John Tierney has an excellent (TimesDelete) piece in the NYT today on the inexcusably negligent post-war planning for the Iraq occupation. Money quote:
"Two months before the Iraq war began, David Kay reported to the Pentagon for a job in the agency being formed to run postwar Iraq. Kay, a former Defense Department scientist and weapons inspector in Iraq, was supposed to oversee the police.
He assumed this meant preparing for the looting and crime to be expected when any regime collapsed. But those problems didn’t seem to be on anyone else’s mind, he told me, recalling his first day on the job.
‘I said our first priority should be to establish order quickly, but that was considered a peripheral issue,’ he said. ‘The attitude was that it’s not a problem, and if something happens the military will deal with it. I had one of the worst feelings ever in my gut, that this was going over a cliff.’"
Kay was one of many who urged some kind of force to prevent the rampant "industrial strength" looting (I’m using Bremer’s words from his book) that continued long after the initial invasion. The looting included arms sites, and weapons that were subsequently used to kill Americn troops and innocent Iraqis. People urged a police effort long before the war, immediately before the war, and they urged it immediately thereafter. In the ensuing anarchy, they kept asking and asking. And Rumsfeld’s response was: "stuff happens." How are any of us supposed to have confidence in recallibrating this war when we have this buffoon still running it? The president keeps making speeches about how he is adapting to make progress on the ground. No doubt, some fine people are indeed making progress and they merit our firm support. But nothing the president can say in trying to restore confidence in this effort would be as effective as getting rid of the obstinate, arrogant incompetent who has brought us this "unbelievable mess". Fire Rumsfeld now.
The Dish 