The stupidest decision in U.S. history was the decision to invade Iraq so Bush and his Texas cronies could steal its oil. The second stupidest decision in U.S. history was the decision to disband Iraq's army so they couldn't stop Bush's grand larceny. That allowed looters to steal the last vestiges of Iraq's government, hospitals, and museums, and unleashed the chaos that quickly led to civil war.

So who made the momentous decision to disband Iraq's army? Charles Ferguson's 2007 film No End in Sight bravely interviewed the main characters. The nominal "deciders" - L. Paul Bremer and his deputy Walter Slocombe - tried to shift the blame to everyone else. But everyone else adamantly insisted on camera that they knew nothing about the decision until after it was made, and objected as strongly as they could because they knew it would be a disaster.

On Monday, Michael Gordon of the New York Times published a long article that pretends to investigate the decision. Of course Gordon co-authored Judy Miller's front page lies about Iraqi WMD that were manufactured by Ahmed Chalabi, so one is more likely to get disinformation from Gordon than the truth. But setting that aside, what did Gordon purport to learn?

Mr. Bremer said he did not recall who first proposed the decree dissolving the Iraqi Army.

Congratulations on a brilliant investigation, Michael Gordon!

I have never set foot in the White House, the Pentagon, or the New York Times. Yet I know whose catastrophic idea this was!

Yup, Henry Kissinger. How do I know?

First, Bremer rose to power as Kissinger's protege. He was an assistant to Kissinger when he was Secretary of State from 1972-1976, and left the Foreign Service in 1989 to become Managing Director of Kissinger & Associates. Who do you think he was taking his instructions from?

Second, Kissinger directly and secretly advised both Bush and Cheney.

Cheney stunned Woodward by revealing that a frequent advisor to the Bush White House is former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who served Presidents Nixon and Ford during the Vietnam War.

"He’s back," Woodward says. "In fact, Henry Kissinger is almost like a member of the family. If he’s in town, he can call up and if the president’s free, he’ll see him."

Woodward recorded his on-the-record interview with Cheney, and here’s what the vice president said about Henry Kissinger’s clout: "Of the outside people that I talk to in this job I probably talk to Henry Kissinger more than just about anybody else. He just comes by and I guess at least once a month," Cheney tells Woodward. "I sit down with him."

Asked whether the president also meets with Kissinger, Cheney told Woodward, "Yes. Absolutely."

The vice president also acknowledged that President Bush is a big fan of Kissinger.

"Now, what’s Kissinger’s advice? In Iraq, he declared very simply:
'Victory is the only meaningful exit strategy.' This is so fascinating. Kissinger’s fighting the Vietnam War again. Because in his view the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will. That we didn’t stick to it," Woodward says.

He says Kissinger is telling the president to stick to it, stay the course. "It’s right out of the Kissinger playbook," Woodward says.

Of course the New York Times (and the Washington Post) know Kissinger was the real architect of the Iraq disaster. But they're not going to expose their favorite war criminal, are they?

It's high time Congress finished the investigation that the Times and the Post are too thoroughly compromised to report.

Update 1: Atrios notes the Gordon revelation that the "invasion strategy" was put into motion in June 2002 with a psychological warfare operation aimed at the Iraqi army, and that is important. But Wes Clark learned the Pentagon started planning the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2002.