Paul Bremer's Rough Ride

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Bremer says he will ultimately be judged not for the violence and mismanagement that marred his administration but for the political arrangements set in place during his 13 months in Baghdad. But he can't escape questions about his political judgment--in particular the decision in late March to close the newspaper affiliated with the radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. At the time, Bremer said the paper was inciting anti-Americanism and endangering U.S. troops. Adnan Pachachi, then a Governing Council member, says that no one was consulted when Bremer decided to shut the paper down. In response, al-Sadr's loyalists staged a rolling revolt in Baghdad and across much of southern Iraq, locking down cities and in the process turning many previously neutral Iraqi Shi'ites firmly against the U.S. occupation. Governing Council members believe the decision was a huge mistake. Says Ibrahim Jaafari, one of the two Vice Presidents in the new Iraqi government: "We couldn't contain the Sadr movement." U.S. troops were forced to fight troops loyal to al-Sadr in Najaf and other politically vital Shi'ite cities in the south. While al-Sadr has in recent weeks called on his fighters to lay down their arms, few members of the new government believe that conflict was inevitable, and most trace it back to the decision to shut the newspaper. "Najaf was a political failure," says Jaafari.

The stresses of the job have worn on Bremer: he tells TIME that he plans to leave public life, write a book and enroll at the Academy of Cuisine in Washington. But while Bremer had hoped to leave Iraq in triumph, the persisting unrest means few Iraqis will be sad to see him go. Members of the now disbanded Governing Council are withering in their criticism of how Bremer treated them--issuing orders and backing them to the wall, rather than consulting. Even the U.N.'s Brahimi has called him "the dictator of Iraq." It wasn't a compliment, but it was close to the mark. This was the hand Bremer was dealt. He was the guy with the broom, standing amid all the broken crockery. He needed to make decisions, and he made them--sometimes for better and, as even he concedes, often for worse.

The supreme power he wielded only months ago has all but vanished. In his final days in Iraq, Bremer spends much of his time helping the new interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, get up to speed on all that will be required of him. On a recent Sunday, after a lengthy lunch with Jaafari--during which Bremer got to use some of the Arabic he has learned in daily half-hour lessons--he confers with the new Prime Minister in the green zone. The meeting with Allawi is about staffing a Prime Minister's office and a new anticorruption law that is about to be implemented. Bremer listens, offers advice. There are no orders given. The dictator's time, it's clear enough, is about up. Later Bremer discloses that Allawi jokingly complained to him about going to bed after midnight and being back at work by 6. A weary smile crosses the face of the soon-to-be ex-proconsul. "Yeah," Bremer says he told Allawi, "now you're getting it."

--Reported by Christopher Allbritton and Hassan Fattah/Baghdad; Brian Bennett, Massimo Calabresi, Malcolm MacPherson and Mark Thompson/Washington; and J.F.O. McAllister/London