Under-Sec. of Defense Feith for "dirty tricks" operated as the neocon point man in the Defense Dept. But his channel of authority short-circuited SecDef Rumsfeld. Bremer, the presidential Proconsul in Baghdad received an order in writing from Feith to dissolve the Iraqi armed forces and civil service. The motive was to totally fragment Iraq so that it might never again be a threat to Israel or Saudi Arabia. In this, however, Israel was not consulted; in fact, Sharon advised against such decomposition; he worried that too deep a de-Ba'athification might leave Iraq short of technical bureaucrats and in chaos. Read the rest of this post...