Garner Fesses Up; the general takes to the radio for a cathartic confession. Let's hope he feels better now. They say it is good for the soul.
The U.S.-led coalition's handling of postwar Iraq came under sharp criticism from Garner, who said he should have deployed more troops in Baghdad and communicated better with Iraqis from the start.
The retired general also said his successors made a mistake in disbanding the Iraqi army.
Garner, who was replaced by L. Paul Bremer after less than a month on the job, made the comments in London during an interview broadcast on British Broadcasting Corp. radio.
"I think there was a lot of thought . . . on how to do postwar Iraq," Garner said. "I just don't think that it unfolded the way everybody expected it to unfold."
He said he could have done better at communicating with the Iraqi people and that the coalition should have moved more quickly to establish a government in Iraq and put more troops in Baghdad, including more infantry.
"If we did it over again, we probably would have put more dismounted infantrymen in Baghdad and maybe more troops there," Garner said, when asked what the biggest mistakes of the occupation had been.
"We should have tried to raise a government a little faster than we did," he said. "I think we are finally placing more trust in Iraqis, which we should have done to begin with."
He criticized Bremer's decision to disband the Iraqi army as "a mistake."
"You're talking about around a million or more people . . . that are suffering because the head of the household's out of work," providing potential recruits for the anti-U.S. insurgency, he said.
