Former officer in charge of post-war Iraq, Lieutenant General Jay Garner met with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on June 18, 2003. ” ‘We’ve made three tragic decisions,’ Garner said. …Disbanding the military had been the biggest mistake. Now there were hundreds of thousands of disorganized, unemployed, armed Iraqis running around. It would take years to rebuild an army. They’d taken 30,000 or 50,000 Baathists and sent them underground, Garner told Rumsfeld. And they’d gotten rid of the Iraqi leadership group.”
– Bob Woodward, State of Denial, Page 219