Interesting Bush Revelation

Buried in a mostly-inconsequential article on Bush's state of mind last December, and his plans for the future, there is a very interesting anecdote:

Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of Iraq when he said of disbanding the Saddam Hussein-era military, “The policy was to keep the army intact; didn’t happen.”

But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush’s former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army’s dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, “Yeah, I can’t remember, I’m sure I said, ‘This is the policy, what happened?’ ” But, he added, “Again, Hadley’s got notes on all of this stuff,” referring to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser.

It would be nice to actually see those notes, but the point is important. Earlier in the piece, Bush takes full responsibility for the decision to go to war in Iraq ("This group-think of ‘we all sat around and decided’ — there’s only one person that can decide, and that’s the president"), but apparently delegated all authority over the occupation to Bremer, to the point that he was actually surprised and dismayed by Bremer's management. It's amazing to me that Bush was so disconnected from the actual policy decisions of the CPA, and it may have doomed the entire Iraq enterprise. The decision to put all authority in the hands of Bremer instead of splitting it with Khalilzad as initially planned had worse ramifications than Bush could've imagined, but the decision to do so still falls on him.

So, why did Bush give Bremer the Presidential Medal of Freedom?

UPDATE: Paul Bremer calls Pres. Bush a liar. He says that Bush knew about the plan to dissolve the Iraqi army, and he's got letters to prove it:

A previously undisclosed exchange of letters shows that President Bush was told in advance by his top Iraq envoy in May 2003 of a plan to “dissolve Saddam’s military and intelligence structures,” a plan that the envoy, L. Paul Bremer, said referred to dismantling the Iraqi Army.

...

After recounting American efforts to remove members of the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein from civilian agencies, Mr. Bremer told Mr. Bush that he would “parallel this step with an even more robust measure” to dismantle the Iraq military.

One day later, Mr. Bush wrote back a short thank you letter. “Your leadership is apparent,” the president wrote. “You have quickly made a positive and significant impact. You have my full support and confidence.”

On the same day, Mr. Bremer, in Baghdad, had issued the order disbanding the Iraqi military. Mr. Bush did not mention the order to abolish the military, and the letters do not show that he approved the order or even knew much about it. Mr. Bremer referred only fleetingly to his plan midway through his three-page letter and offered no details.

...

Mr. Bremer indicated that he had been smoldering for months as other administration officials had distanced themselves from his order. “This didn’t just pop out of my head,” he said in a telephone interview on Monday, adding that he had sent a draft of the order to top Pentagon officials and discussed it “several times” with Mr. Rumsfeld.

A White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House is not commenting on Mr. Draper’s book, said Mr. Bush indeed understood the order and was acknowledging in the interview with Mr. Draper that the original plan had proved unworkable.

“The plan was to keep the Iraqi Army intact, and that’s accurate,” the official said. “But by the time Jerry Bremer announced the order, it was fairly clear that the Iraqi Army could not be reconstituted, and the president understood that. He was acknowledging that that was something that did not go as planned.”

So let's see those notes, Mr. Hadley.