Countless bad decisions and 681 deaths

Posted on Wed, Apr. 14, 2004
Countless bad decisions and 681 deaths
By Joseph L. Galloway
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Things have suddenly gotten very ugly in Iraq. Six hundred eighty-one Americans have died there. Soldiers and Marines are dying at the rate of four to six a day.

Gen. John Abizaid, the commander of U.S. Central Command, has dared to ask his Pentagon bosses for an additional 15,000 to 20,000 troops just so we can hang on by our fingernails. And he has had to freeze the return home of 24,000 soldiers who were headed for the planes after finishing a grueling one-year tour.

The American commanders are struggling to keep open the highways - main supply routes, or MSR's in military-speak - over which truck convoys bring food, ammunition, water and fuel to our troops. These lifelines are vulnerable and the enemy has struck at them repeatedly, smashing and burning and looting truck convoys and sabotaging the roads and bridges.

We never had enough soldiers, enough boots on the ground, to control Iraq. The former chief of staff of the Army, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, told Congress on Feb. 25, 2003, that in his opinion we would need "something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" to occupy Iraq. He spoke from experience: Shinseki led the occupation of Bosnia, and he knew how to do the math.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz two days later told Congress that Shinseki's estimates were "wildly off the mark." He added that Iraq would be much more easily occupied than Afghanistan because Iraq had "no ethnic divisions."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had in mind to skin back our forces in Iraq from last year's 130,000 to 110,000 early this year, then 100,000 by late summer, and a mere 50,000 by next summer, 2005. Their places would be taken by the much-heralded Iraqi Security Forces and the newly stood-up and American-contractor-trained Iraq army.

Well, a funny thing happened to the Iraq army on its way to join their American buddies in the dirty street fighting in Fallujah last week: The battalion stopped the trucks, turned around and went home, saying as they went, "We won't fight other Iraqis."

So much for that.

The fast-talking Rumsfeld hasn't been talking nearly as fast or as often lately. Neither has his deputy. Not much seen or heard from Douglas Feith of the Office of Special Plans - of the Office That Didn't Plan - either. Instead, the bad news is allowed to trickle out of briefings in Baghdad that surely will soon be nicknamed, like the ones in Saigon a few wars back, "The Five O'Clock Follies."

The hunt for a scapegoat must have begun by now, which may explain the rush away from the cameras in the Pentagon briefing room. The civilians will certainly want a general or two to fall on their swords. The uniforms would love to see an arrogant civilian or two hanged, drawn and quartered.

We have a modest nomination for the first head to roll: Ambassador L. Paul (Jerry) Bremer, the American demi-proconsul of Baghdad, head of the Civilian Provisional Authority charged with installing Jeffersonian democracy and turning on the lights, water and sewers. Virtually every major decision he had made in Iraq has been wrong, poorly timed or just plain dumb.

Beginning with his decision to demobilize the real Iraq army and send them home with their AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, no paychecks, no future and heaps of anger. Followed by his decision to purge everyone who ever held a Baath Party card from public life and public employment, thus abandoning many Sunnis to hopelessness and anger. Followed by his latest decision to close down Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr's newspaper and provoke him to anger - without any plan to deal with that anger when it spilled over into the streets and inflamed the Shiite community.

Any one of those flawed decisions ought to be a firing offense. Just as the Feb. 27, 2003, testimony of Wolfowitz to the effect that Iraq was going to be easy to occupy ought to have been a firing offense. Just as the testimony of the deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, that the Pentagon did not do any planning for post-war Iraq because the act of planning might have contributed to starting the war ought to have gotten him fired.

I am reminded by these situations, these quotes, these people that there are three human characteristics which taken in combination are almost always fatal: If he is arrogant, ignorant and in charge, someone is going to get killed. The fatalities are seldom among those who get it so wrong.
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ABOUT THE WRITER

Joseph L. Galloway is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and co-author of the national best-seller "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young." Readers may write to him at: Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, 700 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045.