Paul Bremer's Rough Ride

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And yet, even as he prepares to exit, Bremer continues to stick to the script. "If you go back and look at what has been accomplished, I would say that we have [done] almost everything we set out to accomplish at liberation," he told TIME. "[President Bush and Prime Minister Blair] had a vision of an Iraq that was stable, pluralistic, democratic, at peace with itself--and we have accomplished most of that. There are still problems with security, of course, and I expect there will continue to be problems with security."

Bremer prides himself on the cool, clinical approach he brings to managing the crises that have erupted on his watch. But his tendency to downplay the violence--and Iraqi frustration at the lack of progress toward stopping it--has made him increasingly irrelevant to the people he presides over. Iraqis generally seem to view Bremer as an aloof, remote figure. "He doesn't know us, and he doesn't want to know us,'' says Baghdad schoolteacher Kamel al-Hasni. Bremer says there is little he could have done to alter that perception and he doesn't particularly care about it either. "I just do the best I can, and the chips will fall as they may," he says. "I didn't come here to be loved. I came here to do a job."

The facts on the ground in Iraq have changed so much that it's easy to forget that it wasn't always so dire. When Bremer arrived, in May 2003, the deadly insurgency inside Iraq had yet to begin in earnest. But chaos was mounting, as internecine violence surged, citizens began settling scores and looters took everything that wasn't bolted down. Bremer had all of 10 days' notice that the Administration wanted him to take over as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), and it showed. A former adviser recalls being stunned when at an early-morning meeting the new CPA chief asked the aide to show him on a map the location of Kurdistan--which the U.S. had protected as part of a no-fly zone in northern Iraq for more than a decade.

Even so, Bremer quickly assumed an almost presidential air, appearing in public in jacket and tie despite the sweltering heat. Bremer did make impromptu visits to shops and restaurants--efforts to show that some sense of normalcy was returning. But by late last summer, the violence against both coalition targets and Iraqis had begun, and Bremer has rarely been out of his security bubble since. A former top adviser who briefed Bremer every day says Bremer was in constant contact with his bosses at the Pentagon, talking daily with Washington officials like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. "I was never in a meeting when I saw Bremer make a decision with senior aides. He'd come out of his phone calls, and he'd say, 'Here's what we're going to do.'" Bremer's ability to navigate the Administration's internal divisions made him an instant star. According to the former adviser, the White House was grooming Bremer to become Secretary of State in a second Bush term.