by Walter C. Uhler
(According to Graham, "[O]nce America turned to Iraq, al
Qaeda was able to regroup, refocus, and begin carrying out attacks
again. From September 2002 until the train bombings in Spain in 2004,
al Qaeda carried out twelve attacks that took, in all, more than 600
lives." [Graham, p. 218])
Eager for war, the Bush/Cheney regime also ignored two Intelligence
Community Assessments issued in January 2003 that warned about the
numerous potential problems that might result from an invasion of Iraq.
These reports warned about the difficulty of establishing democracy in
Iraq, about the opportunities that the invasion would provide for al
Qaeda, about the possibility of unleashing violent conflict in a
divided society (e.g., civil war), about fueling a heightened terrorist
threat, a surge in political Islam and increased funding of terrorist
groups, and about how Iran might profit from the whole ordeal. ["Report
on Prewar Intelligence Assessments About Postwar Iraq," Select
Committee on Intelligence, United States Senate, May 25, 2007, pp.
6-12]
(Note the total abuse of intelligence: First, the Bush/Cheney regime
pressured the intelligence community (IC) to produce conclusions that
supported its own preconceptions about Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction and ties to al Qaeda. Then, it embellished or lied about
the IC's WMD intelligence while fabricating damning intelligence about
Saddam's ties to al Qaeda, when the IC found none. Finally, it ignored
the IC's quite accurate assessments about potential problems resulting
from an invasion.)
Consequently, "by March 2003, the planning for Phase IV [postwar
operations] was barely under way." [Packer, p. 119] Moreover, when
General Franks — the man responsible for Phases 1 through 3 - was asked
about Phase IV, he replied: "Mr. Wolfowitz is taking care of that."
[Packer, p. 120]
Wolfowitz assigned responsibility for postwar planning to his
subordinate, Douglas Feith. In mid-January 2003, Feith asked retired
lieutenant general Jay Garner to take the job. Garner eventually
accepted and commenced work. But when he asked Feith for copies of
planning documents, "Feith told him nothing useful existed." [Rajiv
Chandrasekaran,
Imperial Life in the Emerald City, p. 31]
And, thus, the Bush/Cheney regime started a war without having a plan
to win the peace. Not only did it field too few troops, it gave them no
orders about how to handle the looters who ravaged Iraq after the
invasion. According to Noah Feldman, an adviser in Iraq, "The key to it
all was the looting. That was when it was clear that there was no
order. There's an Arab proverb: Better forty years of dictatorship than
one day of anarchy." The looting "told them that they could fight
against us and we were not a serious force." [Packer, p.138]
Or, as former Reagan administration official, Fred Ikle, characterized
the American response to the looting: "America lost most of its
prestige and respect in that episode. To pacify a conquered country,
the victor's prestige and dignity is absolutely critical." [Thomas E.
Ricks,
Fiasco, p. 136]
The invasion also answered the prayers of Osama bin Laden and his al
Qaeda terrorists. For, as bin Laden's number two man, Ayman
al-Zawahiri, asserted in late 2003: "We thank God for appeasing us with
the dilemma in Iraq after Afghanistan…If they [the Americans] withdraw
they will lose everything and if they stay, they will continue to bleed
to death." [Michael Scheuer,
Imperial Hubris, p. xxi]
By its failure to plan to prevent looting, which "caused far more
damage to Iraq's infrastructure than the bombing campaign"
[Chandrasekaran, p. 46] and reached into the depths of Iraq's (and the
world's) cultural treasures, the Bush/Cheney regime not only proved
that it was riddled with barbarians, it also violated international
law. As noted in a very significant June 2007 report, "War and
Occupation in Iraq," issued by the Global Policy Forum, the 1954 Hague
Convention for the Protection of Cultural Properties in the Event of
Armed Conflict "specifies that an occupying power must take necessary
measures to safeguard and preserve the cultural property of the
occupied country and must prevent or put a stop to 'any form of theft,
pillage or misappropriation of, and any acts of vandalism directed
against cultural property." ['War and Occupation in Iraq," p. 20]
Yet, when, on April 11, 2003, Rumsfeld was asked about the looting in
Iraq, he responded, "Stuff happens!" Perhaps he simply was unaware that
even the Nazis felt compelled to protect the Louvre.
The insurgency born of the looting picked up steam in mid-May 2003 with
the arrival of L. Paul Bremmer in Baghdad to replace Garner and to head
the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). On May 16 Bremmer issued his
"De-Baathification" order, which threw some 85,000 members of Saddam's
Baath Party out of work. Doctors, professors and other professionals -
the kind of people "'that you can't do without' in running a society"
[Ricks, p. 161] - were out of work.
On May 23, 2003, Bremmer issued the order, which dissolved the Iraqi
armed services, the staff of the Ministry of Interior and the
presidential security units. As one expert observed: "Abruptly
terminating the livelihoods of these [720,000] men created a vast pool
of humiliated, antagonized and politicized men." [Ricks, p. 162] And,
as Army Colonel John Agoglia subsequently observed: That was the day
"that we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and created an
insurgency." [Ibid, p. 163]
But the incompetence didn't end there. As Rajiv Chandrasekaran detailed in his book,
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone
the CPA was teeming with incompetents. "One 24-year old official with
no background in finance was given the job of resurrecting the Baghdad
stock exchange. Another aide, tasked with devising new traffic
regulations, down-loaded those of Maryland from the internet. A 21-year
old charged with helping to rehabilitate the interior ministry boasted
that his most meaningful job to date had been as an ice cream truck
driver." [Chandrasekaran, "Lords of misrule still in charge at the
Baghdad bubble,"
TIMESONLINE, June 24, 2007]
Ignorant
of what he had wrought, as well as the implications of Bremmer's
incompetent acts, a complacent Wolfowitz told Congress, in June 2003,
that the insurgency was the "remnants of the old regime…I think these
people are the last remnants of a dying cause." [Ricks, p. 170]
Rumsfeld called the insurgents "dead-enders," not knowing that he would
be politically dead long before the insurgency. Predictably, Bush
uttered the dumbest statement of them all. On July 2, 2003, from the
safety of the White House, our brave president observed: "There are
some who feel that the conditions are such that they can attack us
there. My answer is: Bring 'em on." [Ricks, p. 172]
And "Bring 'em on" they did! When Bush opened his big mouth in July
2003, insurgent attacks already averaged 16 per day. Moreover, while
Bush attempted to bamboozle Americans with one bogus "turning point"
after another, the insurgents increasingly brought 'em on.
Thus, when Saddam Hussein was captured in December 2003, the insurgents
were averaging 19 attacks per day. When L. Paul Bremmer signed the
hand-over of sovereignty in June 2004, it was 45. When Iraq held its
elections for a transitional government in January 2005, it was 61.
Notwithstanding these mounting daily attacks, Cheney seized a moment in
June to make yet another asinine assertion: the insurgency is "in the
last throes."
Yet, in December 2005, six months into its "last throes" when Iraqis
voted for a permanent government, the daily attack rate had reached 75.
And when terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al Zarqawi was killed in June
2006, it was up to 90. [See Tom Lasseter,
Miami Herald, Aug. 16, 2006] Worse, in October 2006 attacks surged to a record high of 176 per day.
Even in the teeth of Bush's so-called "surge," attacks averaged 164 per
day in February 2007, 157 in March and 163 in April. Thus, enemy
attacks for the entire month of April totaled approximately 4,900.
"Bring 'em on," indeed!
In addition to nurturing an ever-growing insurgency and civil war, the
Bush/Cheney regime's criminal, immoral and incompetent invasion and
occupation of Iraq "has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic
radicalism" that "has metastasized and spread across the globe."
That's the conclusion reached in the April 2006 National Intelligence
Estimate titled: "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the
United States." Moreover, thanks to the regime's incompetence, "the
overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks." [Mark
Mazzetti, "Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat,"
New York Times , 24 Sept. 2006]
And while the attacks increase in Iraq and the terrorist threat grows
around the world, the U.S. Army, to quote retired General Colin Powell,
is "about broken." As retired Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich has
observed: "President Bush has nickeled and dimed the nation's fighting
forces to the verge of collapse. Even today he remains oblivious to the
basic problem that his administration has confronted for the past four
years - too much war and too few soldiers." [Bacevich, "Bushed Army,"
The American Conservative June 4, 2007]
Finally, one cannot complete an examination of the gross incompetence
of the Bush/Cheney regime without noting the perverse results of its
objective to reshape the Middle East. Not only did it fail to increase
Israel's security and leverage the region's oil, it inadvertently
fostered Iran's emergence as a regional force to be reckoned with.
Walter C. Uhler
is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose work has been
published in numerous publications, including The Nation, the Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists, the Journal of Military History, the Moscow
Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He also is President of the
Russian-American International Studies Association (RAISA).
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