Bush's Catastrophic Failures in Iraq
by Geoff at 01:11AM (CDT) on September 21, 2004 | Permanent Link | Cosmos
A Series of Disastrous Mistakes With Disastrous ConsequencesRecently-Revealed Intelligence Briefing Spells Out Pessimistic Predictions For Iraq. Bush received a classified National Intelligence Estimate in late July which "spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq." The three possibilities outlined in the estimate paint a grim picture for Iraq through the end of 2005, "with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms." A government official who read the document admits "there's a significant amount of pessimism." [New York Times, 9/16/04]
TIMELINE: THE "LONG CHAIN" OF BUSH'S KEY FAILURES IN IRAQ"Iraq today falls far short of what the Bush administration promised. As a result of a long chain of U.S. miscalculations, the coalition occupation has left Iraq in far worse shape than it need have and has diminished the long-term prospects of democracy there. Iraqis, Americans, and other foreigners continue to be killed." -- Larry Diamond, Former CPA Adviser, Foreign Affairs, Sept/Oct 2004
BUSH FAILED TO PLAN FOR POST-WAR IRAQFAILURE TO PLANSecret Joint Chiefs Report: Pentagon Planners Were Not Given Enough Time. In August 2003, the Joint Chiefs of Staff prepared a secret report assessing the post-war planning for Iraq. The report blamed "setbacks in Iraq on a flawed and rushed war-planning process." It also said "planners were not given enough time" to plan for reconstruction. [Washington Times, 9/3/03]
Officials Admit Bush Administration Never Had Concrete Plan for Post-War Iraq. Bush administration officials and military personnel admitted that there was never a real plan for post-war Iraq operations. Posed with the question of whether the Army had an outlined plan for peacekeeping in Iraq, V Corps commander Lt. Gen. William Wallace said, "Well, we're making this up here as we go along." A former senior administration official said, "There was no real planning for postwar Iraq." Knight Ridder reported, "The disenchanted U.S. officials today think the failure of the Pentagon civilians to develop such detailed plans contributed to the chaos in post-Saddam Iraq. ‘We could have done so much better,' lamented a former senior Pentagon official, who is still a Defense Department adviser." [Newsweek, 7/21/03; Knight Ridder, 7/12/03]
FAILURE TO CALCULATE NUMBER OF TROOPS AND EQUIP THEMPrior to the War in Iraq, Wolfowitz Rebuked Shinseki's Estimates as "Wildly Off the Mark." Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz criticized the Army's Chief of Staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, after Shinseki told Congress in February 2003 that the occupation could require "several hundred thousand troops." Wolfowitz called Shinseki's estimate "wildly off the mark." [USA Today, 6/2/03]
McCain: "Painfully Clear" More Troops Needed. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.): "It is painfully clear that we need more troops. Before the war, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff said that several hundred thousand troops would be necessary to keep the peace. While criticized at the time, General Shinseki now looks prescient." [McCain Speech To the Council on Foreign Relations, 4/26/04]
Graham: Not Enough Troops To Do the Job. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.): "So I would like to have more troops on the ground to do the things necessary to stabilize the economy and the country… I have believed for over a year and a half that we do not have enough people to repair the infrastructure and provide security and we need more." [MSNBC, "Hardball," 9/16/04]
Army Study Suggests One-Fourth of Deaths in Iraq Could Have Been Prevented If Troops Were Properly-Equipped at Beginning of War. Newsweek reported that an internal Army study said one in four of those killed in combat in Iraq might be alive if they had had stronger armor around them. Thousands more who were unprotected have suffered grievous wounds, such as the loss of limbs. [Newsweek, 5/3/04]
Bush Was Slow To Address Troops' Need For Body Armor. Though Bush signed the Emergency Supplemental funding bill in November 2003 promising to use the money to "acquire new equipment, such as armored humvees and communications gear," he has been slow to deliver on that pledge. The Bush administration first promised all the troops they would have body armor at the end of November. They extended and missed deadlines for December, January, and February, until the Army Secretary told Congress in March 2004 that there were finally sufficient stocks of body armor to equip all soldiers by the end of the month. [Bush Remarks, 11/6/03; House Approps Cmte, Subcmte on For. Ops, 9/24/03; UPI, 12/3/03; Hartford Courant, 1/11/04; House Approps Cmte, Defense Subcmte, 2/12/04; Senate Armed Services Cmte hearing, 3/2/04]
FAILURE TO ANTICIPATE IRAQI INSURGENCYIraq Embroiled In Insurgency. According to the non-partisan Center for Strategic and International Studies, "Two months after the United States transferred sovereignty to an Iraqi interim government, on June 28, 2004, Iraq remains embroiled in an insurgency, with security problems overshadowing other efforts to rebuild Iraq's fragile society in the areas of governance and participation, economic opportunity, services, and social well-being." [CSIS, "Measuring Iraq's Reconstruction Progress," Sept 2004]
Bush Admitted Miscalculating Iraqi Insurgency. "Mr. Bush also acknowledged for the first time that he made a ‘miscalculation of what the conditions would be' in postwar Iraq." [New York Times, 8/27/04]
Rumsfeld Admitted Bush Administration Was Not Prepared for Iraqi Resistance. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that "I am saying that -- if you had said to me a year ago, ‘describe the situation you'll be in today, one year later,' I don't know many people who would have described it -- I would not have described it -- the way it happens to be today. … I certainly would not have estimated that we would have had the number of individuals lost that we have had lost in the last week." [Rumsfeld News Conference, 4/15/04]
Powell Says The U.S. Miscalculated The Postwar Insurgency. In an interview with Panama's TVN Channel 2, Powell admitted that the U.S. "miscalculated the strength of insurgents in Iraq" and "it is clear we did not expect an insurgency that would be this strong." [Associated Press, 9/2/04]
Allawi Says Disbanding Of The Army Led To An Increase In Violence. In a Wall Street Journal op- ed, Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi wrote, "The postwar wholesale disbanding of the security forces has seen a rise in murder, kidnapping, armed robbery and drug trafficking, often in a vicious cycle that funds violence." [Wall Street Journal, Allawi Op-ed, 8/25/04]
BUSH HAS FAILED TO USE RECONSTRUCTION MONEY EFFECTIVELY"At the current pace and using the combined criteria and priorities set by the World Bank/UN and the CPA, it would take nearly ten years to rebuild and develop Iraq, not the four projected by these organisations."
-- International Crisis Group report, 9/2/04
FAILURE TO USE RECONSTRUCTION FUNDS TO REBUILD IRAQReconstruction Money Is Going Unspent. According to U.S. officials, only $1.1 billion of the $18 billion reconstruction package authorized by Congress has been spent and half of that was for security costs. [U.S. News & World Report, 9/20/04]
Electricity Still Has Not Met U.S. Goals. "Even today, the U.S. has not reached the goal set by L. Paul Bremer III, the former head of the U.S.-led occupation authority, to produce 6,000 megawatts of power a day by June 1. By comparison, California has about 50% more people than Iraq but produces up to eight times as much electricity, about 45,000 megawatts at peak summer demand." [LAT, 9/12/04]
Many Iraqis Still Have No Access To Safe Drinking Water. Many of Iraq's sewage facilities were looted following the invasion of Iraq by U.S. forces in 2003. As a result, "The water is so contaminated that Iraq is suffering from a huge outbreak of hepatitis, 15,000 suspected cases, a 100 percent increase over last year." [ABC, "World News Tonight Sunday," 8/29/04]
Continued at:
http://blog.radioleft.com/blog/_archives/2004/9/21/145948.html
The full 90 min . program can be viewed online HERE. The online version is broken into six 15 min. segments.
