L. Paul Bremer III

From SourceWatch
Jump to navigation Jump to search

L. Paul Bremer III ("Jerry") author of My Year In Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope was Chairman and CEO of the Crisis Consulting Practice of Marsh, Inc., a subsidiary of the Marsh & McLennan Companies (MMC). Marsh Crisis Consulting assists corporations in planning for, managing, and recovering from a "full range of crises such as financial misconduct, natural disasters, product recalls, class action lawsuits and terrorism."[1]

In 2000, Bremer served on the National Commission on Terrorism. He also served on the National Academy of Science Commission to examine the role of science and technology in countering terrorism. He chaired the March 2002 Heritage Foundation study -- Defending the Homeland. He continues on the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for mass destruction terrorism. On June 11, 2002, Bremer was appointed to President George Walker Bush's Homeland Security Advisory Council. Bremer replaced Jay Garner as the top civilian administrator of post-war Iraq in May of 2003, carrying the title of Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

In 1981, Bremer was appointed Executive Secretary of the State Department by Secretary Alexander Haig. Bremer directed the State Department's 24-hour a day crisis management and emergency response center. He was named Ambassador to the Netherlands in 1983 and, in 1986, President Ronald Reagan appointed Bremer as Ambassador-at-Large for Counter Terrorism.

Bremer served at the Embassies in Afghanistan and Malawi, as well as service as Deputy Ambassador at the American Embassy in Norway. President Reagan named him as Ambassador to the Netherlands in 1983 where he served for three years.

Bremer was a Managing Director of Kissinger Associates, Inc. (1989-2001). Bremer joined Kissinger after serving twenty-three years of service in the Diplomatic Corps under six Secretaries of State.

Bremer is also the Founder and President of the Lincoln/Douglass Scholarship Foundation, which is a Washington-based non-profit organization that provides high school scholarships to inner city youths.

Bremer received his BA from Yale University, a CIEP (Certificat international d'études politiques) from the Institut d'études politiques in Paris, and an MBA from Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. His languages are French, Dutch and Norwegian.



A neo-conservative ideologue, Bremer was responsible for two of the Bush Administration's most disastrous mistakes in Iraq: --Eric Margolis

  • disbanding Iraq's Army,
  • and firing tens of thousands of government bureaucrats because they were Ba'ath party members.
  • Any junior imperialist knows the first thing you do when you conquer someone's country is to buy the loyalty of its existing armed forces, government and police. Otherwise you will have armies of angry, unemployed potential rebels roaming the streets - Iraq being Exhibit A.
  • Bremer's third horrible blunder came this week [early April 2004]. The US Proconsul, who is supposedly bringing the light of democracy to Iraq, shut down a tiny, 10,000 circulation Shia newspaper and arrested its editor for `spreading anti-American views' and calling Bremer rude names. The paper's publisher was firebrand Shia mullah Moqtada al-Sadr, who has been calling on Iraqis to resist US occupation.
Bremer turned Sadr, a little-respected junior cleric with a limited following, into an overnight hero to restive Shias, and a new American villain. Bremer's latest imbecility caused Iraq's Shia majority, which was simmering with anti-American passions, to explode into violence. Washington and US forces were caught totally by surprise, though warnings were aplenty.

See related articles on the Iraqi unified resistance and the Shiite Muslim uprising in Iraq.

TruthAboutIraq website

A consultant to Bremer, Steven E. Moore, has a website truthaboutiraq that offers this insight

"After working in Iraq for nine months doing focus groups and polling and advising Ambassador Bremer on Iraqi public opinion, Steven Moore returned to the United States in May 2004. Upon returning, he was astounded to find how sharply his experience in Iraq differed from that being communicated on television."

Affiliations

Resources

Also see

References

  1. Also see re Marsh.

External links

Presidential Envoy to Iraq