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15 000 more troops iraq { May 16 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/international/worldspecial/16IRAQ.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/international/worldspecial/16IRAQ.html
May 16, 2003
U.S. Steps Up Efforts to Curb Baghdad Crime
By PATRICK E. TYLER
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 15 — United States military forces have embarked on their most aggressive police action yet in the Iraqi capital, seeking to arrest thousands of criminals who Saddam Hussein released, to jail looters for extended terms, and to run hundreds of night patrols to restore order.
As occasional gunfire was heard across the city, the new civilian administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, said that, in the last 48 hours, allied forces had arrested 300 criminals. On Wednesday night alone, Mr. Bremer said as he held his first news conference, allied forces ran 300 patrols through the city and made 92 arrests.
"Saddam Hussein released some 100,000 prisoners onto the streets last October," Mr. Bremer said. He added: "Many of those people were political prisoners, but some of them were violent criminals. It's time that these people were put back in jail, and that's where we will put them."
Life in the Iraqi capital now involves a substantial measure of fear over car hijackings, robberies, looting and shooting. The population is under curfew, government workers have not been paid in two months and the most prominent form of public assembly in Iraq since the departure of Mr. Hussein has become the serpentine gasoline lines in virtually every neighborhood.
Outside Baghdad, American forces staged a raid early today near Mr. Hussein's ancestral home in Tikrit, seizing more than 200 Iraqis and Abdel Baqi al-Karim Abdullah, a senior Baath Party leader in Diyala Province who is on America's list of the 55 most-wanted leaders of the former government.
In the southern port town of Umm Qasr, British forces turned over civil authority to an Iraqi town council in a symbolic gesture. British forces continue to secure the area that includes the country's only deep-water port and the oil fields nearby.
Mr. Bremer's debut here focused on a tough law-and-order message. But he also sought to reassure Iraqis on a point with which they might disagree: "This is not a country in anarchy," Mr. Bremer said. "People are going about their business, they are going about their lives."
The chief civilian administrator said that he was not supplanting the authority of the top military commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan. But he said that General McKiernan and the United States Central Command were "directed to support my efforts here in Iraq."
After Mr. Bremer's first meeting with his staff Monday, one official said United States forces "are going to start shooting a few looters so that the word gets around" to end the wave of assaults on property.
In Washington today, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld described as "hyperbole" an article in The New York Times on Wednesday describing new rules of engagement under which American military forces in Iraq would have the authority to shoot looters on sight.
"We have rules of engagement — have had, do today," Mr. Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news briefing. "They've not been changed." The current rules permit "the use of whatever force is necessary for self-defense or for other selected purposes," he added.
In one clash today, the United States Central Command reported that a group of looters in the northern city of Mosul fired on soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division. The soldiers returned fire, wounding one of the looters, while four others were reported to have escaped.
Maj. Gen. Buford C. Blount III, commander of the Third Infantry Division, whose forces are now patrolling Baghdad, said today that "there are no `shoot to kill' or `shoot on sight' orders concerning looters."
Mr. Bremer, asked about the article in The New York Times about the policy toward looters, said he would not comment on the military rules of engagement, except to say that they were "robust" enough to cover any contingency.
Asked specifically if he had said that he supported shooting looters, Mr. Bremer replied, "No, I read that story and it looked rather colorful to me, more colorful than is my normal habit."
General Blount described a more muscular policy of arresting looters and holding them for longer periods.
"Initially, we were holding looters, depending on the individual, his age and what he was looting, we would hold him from a period of a couple of hours to a couple of days," General Blount said. "And so now we are holding looters for 21 days. And so that, I think, is taking a lot of the looters off the streets."
Mr. Bremer, dressed in a blue suit and tie with a white handkerchief in his breast pocket, seemed to have stepped directly from Park Avenue to Saddoun Street; he appeared oblivious to the swelter of Baghdad, where temperatures reached 103 degrees today and were headed for 106 on Friday.
The 61-year-old counterterrorism expert is spending his first week getting acclimated in the senior reconstruction job following weeks of paralysis and contention that marked the tenure of Jay Garner, the retired lieutenant general first assigned the task of rebuilding Iraq.
Mr. Bremer welcomed the announcement Wednesday in Washington by Mr. Rumsfeld that an additional 15,000 American troops would soon arrive to assist in restoring order.
"We have, if I'm not mistaken, plus or minus 15,000 additional U.S. forces that are due to arrive in Iraq over the next 7 to 20 days," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
Those troops will join 4,000 military police whose imminent arrival has been announced almost daily by American officials, eager to reassure Iraqis that order will be restored to city. Baghdad was captured by allied forces in the first week of April.
"It is my responsibility as the administrator of the coalition provisional authority to help the Iraqi people turn Iraq into a stable, safe, peaceful and prosperous country," Mr. Bremer told reporters.
In the next few days, Mr. Bremer said, he would also be issuing a proclamation on so-called de-Baathification, a process meant to ensure the abolition of the Baath Party that sustained Mr. Hussein's rule.
"Shortly I will issue an order on measures to extirpate Baathists and Baathism in Iraq forever," he said. "We have and will aggressively move to seek to identify these people and remove them from office."
Any remaining symbols or "representations" of Mr. Hussein will also be "removed systematically from public display, and we will work with the Iraqis" to devise "a process to bring Baathist officials to justice for their past crimes," he said.
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