of Defense Rumpfeld's office and Rumpfeld questioned Garner why he had hired the people he had hired especially the people from the State Department. Quote I'm just uncomfortable with these people said Rumpfeld. Ah and Garner asked well who from the Department of

Defense do you have that's qualified to do agriculture and Rumpfeld Rumpfeld just stared at him. How about education? Rumpfeld did not have an answer. Garner went down the list of people he needed. Banking? Rumpfeld finally said look I'm not gonna argue with you on this one but I'm gonna get you other people. That is arguing. It's totally arguing with him. Rumpfeld then blocked all senior State Department people Garner had hired. What the fuck? He said they were too bureaucratic. They must have been like well hello pot. The Pentagon wanted his few State Department people on the team as possible because anyone

from the State Department understood worst-case scenario and would immediately raise red flags about the planting. Jesus Christ. On March 19th 2003 the invasion of Iraq began. What a time. And went pretty fucking smooth. Yeah shock and awe. Decide from all the dead people in the destruction. Yeah well no but when you're doing shock and awe you're gonna have some dead people. Girl. You know what I mean? That's that's that's the that's the shock part. That's and the awe. Yeah and the awe. As in as in you're like oh wow. It wasn't much of a fight. The elite forces put up resistance but when the fighting started the

regular army just put on their civilian clothes and went home. They had been told not to fight by dropped leaflets. The vast majority were not loyal to Sonam anyway but loyal to their country and they would said they would just wait around for new orders after the US took over. Okay. On April 9th an army tank toppled a huge statue of Saddam. Yeah. That was the big moment of the war. It was now over for the in the Iraqis eyes right. Yeah well the statue came down. Yeah. This is we're peeking right now right. Yeah this is good. This is as good as it got. This is as good as it got. This is when you were watching it and you were like well

shit this actually did go pretty well. Yeah it went okay. And then the looting started. They began at the Ministry of Industry's headquarters. There were no US troops guarding the ministries so the looters went after the building like the Rube went after a fire truck. Oh god. They tore it apart. Before the war Baghdad was a hopping place. Shops stayed up until 10. Restaurants till midnight. Nobody worried about driving home late at night. It was an incredibly safe city because Saddam would lock your shit up or cut off your hands for the smallest crime. It was like Vegas in the 60s. Yeah. Now the opposite was happening. Total

chaos and no one in charge. When the looting began the ORHA ministers watched on television and assumed the military was on their way to protect the buildings. But it wasn't. No troops have been assigned to guard the ministries and there was still no consideration to put troops there even after the looting started. How was that possible? Only ministry being protected by American troops was the Ministry of Oil. It's so obviously transparent. I get so fantastic. How is it so transparent. It's so fantastic. Like at least you know we used to get you like this was the first time somebody just straight up looked

you in the eyes and fucked you as a citizen. Yeah. For you know you're used to getting fucked minorly but you'd normally just wake up and your butt would hurt. Yeah. Now you're literally a guy looking in the eyes of the eye contact. Yeah. While I'm fucking you. Yeah. I'm fucking you right now. And just shouting it. Yeah. I'm fucking you. I'm fucking you. When asked about why the looting wasn't stopped run Rumsfeld said freedoms untidy. Freedom. Freedom is he did. He's I mean he's obviously Satan's penis but he is he is. No you. You. You you could put that in as a phrase that a Marvel villain would say he's and he's

got tons of you ever seen the fog of war. Oh yeah. He's got tons of them. Yeah. He's got so many where you're just like I'm glad this happened. The streets became a free for all by the time it was over. Freedom for all. The RHA believed the looting had caused more damage to Iraq's infrastructure than the entire bombing campaign. Well RHA contractors got their ministries and quickly realized how fucked they were. One man running the Ministry of Health named Carney only had two people as his staff. There were over 100,000 employees at the ministry and he didn't have a budget. Wait he he how he had a hundred thousand

people on his he was brought in. He was brought in to take over the Ministry of Health. Uh-huh. There were a hundred thousand employees. Uh-huh. And it's just him. Oh my god. Garner said about putting together a plan for how much power to give the Iraqis and when he would hand them back the power of their country. Meanwhile the Pentagon the State Department and the White House had not agreed to anything. Cheney and Rumsell wanted Chalabi to take over obviously and Bush and Rice didn't know what they wanted which is great. When Garner arrived in Iraq he thought elections should be held within 90 days as he was

told and he told the press that. Then Rumsell and Feith flipped out and were pissed off at him because they thought an election wouldn't leave Chalabi in charge and the White House was also upset so they fired Garner. Get him out. They decided to hire what is called a take charge kind of fella. Wait no okay. Okay. No one this is the guy no one knows about or people don't talk about. Bush, Cheney, Rumsell, and Rice had a meeting and tossed out different names Rudy Giuliani but he had just opened up a consulting firm. They went over former governors and ex senators but they couldn't agree and then Cheney

suggested Paul Bremer and that was that. He was a company man Republican with lots of experience. He worked for Kissinger you know all the good shit. Yeah yeah good track record. He was a rich kid who went to Yale and then got a degree in business from Harvard and then went to get another degree in Paris. He joined the Foreign Service. I just got a degree in Paris for whatever. He worked in the State Department was stationed in Norway and in Kabul Afghanistan but he spent a lot of time in the US in the State Department. He was moving up the ranks. Reagan then appointed him ambassador to the Netherlands. A really

valuable position. Guess what he didn't speak? Dutch. Yep. Yeah. He then quit the government and worked for Kissinger's consulting firm. He received a shitload of awards for his work in the government and was successful in the business world. At the time of the 9-11 attacks he worked for a business with 1700 other employees in the North Tower of the World Trade Center above where the second plane hit. So ORHA was done. Bremer would be the new head of an organization called the Coalition Provisional Authority the CPA. Coalition Provisional Authority okay. Garner hadn't even been in charge in Iraq for a

month and and now he was no longer in charge. He had no reports, no information, no money and all the buildings he needed to run. The country had been ripped apart so he was considered a failure. That's so true right? Yeah. But you really fucked this one up. No. I don't think. Guys. Please. Yeah no you really did a shitty job. Well in my defense what's happening everywhere. Okay well that you should have fixed that. No. Bremer hit the ground running. He'd meet at eight with his staff every day. People were told to make their points in 30 seconds or less and he'd make a decision just as quickly. That's more like a game show.

That is how you rebuild a country. 30 seconds or less. Welcome back to 30 seconds or less. Today we're gonna try to rebuild Iraq through ideas that are pitched in under 30 seconds and then Paul Bremer has 30 seconds to decide if he wants to enact that or not. 30 seconds or less your time starts now. Well I want to rebuild the bridge. We need to get we need to get a consulting firm to come in and rebuild the bridge and what we need is we need security around the bridge and and we're also gonna need we're gonna need like a like a new kind of fuck. No. God damn it. It's a really important bridge. Sorry. Your 30

seconds is up I'm sorry sir. I'm over 30. 30 seconds or less is brought to you by Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein he used to be the glue that nobody respected. In May 2003 Bremer sent Rumsfeld a report made by Rand a US military think tank and military contractor. It said that 500,000 troops were needed to stabilize Iraq. That was three times more than we're currently in Iraq and Rumsfeld just ignored it. That is a problem right? It's just like it's not the problem wasn't the not knowing of the facts. Oh no. Was not wanting to deal with the facts. No it's not even that. It's worse than it's worse than not knowing it's willful

ignorance. Right. Right. It's willfully trying to put what you believe the world to be on something that is not going to be that. Totally. It's like staring at water and going your wood. Oh man. Now Bremer had a plan. It was a three-part plan. First he wanted to restore electricity, water and other basic services. Jesus. Yes. Make sense. Yes. Next he wanted to quote put liquidity in the hand of the people. So he's talking about reopening banks, offering loans, paying salaries, etc. The third part of his awesome plan was to quote corporatize and privatize state-owned enterprises. Now which one of those? Okay. He wanted to get people away

from the idea that the state should support everything. It was time for Iraq to experience the awesomeness of a free market economy in a country where huge amounts of people have been living off the government for their entire lives. No part of his three-part plan did it say make things secure. Right. So another thing Bremer did was to end the horrible bureaucracy that he had to deal with. Okay. Sending ideas and reports to the State Department and the Pentagon and the CIA and the NSC blah blah blah blah. Yeah well it's supposed to be easy to rebuild the nation. He said quote he didn't want to deal with the Washington

Squirrel Cage. Sorry pal. Tough shit. He didn't want to wait around for approval. He wanted to get shit done. So the White House said go for it dog. Oh god. You are the man. Now he only needed to go to the White House for really big things and everything else he can make a decision on his own. This is how you rebuild a country. How is it if you if you're George W. Bush. He's fucking lazy. But how how is how is it is it because it always baffles me because I'm like he's for sure dumb and he's like not good with English but he's also not like people made it sound like he's like handicapped like he's definitely no I don't think

he's handicapped capable of understanding reality. No I think he doesn't give a shit. So he's just that like he's he's it's just it's so hard because I look I like I told you I used to go what run up these stairs in Hollywood and what I used to picture on the ones that would get hard is I picture George W. Bush at the top of the stairs so I can beat the fuck out of it to motivate me to like keep going up the stairs. But so I despise the man but I also I'm always like baffled by what is in that fucking head. He doesn't give a shit. And it's just ambivalence. He's a fucking party boy. He doesn't care. He's

never cared about anything. It's probably I mean yeah it's just it's shocking. It's still shocking anyway. So still both elections 11 days after you got to Iraq. Brammer dissolved because now he can make his every decision he wants. Sure. He dissolved the Army Air Force Navy Ministry of Defense and the Iraqi intelligence service. No biggie. It's no big deal. Just all of the aren't those the military isn't that. Yeah. Yeah the military. The military is a good one to start with. No biggie. Right. Meanwhile Powell thought Brammer was fucking nuts. And so he got the few lower level State Department personnel who are

working for the CPA to write memos to the State Department using their personal email like Hotmail or Yahoo. So it could be detected. Wow. As far as staff Bremmer chose three Republican advisors who had been around a long time and had experienced the rest of the posts were filled with young Republican. Yes people. They were fawning parasites who never challenged anything. Brammer said for the vast majority. This was their first job working in government. They all believe very strongly in building a Democratic Iraq. Yeah. But. But what. Experience was needed. There was one

man who had been working on Iraq for quite some time. Afghan born now American Al Klazilid. He was a White House envoy who had been spending months trying to smooth the coming political transition and put together an interim government. He said he had been speaking to exiled leaders and was very trusted. He was the man you'd want by your side if you were Brammer. Mm hmm. So naturally Brammer viewed him as a threat. Right. Good. Here was a guy who knew more than him about the situation. Brammer was supposed to be running. That man he might have other ideas that Brammer might not agree with

and Brammer was in charge. Did I mention he was in charge. Yeah. So that guy wasn't hired. Right. So Brammer came to Iraq after telling someone in Washington that he was going to quote make some bold decisions. Not what we're it's not a thing. You're not you're not making bold renovating. Yeah. He's making you know what Iraq needs. No. Just some fucking straight up hard decision making. Oh my God. That's what it needs. Hard to say. You know people are doing. Guys got to come and go. Yes. No. Yes. No. How is there not a show yet where people go and do makeovers at homes in Iraq.

Like Iraqi home makeover. How is that not it. Like we've completely ruined the country. And normally what we do to at least our coping mechanism is to feel like we're helping a few. How is that not. That's so great. That's not a show yet. It's so great. All right. Today what we're going to do is we're going to change your entire home. Well I had been changed. It's just rubber. It's just a pile. OK. Talk to me. Don't look at the camera. Pile. OK. I told you his my brother. OK. Well first of all you're going to get a whole new kitchen. My brother. Do you like marine tiles. We'll go with small tiles. It'll take a while

and these cabinets here. These are so old. I mean we're going to rip down those and we're going to give you some cutting edge design down. Exactly. And cabinet should be hung up. So we're going to bring in some people to do that. And we have some great ideas for the living room. Flat screen anyone. My brother is sleep bomb. You know maybe we don't need you on camera for this one. Just maybe we just redo the house. He's really negative. I guess his brother his brother was killed out here. And he's just crying a lot. Next up on Iraqi Makeover. So Bremer is right. So he says he's going to make some bold

decisions. He did when he got to Iraq in his first meeting he said they should shoot looters. He was somehow talked out of this great idea. I think I'm just going to say that the catch phrase I'll have is how. Then someone mentioned de-bathification which was the shower which was purging senior members of Saddam's bath party from the government. Bremer was so for it. The CIA and State Department were super not for it. They wanted what was called de-sadamification getting rid of those who were very top commanders and those who had committed crimes. So Bush met with the CIA, the state and Pentagon and everyone argued

and in the end the NSC came up with a compromise. The top 1% of bathists would be purged and then the rest of the party would have to go through a truth and reconciliation process basically vetting them. Okay. Okay. Bush was down with it. So that was that. Sorry. So the plan is to take the top 1% of bathists. Right. The really bad guys. Right. And use them. No. Get rid of them. Get rid of them. Okay. And then the rest of them you vet them and make sure that they weren't. Right. The rest of me put through like some sort of Scientology class where they hold the rod and you know. That's right. Yeah. Okay. The cool thing was that the

NSC had no idea how the bath party was structured or how many people were on each level or what each level meant or anything. They could have looked up this information on the internet or read papers about the party. All of this information was easily available to anyone particularly those people who had just invaded and needed that information but nobody read it. But how they like how do you how it just takes time. How do you not just buy discussion of this. Can I tell you something when this was going on I looked it up and read about it. I'm and you had a good feeling. Just so they went blind into the decision. So here's

how the bath party was structured. There were four top levels of the bath party. Below that were just regular members and cadets. The top four levels were the concern. Right. Uh-huh. But Bush had made his decision and they were basically going to be vetted. Okay. Nope. Fife put to get got together with Chalabi and they came up with their own debathification plan. So what. Somebody's somebody's out bad planning W. Well the but the president has made his decision. But then this other guy the Department of Defense decided me and Chalabi actually spitballed a little and now we don't need to do all that stuff.

Chalabi's got us in there's all four levels of the bath party and group members known as the Udu-Furqa would be perched. Bremmer met with Feith and because this was one of those great 30 second ideas he jumped on it. Bremmer had said he wanted to make bold decisions and this was a fucking bold decision and really fucking stupid and fast and it was not at all with the president side off on. So here's the thing you're learning right now. It wasn't that Bush was stupid. It was that he was stupid and then dumber people did dumber things. But it's but it's see that's what's so hard is like it's not

it's not just dumb it's just it's just wrong like it's just like wrong like they're like you're saying like they're they're blissfully like they're blissfully ignorant that's right they they're going in with the the everything they do they look at the rosiest picture and they don't actually look at the evidence or the analysis or anything they just make a decision based on what they want it to be and then that and and the idea that you that that can carry like when it was going on you were like I honestly I remember saying to a friend of mine like they just they must know what they're doing just because it

seemed so ludicrous yeah you're almost like they must have it's not even as ludicrous you you don't even know how ludicrous it is but the idea that I was like I was right your head on a couch you're not right you're it's so much worse than you ever imagined okay so 5th just printed up one and a half page executive order of his plan and including banning members of regular members of the bath party from having top-level jobs in government he showed it to Rumseld but not Powell or Rice or Bush and Rumseld was like fucking cool man send that shit out when Garner read the report he almost shit himself he

thought it was the dumbest and craziest thing he'd ever read he ran into Bremer's office and said this is too harsh let's get run from spilled on the phone and see if he we can soften it and Bremer looked at him and said absolutely not we are gonna issue this today Garner pleaded you're gonna drive 50,000 bath bath this underground before nightfall don't do this the CIA station chief and Baghdad said in six months you'll regret this Bremer didn't give a shit debathification of Iraqi society or as it can now be called the creation of the insurgency in the biggest post-World War two fuck up in American history was

read by Bremer that one that's read by Bremer to his CPA staff that night one guy had some total fucking asshole loudmouth right sort of fella his name is Steve Browning he opens his fucking yam pole and he said the bath is are the brains of the government the ones with a lot of information and knowledge and understanding of how everything works if they're purged the CPA will have a huge problem running anything but what did Browning know he was only in charge of running five ministries at that time Bremer said the order is not open for discussion look the 30 seconds are up bro sorry bro 30 seconds out of the

lightning round another staffer asked Bremer if he completely understood the impact his policy would have as she continued on she grew angrier and her face read as she spoke and Bremer finally cut her off and said the decision was made and left that night David Nummy who was currently working Nummy now mr. Nummy who is currently working at the finance ministry called Bremer's office and told the staffer quote if you want me to enforce this I'm leaving on the next plane out of the country because it's ill advised and you have no idea how far back it's going to set us if those people disappear and

we don't have the tools to find the next generation Bremer did it anyway Nummy was gone within a month the purge was on the order went public that was 700,000 government workers who were used to being in power who were turned against the US occupation overnight the next day at the health ministry eight of the top 12 jobs were vacant one third of the entire staff on the ministry was gone and now at the ministry's Americans were spending all their time investigating who was and who wasn't a bath party member to finish the purge they poured over records and fired more Iraqis instead of doing things like starting factories up

and getting workers paid and making the country secure fight that Bremer had managed to turn everyone into a guy shuffling through paperwork oh and they were purging innocent people the bath party wasn't like the Democratic Party in the US you couldn't turn down a promotion in the bath party under Saddam or you would be sentenced to years in prison so these guys had to be bath party members right so that like what are the what do you do when you purge what like how did what is it they're gone that just done they can they can never get a job in government again so they're like go work at a gas station

there's no gas just go it's funny because when it was going on that people are always like man we shouldn't be built like one of you know the Democrats will be like you shouldn't be building roads and bridges there you should be building roads and bridges here but it turns out we were building roads and bridges nowhere right I'm just up nobody's nobody's doing shit we basically like Americanized we did we did spread America to Iraq we did it's just nobody knew that America spoiled milk I would say Iraq is American about 80 years yeah so you get put in prison the promotion in the bath party got you a monthly raise

of 25 bucks if you became a FERCA so a lot of people just took it to get an extra 25 bucks a month it's quite a bump some of them are former soldiers they really didn't give a fuck about son on they just wanted a job an extra cash because of the purge 15,000 teachers were fired oh my god well this is what happens when you don't this is what happens when you don't read it really it really is it is a makeover show but they just don't we just don't have the contractor or the plan to rebuild no but you're just knocking down everything the guy to knock it down and then we're like oh we forgot to get a

guy to build the shit under Saddam the Ministry of Education had told all teachers to join the bath party and they were then made furkas in Sunni areas entire schools now had just like two teachers Bremer realized this was actually not good instead of a commission to hear appeals from teachers okay uh-huh and he put Chalabi in charge of the Commission who made sure the appeals weren't hurt right okay Bremer Bremer was cool that because he considered the debathification to be quote the single most important thing we've done here oh my god so shit little people are out of work and then two

days after the purge order Bush decided to disband the Republican Guard they were the elite forces believed to be loyal to Saddam the regular Army guys could stay though right so they still the army is still intact they didn't even fight during the invasion but where were they every military base was empty not one Iraqi military unit was intact apparently their leaders had been asking since the invasion and in what the army should do but no not one American answered for some reason the Pentagon assumed the soldiers would just stay in their barracks and wait until they were told what to do instead they

went home to their families because you know there's a war is yeah oh do so they all they did what Americans wanted they took off their uniforms and they went home and they went to their families and then they were like fuck I guess I just live at home now so instead of instead of sitting around with no food or supplies in hot barracks with no electricity the US also sort of forgot to tell them that they should stay at the barracks so now the bases were all empty and looted and 5th looked at the situation and decided the regular Army shouldn't be called back and Bremer agreed so instead of vetting and

assessing all the soldiers and figure out which ones to bring back they were just tossed aside even though they had all been waiting around for orders thinking they were still part of the army so they didn't fight they stood aside they led an army in vain and then they lost their ability to support their family so that's another 300,000 men tossed the streets that's a million right now that's a million if you're counting and and those are those are the million that were like this will help let alone the ones that are just already fucked even worse the Iraqi army was considered the glue of Iraq it helped to

hold together all the desperate ethnic and religious groups by stressing national identity yeah and it was gone this was a great move also because unemployment was at 40% Lieutenant General David McKiernan 40% set of the order quote there are a large number of Iraqi soldiers now unemployed this is a huge concern how you doing it's just you just it's like a choose your own adventure but somebody else is choosing the adventure and they're always picking the bad adventure no don't go okay like everything like every bad every every wrong decision is somebody's like I'm on board every single wrong decision

they could have possibly made the soldiers protested by the thousands all that like I mean like to me it always felt more like the damage was just we blew everything up and that just sort of fucked the country up and that you know that's why all the civil war because the army just sort of couldn't handle it and didn't want but the idea that there were ways that it maybe could have actually been okay when I finished this research I realized that it actually could have been okay yeah soldiers protested by the thousands they lost their jobs their pensions their source of pride they just wanted their jobs back but apparently

firing guys who took their guns home was the call to make during one protest to Iraqi soldiers were shot by US troops with fur which further infuriated all of this laid-off soldiers Bremer was slow to react and when a new army was finally created the old soldiers weren't given preference and they only made an army of 40,000 months later a reporter saw one of the protesters and he asked what happened everyone there did they join the new army and the soldier left they're all insurgents now 72 hours after the decision was made we just turned the army into we just made the army turn against us yeah right 72 hours after

the army was let go the first major attack from the airport road took place one furious US general said you guys blindsided said calm we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and created an insurgency another said we made hundreds of thousands of people very angry at us and they happen to be the people in the country best acquainted with the use of firearms also the insurgency meant people had a job again something to do the insurgents offered unemployed ex soldiers or ex-bathis up to a hundred dollars to shoot Americans or plant landmines I mean that's crazy if they film the killing of America and they

got a bonus Bremer then met with the leading exiles and told them he had decided there would be no interim government the US would continue to occupy and he was the vice Roy and totally in charge he just anointed himself king the Iraqis weren't pleased he then put together a council of 25 Iraqis who had just advised him and write a new constitution but Bremer would have the final decision on everything meanwhile he ignored a guy named Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani who was the big dog when it came to Islamic law in the country after

it became obvious he shouldn't ignore the Ayatollah Bremer finally sent a man to meet with Sistani okay who did he send to meet with the most powerful religious man in Iraq no was it a diplomat no some of the experience with rebels no a urologist what why he was an Iraqi American who lived in Florida he had been recruited by the US to help but letting anyone from Florida do this is a red flag to begin with he was recruited by the US to help with reconstruction he was not a diplomat he was not a politician he was a urologist I'm sorry what am I missing he speaks the language that's the only

reason he sent him to talk to him no he's a urologist no he he sent it's like sending a fucking gynecologist to talk to the pope like you're fucking idiot although I bet you the pope would really start asking some like like you'd be like and what does it what happens in there inside what would you describe the feeling what would it be like what does it look like draw a picture but they were urologist hadn't invented and patented patented his own penile implant so that's good they sent a guy who has a patent for a penile implant yeah to talk to the leader of the so well if this is just not any need to talk about a year

need your name track so that didn't go well why and the CPA quickly learned that the p-doctor might not be the guy to meet with the ayatollah what was the ayatollah just like what is going on what's happening what's going on is I don't understand who are you and then this is talking about the penis implant like eventually he's just vamping let me show you something that I want to get into all your people in your country it didn't go well I tried to sell him a couple penile implants and he was livid what I tried to sell him two of my penile implants and what did not take it well he's the ayatollah I understand

and he did not like the demonstration I have one I showed him a little bit and one of the men really threw me on the ground hard oh god I know that's what I'm like I said oh god Allah the CPA then looked into the doctor's background and they found out he'd exaggerated his connections to the Bush administration they did that they did that after they sent him to meet with the ayatollah they did that after how can lying on your resume at this level work like if you're trying to get a job at like forever 21 yeah you can beef up the fucking res a little bit but how the fuck are you like wait oh shit he really pulled one over

on us so Brahma replaced the urologist a new man with would meet with the ayatollah a stool doctor so with more experience whatever you're about to say is not gonna be good a pharmaceutical executive from Michigan oh geez is it is the idea that you just literally can't send anybody who's not just kind of corrupt like you you're like okay well look maybe we we got to leave government now who do we go but if you're a pharmaceutical executive from Michigan and they go hey we want you to go with me with the ayatollah you should say I don't think that's why I should be doing nobody it's totally like winning a

trip for him it's like yeah it is like you want a vacation the ayatollah was not impressed he then issued a fatwa you know who we should have sent next carrot top let's just people are just so you send me Gallagher yeah how did it go I'm covered in melon I don't know what your country is doing I am covered in melon okay you know we're gonna send you a you do you know what the Coney Island hot dog eating contest is there's a guy one last year no I'm gonna send him over oh wait Joey Chestnut yeah we love him actually I send him I watch him maybe you're an ESPN didn't you didn't you do a bit about how the we should set we

should send that to like Ethiopia or something oh yeah I don't know I think I tried that a couple of times yeah my idea is that we should hold the Nathan's hot dog eating contest in in the Sudan and they should do it live there and then and the and so they should they should do it at a camp and then after it's over I would assume the guy as he's shoving the hot dogs into his mouth and watching the crowd of starving people I assume that is something would change in him and then he would hopefully weigh down into the crowd and they would tear him apart and eat the hot dogs from his stomach and eat him no just tear him

apart and then eat take the hot dogs out because they're not digested yet you know okay take him out of his snake egg swollen yeah right okay so just remove the babies from the throat like that to me would be a great new way to do those I mean those aren't getting overly cheered so there's definitely hunks in there Cistani issue to Fattwa it said that Iraq's Constitution had to be written by elected representatives and the committee Bremmer had picked was unacceptable no one at the CPA decided to give a shit about the Fattwa they figured and this is a quote from one of Bremmer's aides the view was we'll just

get someone to write another Fattwa wait I can't wait sorry I had totally issued a Fattwa saying they had to hold elections to write a Constitution and they wanted to just get a different guy to do a different Fattwa so they just they're counter like a counter Fattwa they got counter Fattwa yeah interesting okay that's a fair well they think this is crossfire right okay that's fair but that kind of thinking will make more sense once you understand the hiring process of the CPA most CPA staffers were chosen because they had a well connected Republican friend or were recruited by Bush himself not because

they had experience at post war situations never that actually James O'Byrne a White House envoy took over recruitment he asked for resumes from the usual places you would go when trying to rebuild a country sure Republican congressman staffs conservative think tanks Republican activists sure Frederick Smith deputy director of the CPA Washington office said the criteria for sending people over there was that they had to have the right political credentials O'Byrne was definitely the correct man for the job he once pointed at an applicant's resume and said this is the ideal candidate because he had

worked for the Republican Party in Florida during the contested presidential election of two that's oh god they asked questions that were very important to nation building like if the interviewee supported Roe versus Wade oh wow or if they voted for George W. Bush oh my god one CPA staffer sent an email to a friend describing the process quote I watched resumes of immensely talented individuals who had sought out the CPA to help the country thrown in the trash because of their adherence to the president's vision for Iraq was uncertain so so anyone who was anybody who did anybody who's who went in for an

interview and said the truth which is I don't think Bush knows what he's doing over there yeah he doesn't actually have a vision where that's not blissfully ignorant that's not what we're looking for they throw that away yeah so anybody who had any sort of knowledge or smarts was immediately dismissed for telling the truth what would you rather would you rather you know would you rather know about a problem or would you rather just ignore and never solve it yep you don't have to solve a lot of problems if you don't believe them the email continued I saw senior civil servants from agencies like Treasury Energy and

Commerce denied positions that were instead handed to prominent Republican National Committee contributors the good thing was that the recruitment process was very fast because they weren't looking at actual experience right good it's easy to hire at one point Bremers budget chief asked for 10 new young workers he got a list one was the daughter of a new conservative commentator named Michael Leiden one was a recent graduate from an event evangelical University for homeschooled children oh my fucking god another was an age Rick Santorum all 10 were hired when they got there they all found out something

hilarious they had all sent their resumes to the Heritage Foundation a conservative think tank and ended up getting hired to work in Iraq six of them they couldn't believe they were like this is amazing oh my god six of them were put in charge of Iraq's 13 billion dollar budget oh my god they had zero management in the financial world so they took just fucking college kids yeah who had no experience doing anything yeah and put them in charge of the budget yeah of Iraq right and it didn't go well it apparently John Agresta was hired as senior advisor to the Ministry of Higher

Education a lifelong Republican and big supporter of the war he got the call early on he actually had experience in the field surprisingly and he was going to Iraq to completely redo the university system he was gonna get he was going to get high-speed internet going in schools and Oprah open liberal art colleges what why get what he's gonna get high-speed internet in there open that bitch like what how do you like if you're an Iraqi how do you're like okay thank you but listen to me fuckface my I don't have electricity I actually live to story out them to do is a separate dollop it's really amazing oh boy now

he didn't know anything about Iraq's educational system though cool so going in when he arrived in Iraq he had not read one book about the country quote I wanted to come here with as open as a mind as I could have he said that came out of his mouth good a guy going through redo the education the entire education system in Iraq said I didn't want to read anything about Iraq it sounds it came out of his mouth it almost sounds like we hired jayden Smith I only want to read books about Iraq written by my sister maybe you should have read a book or something because high-speed internet

wasn't even remotely a possibility interesting on the ground what they needed was beyond obvious after being in Baghdad for about a month Bremer went to a school for a photo op there he saw classrooms with no lights no fans no chalk no blackboard just empty rooms Bremer promised the headmistress that engineers would visit soon to fix the school completely renovated Bremer said and then he told the boy he'd bring soccer balls from the back of the crowd a woman shouted please help us we are very worried about security they are people kidnapping our children we are very scared another woman yelled Bremer

said they're arresting people every day in the back of teacher yelled please we just want to be paid Bremer was down then hustled into his SUV good luck he yelled oh my god thank god that guy's coming to put in the high-speed internet how can you how can you have it like if you if you're in this country how can you be like Michael Jackson at a trial like just like hopping into it like answering two questions on the way to the car and then getting in we still give a shit that's been nice when our Gwesto hit the ground in Iraq he found out he had no budget for his education reform he thought he would have 25 million he

quickly learned that all the money had been given to American universities so they could establish partnerships with Iraqi universities each American University would decide how to use the money what it just why are you looking me where it just doesn't I don't understand well what they did was all the money that was to set aside to rebuild Iraqi schools was given to US schools to dig off with what what just doesn't even make me it does because a bunch of Republican cunts who are running schools just got a bunch of fucking money and Iraq and go fuck itself it's fine

run felt was always recommending people to work through CPA at one point he sent five the memo recommending a guy for a specific position Rumsfeld said the guy had worked in banking and might speak Arabic but later Rumsfeld was told the CPA had not hired the man he was pissed oh boy he sent a note I would be curious to have someone check into that and explain to me what in the world is going on I thought we needed people out there turns out the guy was 80 years old sort of didn't want to spend it a moment of his final years in Iraq oh and he had quote connections with shady bank dealings in the Middle East oh my god

so Rumsfeld wanted an eight-year-old corrupt asshole to work right that's who'll get it going now some foresight did happen just not by the Pentagon or the White House of the CPA before the war the Justice Department actually hired a guy who was perfect for the job he had experienced rebuilding police forces in conflict zones his name was Richard Myers before way before the invasion he said they would need 5,000 law enforcement advisors to come and train the police of course that idea was rejected of course the Pentagon had just assumed the police would keep working after the invasion interesting like the army but

weird thing is is they all fled when the invasion started sure so no cops anywhere at this point experts said 7,000 police were needed immediately the White House sent fewer like a lot fewer like 6,999 fewer uh dude what they sent one person was it Robocop Bernie Karak former New York police commissioner that fucking asshole former military vet oh god oversaw the NYPD during 9-11 and he would later go to jail for four years yeah for eight counts including criminal conspiracy as a bonus Karak had zero experience in a post war zone although the White House believed his total lack of experience was an asset that's an

amazing way to be it's an amazing thing to think I mean it really is like you know you you do have total sensitivity towards like 9-11 obviously it's like the craziest thing that's ever happened in this fucking country yeah but the idea that just because a dude was working for the police at the time and right it doesn't it doesn't make him for patriotism patriotism doesn't give you experience like there's no no it's fucking mind boggling and that's the same idea with the hiring Rudy Giuliani for that position before it's like yeah he was he was there like they just gave the

Rudy Giuliani he just said he was he said he said compassionate he said shit it wasn't even that compassionate yeah and he really wasn't I mean he was like fake compassionate but that was like enough well look important things Karak was a Republican right and he was a cop right and he believed in what Bush was doing good so he's the guy Karak agreed but only wanted to stay for six months and see was now a partner in Rudy Giuliani's consulting firm and he was making 10,000 a pop for speeches oh god I can't afford to be here he said that's the guy that's the guy the entire time in Iraq Karak held a total of two staff

meetings oh my god one the week he arrived and the other one a New York Times reporter was following him and doing a story on him now at this time they needed someone to assess the police and get them back to work they needed a guy with vision who would get the funding needed and hire new police chiefs but Bernie was a street cop and in Iraq in bagged out he found an exact mirror version of himself oh dear Ahmad Abraham the the Iraqi Bernie Karak he was named the chief of investigations and deputy interior minister never mind that he had only met a mid-level cop before the war this guy there's something about this

guy so incompetent people are hiring more incompetent people yeah so it's a copy of a copy of a copy instead of bringing in the seven thousand like multiplicity foreign police officers needed to train people they brought in one guy who didn't know he was doing and he hired a guy who didn't know he was doing good perfect Bernie never seemed to understand where he was he shared an office with the CPA's interior ministry who often met with Iraqis Bernie came into the office one day and saw Iraqis around talking to people and loudly said who the fuck are these people Jesus though and someone said oh those are

Iraqis what the fuck are they doing here Bernie that's their country that's the reason we're here it's their country they're everywhere Bernie cut his six months like jumping into the ocean and asking why all the fish what's with all these things these things with the flippers Bernie cut his six month torn half after three months he left Iraq he didn't tell most of the people who worked for him that he was leaving he was just gone one day wow he ghosted them awesome now the CPA was getting people into positions they needed to get things fixed and to get people working again the CPA needed 150 factories

that were owned by the Ministry of Industry looked over to figure out which would work okay they hired a man named Glenn Corliss to do the job Corliss was one of the few who came with actual experience to a job that needed it he'd worked on Wall Street and was known from bringing back companies from the brink okay so he arrives and here's the conversation that took place on that day right CPA okay you have 150 factories we want you to evaluate them Corliss where's my staff well it's you okay where's the management of the companies we fired the management because of debathification where the financials

there are no financials how much time do I have two weeks what 150 factories he has no staffs he has no money he has to do it in two weeks what everything sounds like a reality show it's like a movie plot he's two weeks what is it two weeks 150 countries okay so here's how the companies worked under Saddam they were state-owned and made a bunch of shit that wasn't very good okay notebooks batteries all kinds of fucking crap but a factory job was a government job and you got a nice salary for the rest of your life okay many people implanted factories didn't even

have anything to do they just sat around employed sure the salary was low but the government took care of everything gasoline was almost free electricity was free colleges free health care was free people got food every month from the government so that's how they live in their life mm-hmm so you had a whole society basically living off of the government and it was the only thing they knew they had been doing this for decades so when Corliss told them their system was screwed up they looked at him like he was insane yeah Corliss quickly realized privatization was not happening yeah if they sold out the factories

many people would lose their jobs just increasing the already massive unemployment numbers there wasn't even electricity or raw materials to work with many of the factories were worthless already they should just be shut down but Corliss recommended shutting them down and then continuing to pay the employees forever because you can't just get rid of because there's so many unemployed and the factories don't actually make anything so he's like so he's like well just fire them just just get rid of the companies and just keep paying them and hopefully they'll start their own businesses or something Jesus

Christ if you're one of them jackpot yeah he there just wasn't another solution in his eyes and this is the guy who fucking does this yeah the guy above Corliss who made the call and stuff like that was named Peter McPherson he'd been the president of Michigan University worked under Reagan in international development for seven years was VP at Bank of America and most importantly he was buddies with Dick Cheney yeah he strongly believed that it was very important to shrink government employment not increase it the faster they can eliminate subsidies and get privatization going the

quicker shit would turn around but he had only asked for 130 days leave from Michigan University so he was thinking he cranked the shit out in four months he's really like he's on board and McPherson believed strongly the way to cure all problem was to reduce taxes and privatize oh okay no go ahead I mean let's love how we're like yeah Reaganomics that's what you guys need we went into a country and said Reaganomics Reaganomics also CPA lawyers said privatizing the factories would violate the Hague convention McPherson looked at the looting that had occurred as a necessary shrinkage sure it was like

the natural natural selection but for business the good companies would now right-wingers believe in survival of the fittest and like Darwin it's when it comes to this shit with this shit yeah this is when it comes to actual when it comes to us it's like ah it's preposterous now let him work itself that's how nature does it I know God created us yeah in a pot in the sky so he thought the good companies would now flourish he looked at everything that way a lot of police cars have been stolen and turned into taxis good he said privatization hey that's privatization democracy in motion bus drivers are not

driving their own routes and just pocketing the money and keeping the privatization so this stuff's all good but there are a couple of big problems debt Iraq's banks were one million in debt so McPherson just wiped out all the debts from government-run businesses okay and anyone who knows anything about business knows that weak companies usually owe strong companies money so now the factories that had actually been profitable suddenly had no money oh good and a bunch of companies that were shit had money or usually just goods that they had bought from the strong companies right like one

company now had a giant mountain of free cotton they could use to make clothing but they were a shit company right so they just made they just had free they had free they had free cotton right so overnight he destroyed every strong government-run company Jesus it's so great he was right though he will be out pretty fast this is good plans gonna be done real quick McPherson that did whatever Iraqi had been waiting for since the tanks rolled into Baghdad left he cut the top tax rate from 45 percent to a flat tax of 15 percent okay boom right yeah most Iraqis didn't pay taxes now we're six months into the occupation and

assaults on the green zone begin oh all those released Iraqi soldiers and fire people finally found something to do suddenly the people who worked for the CPA started to have an actual look around at what was going on and they were forced to do this because bombs were coming over the walls of their secure zone well don't I guess they didn't know about the green zone it's big it's like ghoul and tag can't tag me I'm on ghoul they realized this wasn't good and it suddenly started dawn on then that without security they couldn't make liberal arts colleges or privatize the factories or get election going yeah I

mean the ballerinas are gonna be really effective right yeah for sure but they were so far past fucked at this point that it's amazing the entire CPA was in Iraq the entire time the CPA was in Iraq the CPA actually had no idea how many people worked for the CPA okay I mean like I just I'm starting to feel like I could do some of this shit yeah and that's not good no it's very bad this made it hard for them to ask for more people one CPA minister said quote we never had a good grip on how many people were in the CPA sometimes people just showed up in Baghdad and sometimes people just left hey I'm working for you

guys I okay I'm gonna leave now all right it ended up taking six months to get CPA staff into all 18 Iraq provinces and when they did get the staff there the staff were so small they were completely overwhelmed running them almost pointless they needed a lot more staff everywhere in May 2003 the regional coordinator for South Iraq wrote our window for influencing the course of events in the south will be gone in two to three weeks in two to three weeks it was of course despite reality being smashed into his face Bremer continued to push for privatization he thought it was quote essential for Iraq's economic

recovery but the factories at this point were a train wreck faez Aziz ran a government vegetable oil company he had fired a lot of men before and they were demanding their jobs back they were saying quote either you get us back to work or we're going to do something one day a former employee came into Aziz's office with a hand grenade and demanded his job back or he would blow them both up Aziz managed to talk the man down it didn't matter two days later Aziz was pulled from his car and gunned down in the street by eight men now this changed everything privatization suddenly looked like it would be more difficult than

everyone thought if they fired thousands of workers what would happen fortunately the dream of bush and company was still alive Tom Foley arrived two weeks after Aziz was killed his job to work on private sector development he was an investment banker who had gone to Harvard with President Bush and he had a bold plan he wanted to privatize all of Iraq's state-owned businesses in 30 days again reality show a contractor told him it couldn't be done because for one reason international law prevents the sale of assets by an occupational government Foley responded I don't care about any of that stuff I don't give a

shit about international law I made a commitment to the president that I'd privatize Iraq's business wow what a great attitude fuck you everyone is not W yeah right international law international fuck about international law fuck about international my bro invaded this place I'm gonna set shit straight I don't give a fuck about international law Iraq is being run by a fraternity at this point yeah and and probably not the best fraternity on campus no not the academic one no certainly not that one the one that the one where like you're like don't go there you'll get roofing yeah this is there this it's being run

by roof ears yeah but Foley was forced to face facts after the killing with the state of the factories the debt debacle it became queer clear and quickly that selling off the factories was a bad idea oh and illegal right he decided to lease them instead which he was very sad about hmm the only hitch was that any investor leasing a factory had to agree to not fire any employees I mean that is not gonna go down well strangely no one stepped forward to buy to lease a factory one would think that without adequate electricity an internet terrible phone service an airport that still wasn't open and violence increasing by the day

that companies would jump to lease a business yeah let's go get out there get involved meet the people but they didn't put your goods on display now being a master of timing Bremer then decided it was the moment to deal with all the food rations the Iraqis got from the government oh good finally let's start toying with that look tons of people out of work and joining the insurgency every day what's the best thing to do right now get rid of their food so make it hard for them to eat he decided the government shouldn't hand out food as had been happening for decades but instead the government should give out

debit cards and then private companies could distribute the food so what he's doing is trying to figure out any way to privatize something he wants something privatized and it is it just why the main reason being to privatize just because of the philosophy of it yes because you would think that there would be more if well there's there's one problem with the plan no they're in the plan is the problem no one in Iraq used credit cards or debit cards I don't understand why why it's a good idea why would you go there and be like let's turn this place into the fifth element like they're like they don't know what

those are like just you can't I mean what do you want to the work you're not going there to make Yankee fans it's just go there to like just fucking like let them have their shit give them food food there were no ATMs you've killed you've definitely killed someone they're related to and you've definitely killed a friend of theirs there are no ATMs so then what are they gonna and there wouldn't be for a long time because there wasn't consistent electricity or phone service so basically they would be giving people a magic piece of plastic they trapped their money inside of it I mean that's what the government really

is remember did not care about all the negative Nancy's in there blah blah blah he decided to move forward with the debit card plan good then the military heard about the idea and immediately killed it because they did not like the idea of food riots yeah well I was going to do it even though there was no infrastructure what would be what would like it would be like giving people trying to make the biggest riot it's like giving people like you give them all a a thing to ride a water slide on right okay everybody here's the water slide cloth that you ride on everyone's like there's no there's no

water slides use your cloth use your cloth buddy there's there's no slide to to to ride it on it mean it really is so fucked up slowly the country began to completely destabilize the shiites and Baghdad slums started fighting US forces and not just a little bit this is full on fighting all the while they're getting along finally yep all the while Bremer tried to put together some sort of functioning government this usually just led to more fighting good while all this was going on the insurgency in the city dominated west of the country increased because those were the people most affected by the debathification and the

firing of workers good for the first time ever the country of Iraq was breaking off into different ethnic and religious groups previously they had thought of themselves as Iraqis first now that was gone meanwhile Bremer was having problems he had formed the Iraq governing council to create a constitution all the members of the governing council had supported the American invasion of Iraq good grand ayatollah sistani had said the constitution had to be drafted by elected politicians Bremer did not want that because he wanted the new constitution to have the separation of church and state in it oh because he was

fucking insane Jesus Christ so the US now found itself in the rather awkward position of an Iraqi religious leader calling for democracy and the US working to stop democracy wow I mean that says a lot by September 2003 the population was done with the occupation things were far worse than they had been under synom they only got 12 hours of power a day unemployment was rampant insurgent attacks were increasing constantly it was a total fuck up in their eyes more and more believed the occupation was doing more harm than good and they started joining up with the insurgents every time Bremer tried to delay an

election to drop a constitution with the council the ayatollah released a message and the whole thing would be fucked the UN got involved Bremer refused to meet with sistani saying sistani was saying different stuff to different people well what a pussy well the way if someone's saying different stuff to different people is to go sit down with him fucking talk to him bitch it's such a high school he's a little bitch Bremer just didn't think the country was ready for voting by the time Bremer came around to meeting with the ayatollah the ayatollah wouldn't see any Americans so now the British were

sending representatives to talk to Bremer about the ayatollah's positions but Bremer would not listen to them the ill-ticking your finger in your ears move and the West shit was going south fast in March 2004 four American contractors were ambushed and killed in Fallujah bush want to revenge and against recommendations from the military because they said it would look like revenge he decided to attack Fallujah which was largely held by insurgents now these were soldiers and factory workers who had been let go by Bremer because they were bathists right so the military attacked Fallujah as

warned it didn't do great things to keep all smooth in the government the cities in the council demanded an end to it immediately the military who strangely believe that you shouldn't start something unless you plan on finishing it were told to stop the attack interesting they estimated there were two days two days from taking the city now some old Iraqi army generals were brought in to negotiate okay they said they could bring in some old Iraqi Fallujah soldiers from the army to handle the situation and deal with the insurgents okay the US agreed strangely didn't go as planned interesting the

Iraqi soldiers did not go after the insurgents they just set up checkpoints around town they also refused to wear the new Iraqi uniforms given to them by the US instead wore their old Iraqi uniform oh wow throwbacks then the checkpoints went away pretty quick okay then all the equipment that have been given to the Iraqi soldiers humvees tons of weapons to fight the Fallujah fight ended up an insurgents hand good because good now they have tanks they were insurgents the whole time right so we brought we brought we negotiate we negotiated with the enemy right and gave them guns but in our stop themselves in

our defense yes we did get a pretty good deal we kind of took them to the cleaners on that one imagine them negotiating like hey for fun push back not good enough shit they're really good I mean they're obviously seem invested okay yeah we'll do it we like more humphies okay yeah and more many more guns sure that'll help yeah do you know do you know we are the same guys nothing boys got super high there so okay I can see you okay bashed back in Washington the White House really really really wanted this thing with the ayatollah worked out and fast because US president presidential elections were

coming and Bush needed good news Bush needs yeah so yeah what's great is he's already been on the aircraft carrier he's already been on the yeah oh yeah mission accomplished Condoleezza Rice decided Bremer had to listen to the ayatollah about how to do the election the UN came back in and convinced the ayatollah elections couldn't happen until December but Bremer kept rejecting all of the ayatollah's demands the way the ayatollah wanted things it would lead to a religious democracy which is how the people of Iraq wanted but not Bremer and Cheney and Faith and Company finally Bremer was called to Washington

where it was hammered into his head that the US presidential election was the most important thing Bremer came back and agreed to hold elections in January 2005 for a parliament and government who would then put together a constitution and this is exactly what the ayatollah had wanted all along the CPA then pushed for an election within a year and then Iraq would be turned over by the US they set it up so it would happen four months before the US presidential election perfect because they wanted to do it fast to get Bush some sweet PR the only way it could occur in such a time is is if the entire

country was a single electoral district regardless of where in Iraqi lived they would choose from the same list of candidates so basically what happened was Bremer kept fucking everything up right and pushing ship back sure and then Bush started panicking about getting reelected and so then they were more years of this leadership so then they rushed an election right instead of doing it right right because he was this was gonna make things difficult in Zuni areas where the insurgency was strong not only would voting be a problem but because of security the Sunnis didn't have big parties anymore

the bath party was gone now was a little political parties vying for control many wanted Bremer in the White House wait many warned Bremer in the White House that having one electoral constituency would lead to disaster it didn't matter they wanted to get it done the elections were a disaster Sunni politicians boycotted insurgents scared people away from voting Sunnis who made up 20% of the population had 8% of the seats in the legislature so the Shiites and Kurds have majorities in the government then the government sat back and watched as Shiite and Kurd militias grabbed up young Sunnis tortured them and

killed them now Sunni started attacking Shiites and Kurds instead of just Americans mixed religious neighborhoods and Baghdad as they have been for decades broke apart Sunnis fled Shiite neighborhoods and vice versa they were heading towards civil war when it came time to write the Constitution became even worse the Sunnis had no representation so they hated the Constitution and it was on the Sunni insurgents formed Al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2004 which then slowly turned into the Islamic State through different events the US pulled out its troops in December 2001 11 ice ice I asked recruited

while the Shiites use oppression in the Sunni areas then war broke out in Syria between Sunnis and Shiites soldiers went to fight there and there they learned how to fight and slowly ISIS formed the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is what we have now when Bremmer left in June 2004 he said the CPA had set up Iraq perfectly it was now on the way to be laughing now on the way to being a democratic country with modern infrastructure and a free market to an interview with a reporter Bremmer said Iraq had been quote fundamentally changed for the better what was Bremmer most proud of doing I can't wait to

hear what his prideful moment lowering the tax rate sure the liberalization of foreign investment laws right that went right and of course the reduction of import duties yeah the CPA to this day cannot account for nine billion of the 12 billion in cash it was given yeah I mean like that cash yeah it well it's hard that's the problem that's why you need to put them on the debit system thank you former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich called Bremmer quote the largest single disaster in American foreign policy in modern times and that's coming from a huge disaster giant piece of shit yeah on December 14th 2004

Bremmer was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bush at the irony awards America's civil award for quote especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States to world peace or to culture or other significant public or private endeavors he was also presented with the Department of Defense Award for distinguished public service and the Nixon Library offered him with the victory of freedom award for demonstrating leadership and working towards peace and freedom it's just can't we just Iraq still does not have

full electricity like they did under Sonoma's saying and now they have ISIS who in July after being allies with the bath party decided to go with debathification and purged all the bath is word is things are not running as smoothly after the purchase I just can't believe he gets awards it's like of all the shit I mean like to like to like oh like the nerve of awards the nerve of a war it really I mean dude I mean so it's worse than you thought right it it's just yeah I mean it's like you know it's like it's like fast food like we all know it's terrible but if you tour the factory floor you're

like oh fuck yeah I mean it's really it's mind-boggling how much they just created this yeah and how I could like he's like we're saying actually I could have maybe been if the State Department had to run things then Iraq probably would be a million times better a million better doesn't mean we should have still I highly recommend the book Imperial Life in the Emerald City inside Iraq's green zone by Rajiv Chandra Sekharan it's fucking great and it just goes over a lot of those fucking stories of the hiring shit which is just I mean come on yeah when the I mean it's the hiring it was all the

hiring the hiring you you hire you hire a fucking GM to run your football team and he's a shithead and remember gonna be surrounded by shitheads these are the guys that he's friends this is the president that was elected because he knew how to run a business and he was gonna have people surrounding him that knew how to make the right decisions however you're wrong because you said elected okay fair and he's never been elected totally fair oh for two well that one wasn't as funny as it might have been cuz Gareth was so upset I mean we had some fun

go to the patreon if you would like to donate to the dollop how many people do you think how many Iraqi people do you think we've killed oh god it's I mean it's cuz our estimations is like six figures well you know at one point the army reclassified Iraqi on Iraqi violence to if someone got shot from the front it wasn't technically a shit right no it's true like they did shit like that where they just reclassified killing so I have no idea I mean it's probably with with with disease and well let everything else is probably a million I mean or more I would figure over a million yeah that's what I would

think yeah well yeah because if they're admitting the hundreds of that I mean that well we would admit to probably what do we admit to probably like 200,000 maybe yeah but it's way over that now you throw an ISIS and everything else that led to well and like and that I mean the next generation so many children are so and when and you know we destabilize Syria we just because we started the war and so then you know it's all with dominoes baby yeah fun stuff make Christmas we are at the dollop on Twitter we're on Facebook the dollop we have a read it reddit subreddit the dollop check all that shit out I

think I'm gonna start doing those stairs again hey girl start get up there and punch that shit go so I can go up there and hypothetically in my brain just punch the fuck out of George W. Bush where wouldn't that be great wouldn't it be great to just have like an hour to fight him I love it like cuz I think he I think you on pure like when a mother can lift up a car because her child's underneath it I feel like he would not be fighting me he'd be I would just and he would know that there was I mean that there was a man who would die yeah to just beat the shit out be so great to beat him up punch him in that fucking

Korean right we didn't say that secret service point we want to hug him I want to punch him