"It's not my fault that the occupation of Iraq went down the toilet!" says Paul Bremer. It's also not the fault of George W. Bush, Bremer says, for George W. Bush is a manly man who backed Bremer in "most of [Bremer's] battles" with Rumsfeld and company. How has Bremer reached his advanced age without realizing that the cossacks work for the czar, not for themselves?

Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach Richard Cheney. Do it now.

FT.com / Middle East & Africa / Iraq - Bremer claims he was used as Iraq "fall guy" : By Edward Alden and Guy Dinmore in Washington: Paul Bremer, former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, says that senior US military officials tried to make him a scapegoat for postwar setbacks, including the decision to disband the Iraqi army following the US invasion in 2003... Mr Bremer portrays himself in a constant struggle with Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, and military leaders who were determined to reduce the US troop presence as quickly as possible in 2004 despite the escalating insurgency.... A Pentagon spokesman on Monday confirmed that Mr Bremer had sent Mr Rumsfeld a memo based on a report by the Rand Corporation consultancy that recommended 500,000 US troops would be needed to pacify Iraq -- far more than were sent. But Mr Bremer's advice was rejected by military leaders and Mr Rumsfeld. Mr Breme's account of his 13 months as Iraq's governor is... scathing of the Iraqi exiles who formed the initial Iraqi Governing Council, resentful of Democrats... the press for focusing on the negative... and bureaucrats in Washington who obfuscated when he was trying to rebuild an entire country....

What emerges clearly from the diary is that there was no detailed postwar reconstruction plan, that the US lacked decent intelligence to deal with an insurgency it failed to predict, and the naivety of Americans who were shocked at the dismal state of Iraq's economy and infrastructure after years of sanctions. Mr Bremer accuses Pentagon officials of setting him up to take the fall for the postwar failures in Iraq, even though the decision to disband the army was personally approved by Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary, and cleared by Mr Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush.... [H]e defends the decision, insisting that reconstituting a Sunni-led Iraqi army would have plunged the country into civil war. He says that military leaders, including the commanding US general John Abizaid, exaggerated the readiness of Iraqi police and military forces in an effort to justify reducing the US troop presence.... In one particularly bleak moment in October 2003, Mr Bremer pleaded with the president to back him in this internal struggle. "I'm concerned that a lot of the Pentagon's frenetic push on the political stuff is meant to set me up as a fall guy," he told Mr Bush at the White House... the president looked puzzled.... Mr Bremer lauds the president for backing him in most of these battles...