[Vision2020] 10-26-04 LA Times OP/ED: Worse Than the Usual Bad

[Art Deco aka W. Fox]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-iraq26oct26.story
EDITORIAL
Worse Than the Usual Bad

October 26, 2004

The confirmation Monday that U.S. forces in Iraq failed to prevent the looting 
of 380 tons of conventional explosives represents a new chapter for the "just 
when you thought things could not get much worse" file. Further, the 
execution-style murder Saturday of dozens of Iraqis being trained as soldiers, 
the very men to whom the United States planned to transfer the job of guarding 
the country, demonstrates an abject failure by Iraqis and occupation officials 
to learn from past mistakes.

The International Atomic Energy Agency announced Monday what it told the interim 
Iraqi government and the Bush administration earlier this month: High-powered 
explosives that could demolish buildings, bring down aircraft or detonate 
nuclear weapons have disappeared from a former Iraqi army site about 30 miles 
south of Baghdad. A Pentagon official said troops searched the site soon after 
the March 2003 invasion and found the explosives that had previously been 
counted by the United Nations. But U.S.-led coalition forces failed to guard the 
site, and the explosives later disappeared.

President Bush has repeatedly said his generals have not told him they need more 
than the 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. But it's now clear that Defense Secretary 
Donald H. Rumsfeld and his Pentagon colleagues should have listened to Gen. Eric 
K. Shinseki, then the Army chief of staff, when he warned that "several hundred 
thousand" troops would be required to win the peace as well as the war. Instead, 
Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, disparaged Shinseki and shoved him 
aside.

The ineptness of the Pentagon's civilian leadership surfaced as well in its 
confused attack-and-retreat from the Sunni stronghold of Fallouja. Times 
reporters Alissa J. Rubin and Doyle McManus reported Sunday that after the March 
31 killing and mutilation of four American security guards, a Marine general 
said that rather than besiege the city out of anger, his troops should first 
enlist moderates to provide intelligence. Rumsfeld did not tell Bush of the 
Marines' objections, and the president authorized the attack. Yet when the 
Marines reported that they were close to retaking the city, the White House, 
worried about backlash, ordered a cease-fire. Fallouja remains under insurgent 
control and is the base of one of Iraq's main terrorist leaders, Abu Musab 
Zarqawi.

Zarqawi's followers claimed responsibility for the Saturday attack on the 
unarmed army recruits. Rebels dressed as police or soldiers stopped three 
vehicles, ordered the passengers out and shot them. Iraqi police and military 
trainees have been targets for months. The recruits should have been protected 
by other soldiers or given weapons to defend themselves.

The U.S. military prides itself on the lessons it learns in combat. Yet the 
continued assaults on Iraqi police and military trainees, and the evidence that 
insurgents keep infiltrating those squads, indicate a failure to adapt tactics 
to an increasingly powerful and sophisticated enemy.

There have been better days in the Iraq war, but not many worse ones. 
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