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Toll of iraq looting more serious now Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/93-03152004-264877.htmlhttp://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/93-03152004-264877.html
Toll of Iraq Looting More Serious Now
By KEN GUGGENHEIM
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - When looters rampaged through Iraqi ministries, schools and hospitals after Saddam Hussein's fall, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld called it the inevitable "untidiness" at the end of a dictatorship.
But a year after the war's March 19 start, it has become clear that the looting had a serious impact - slowing U.S. efforts to restore electricity and water, adding untold millions to the costs of rebuilding and hampering inspectors trying to uncover Saddam's weapons.
Some believe it helped create a sense of lawlessness in Iraq that continues today.
The United States "has not yet been able to retrieve the lost ground and establish public security in Iraq," said James Dobbins, who held high-level diplomatic positions in the Clinton and Bush administrations and is now with the Rand research group.
The looting has become, in some ways, emblematic of what critics contend was a lack of adequate planning by the Bush administration for the postwar period. After a remarkably quick and efficient combat operation, the rebuilding and stabilization of Iraq has been slow, costly and inefficient, they say.
Before the war, many analysts urged the Bush administration to prepare for a breakdown in civil order immediately after Saddam's fall. But critics say the administration didn't heed that advice because it believed Iraqis' gratitude toward their U.S. liberators would discourage looting.
Some critics also believe the Bush administration didn't want to consider proposals that might slow the drive for war.
"I think there was such an urgency here to go that to focus on the aftermath would have been a complicating factor," said Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the Armed Services Committee's top Democrat.
Past and present Pentagon officials, however, say prewar planning was a great success despite the looting. They contend the planning averted other widely expected problems, such as food shortages, a massive refugee crisis or catastrophic oil fires.
"If somebody had said before the war started that the biggest problem would be that government offices and facilities would be looted and there would be gas lines in the city - people would have thought they were wildly optimistic," said Walter Slocombe, who last year served as the chief security adviser in Iraq.
Retired Gen. Jay Garner, the first civilian administrator of Iraq, said the looting probably couldn't have been prevented. In combat operations, military forces have to take cover. But to do riot control, forces have to be exposed. "You can't fight combat and have riot control on the same street and at the same time," he said.
Much of the looting occurred before U.S. troops arrived, he notes. Even when soldiers were there, they couldn't shoot civilians for stealing.
"Was it bad? Yes. Did it cause us problems? Yes. Could we have controlled it? Probably not," Garner said.
Indeed, the very factors that contributed to the quick military victory may have hurt efforts to restore order. Iraqi security forces dissolved ahead of the American advance. That meant U.S. soldiers encountered little resistance, but also meant Iraqi police weren't around to stop looting.
The war was fought with a small, light force that advanced from the Kuwait border to Baghdad in just three weeks. A Pentagon spokesman, Army Lt. Col. James P. Cassella, said "the speed, precision, and forces with which this war was fought undoubtedly saved many lives on both sides."
But it also meant few soldiers were available to protect Iraqi installations.
Postwar evaluations have found problems. Army troops arriving in Baghdad didn't have adequate plans to shift from combat to stabilization roles, according to an internal review by the Army's 3rd Infantry. Among the review's "lessons learned": "Train and resource maneuver units to counter looting and rioting."
That was hardly a new lesson. Similar advice came from the State Department's Future of Iraq Project, in which Iraqi exiles before the war mapped out a post-Saddam strategy. It also came from humanitarian groups, former government officials and major think tanks.
"It really wasn't rocket science," said Robert Perito, an international policing specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace, an independent, federal think tank. "Anyone who knew anything about the background of Iraq, knew this thing was going to come."
Perito presented a report to Pentagon officials before the war about the importance of quickly establishing the rule of law. The Center for Strategic and International Studies recommended creating a multinational security force "to avoid a dangerous security vacuum."
The report's co-author, Frederick Barton, said U.S. officials didn't want to be bothered with those details. "It just doesn't fall within the core mandate of a warfighting machine," he said.
Ret. Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, who has taught at the National War College, said he briefed administration officials before the war about the need to keep electrical plants operating, but believes his advice was disregarded.
"If they paid attention to the problem, it would have meant that they couldn't go when they wanted to go," Gardiner said. "Nobody wanted to go into the White House and say, `Mr. President, you know, we're really not ready."
When the looting began, the Pentagon played down its importance. On April 11, Rumsfeld said that whenever a country moves from a repressive rule to freedom, "we've seen in that transition period there is untidiness."
Soon afterward, U.S. officials described the looting in stronger terms. Garner's successor, L. Paul Bremer said June 12 that while criminal activity in Baghdad was initially random, organized crime groups later became involved. The burning of ministries - first seen as looting - were actually acts of sabotage by Saddam loyalists undermining rebuilding efforts.
The former chief weapons inspector, David Kay, said looting and document destruction by Saddam's forces left "unresolved ambiguity" about Saddam's weapons programs.
The costs of looting are difficult to estimate. Congress last year approved $18.6 billion to help Iraq rebuild, much of it for water systems, electrical plants and oil facilities damaged during years of neglect by Saddam's government. The looting compounded those problems, but it's not clear to what degree.
March 15, 2004 11:48 AM
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