Whenever things heat up in Iraq, as they are these days, most Western and Arab media types and ‘analysts’ fall back on an old and mistaken argument. That argument is: that disbanding the old Baathist army was a big mistake by the Bush administration. Oh, yes, if only the old Baathist army ‘was not disbanded’. Yet it is arguable how and when the old army was ‘disbanded’ and by whom.

During the start of the last Iraq war in 2003, the Iraqi army vanished. Its men just shed their military uniforms and melted away. They deserted rather than defend Iraq’s borders. They did not even defend their capital Baghdad, which lay open for the coalition invaders (or liberators, if you will). The army that tormented its own native people could not face foreign forces, sadly a typically common Arab phenomenon.

The old Iraqi army vanished, deserted at the start of the war, long before Paul Bremer arrived in Baghdad. The myth that Bremer made a mistake by “disbanding” it continues. The myth is dusted up periodically by media and analysts and pundits and many Arab apologists, then shelved until the next Iraq crisis.