Views Of The Iraq Occupation Follies

Scoop NZ also The Nation Pakistan -- Rumsfeld's Amateurs In Iraq

First, the US Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, ignored advice that an invading force needs twice as many troops coming behind as there are in the first waves. The man knows nothing of the art of war, and is an arrogant, blinkered oaf.

Second, the administrator appointed by Rumsfeld to run Iraq was a known supporter of Israel. No way could General Garner have been accepted by a Muslim nation, and anyway he is not a "people person". This was just another stupid move by Rumsfeld, who was warned that the appointment was inadvisable.

Next, the officials of Garner's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) who venture out of the former palace - apparently a rare occurrence - are driven around in SUVs escorted by a troop of armoured vehicles bristling with machine guns. This is dumb, too, because they should be on foot or in a jeep, unarmed and escorted by an interpreter. That creates confidence. But nobody thought about interpreters (except the State Department's Barbara Bodine, and she was sacked for her temerity in pressing to have them, and for criticising the shambles), so ORHA, the AMGOT de nos jours, can't speak to many people, and none at the basic working level. Then ORHA found it had no say as to what facilities should be commandeered by the army, which resulted in schools and hospitals being taken over as barracks - a major disaster that has had wide-reaching effects in fuelling contempt for the invader. This was almost as stupid as making a Sunni Muslim mayor of Najaf, the Shia city, to which the reaction has been amazed incredulity.

In Iraq ORHA is supposed to means Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs. Perhaps it would be better described as the Office of Rumsfeld's Hamfisted Amateurs.

Washington Post -- Plan to Secure Postwar Iraq Faulted

A month before the war began in Iraq, senior Bush administration officials said their plan for winning the peace was built upon the swift provision of basic services that would "immediately" make the Iraqi people feel they were better off than they had been under the government of Saddam Hussein.

Five weeks after the war ended, the administration is still struggling to accomplish that goal. It has failed to establish law and order on the streets and has achieved only mixed results in restoring electricity, water, sanitation and other essential needs.

In interviews here and in Washington, and in testimony on Capitol Hill, military officers, other administration officials and defense experts said the Pentagon ignored lessons from a decade of peacekeeping operations in Haiti, Somalia, the Balkans and Afghanistan.

"We ended the rule of one of history's worst tyrants, and in so doing, we not only freed the American people, we made our own people more secure."— Bush - Crawford, Texas, May 3, 2003