After the close of the ground war in Iraq, Commander of Coalition Forces “General [Tommy] Franks had ordered Iraqi troops on April 10 [2003] to ‘remain in uniform at all times. Maintain unit integrity and good order and discipline in your units.’ But those plans had not taken into account the harsh reality of life for the [400,000] Shiite draftees, who had endured Spartan rations, token pay, brutal hazing, and arbitrary execution at the hands of their mostly Sunni officers. …they shouldered their rifles and trekked home to their farms, villages, and cities across Iraq. At Liberation, there was not a single Iraqi military unit standing intact anywhere in the country. And, as U.S. Central Command confirmed after the fall of Baghdad, the Iraqi Army no longer existed as an organized force. In Pentagon terms, it had ‘self-demobilized.’ ”
– L. Paul Bremer with Malcolm McConnell, My Year in Iraq, Pages 26-27