Paul Bremer ran Iraq for Bush. His emails reveal panic and chaos [View all]

https://www.thetimes.com/world/middle-east/article/paul-bremer-iraq-emails-diplomat-2fwd70g8j

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https://archive.li/1Du8M


The helicopters never stopped. In Baghdad’s Green Zone, their steady thrum marked the rhythm of occupation: circling, landing, lifting off again into a city that was slipping, day by day, out of control. It was April 2004 and, a year after the America-led invasion, Iraq was descending into chaos.

In the midst of this turmoil was Paul Bremer, a 61-year-old career diplomat, who, since May 2003, had been the administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) — the man President George W Bush had chosen to run Iraq. He lived with his staff inside the heavily fortified former palace complex of Saddam Hussein, the toppled dictator. Beyond the blast walls, rebellion was spreading, and the promise of liberation was dissolving into an anti-American revolt, sectarian bloodshed and, later, the rise of Isis after hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and about 4,500 American and 179 British troops had lost their lives.

Bremer’s stint as “viceroy” of Iraq ended with a hurried flight from Baghdad on June 28, 2004. Two years later he published My Year in Iraq, his account of his nation-building efforts and quest to install a representative government amid the ruins of war. We can now reveal that this airbrushed account is only part of the picture. The Sunday Times has seen a cache of private emails that exposes the gap between Bremer’s public account and his private thoughts and calculations as the occupation unravelled.

From the relative safety of Saddam’s palace, each night Bremer would email his wife, Frances, who remained in the United States in poor health. These emails contain the expected inquiries about Frances’s wellbeing, and that of their pet dog, Minny, a Maltese Bremer described as “the second blonde in my life”. But Bremer also shares the often violent details of the unfolding operation in Iraq — and his frank views on his American, British and Iraqi colleagues.

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