Handling chaos in Iraq wasn't in plans

It's hard to believe that the Pentagon didn't prepare for the looting and chaos in Iraq following the ouster of the Bath Party. Didn't the Pentagon have a single history scholar amongst it's planners? Anyone half-way literate in history knows that following the revolutionary ouster of a dictator (or king, tsar, et al) nearly always is followed by chaos and looting in addition to killing any oppressors that can be found. The only exceptions I can think of in the last 50 years are the ouster of Gorby in Russia (a bloodless coup) and the resignation of Richard Nixon.

---BumbleBeeBoogie

Chaos in Iraq wasn't in plans Rumsfeld: Attacks won't stop soon
By Dave Moniz
USA TODAY - 6/11/03


WASHINGTON -- A Pentagon official conceded Tuesday that planners failed to foresee the chaos in postwar Iraq, as another U.S. soldier was killed and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signaled that guerrilla-type attacks could continue there for months.

Joseph Collins, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for stability operations, said that despite careful planning, the Pentagon was surprised by the extent of looting and lawlessness. Postwar conditions have ''been tougher and more complex'' than planners predicted, he said.

Collins' description of the postwar planning was one of the most detailed so far, and his admission that planners were caught off guard by the post-Saddam disorder was among the most candid yet by the Pentagon.

He defended the planning process, which he said produced documents 18 inches thick. ''We had a highly developed plan for stabilization,'' Collins said. ''But no plan survives the first contact with the enemy.''

Rumsfeld, traveling in Europe, offered a sobering assessment of the continued attacks against U.S. troops: ''Do I think it's going to disappear in the next month or two or three? No. Will it disappear when some two or three divisions of coalition forces arrive in the country? No.''

A soldier with the 82nd Airborne Division was killed Tuesday when an arms-collection checkpoint in Baghdad was attacked with a rocket-propelled grenade. Since Baghdad fell two months ago, 44 U.S. troops have died, 12 from hostile fire.

The unsettled situation has forced the Defense Department to extend indefinitely the stay of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, which was scheduled to come home this summer.

Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said last week that senior U.S. commanders did not fully consider the potential for mayhem. ''Looting wasn't taken into military consideration. I'm not sure it was on anybody's screen,'' Blount said.

The Pentagon has about 150,000 troops in Iraq, mostly Army soldiers. Collins predicted that it would require three to four divisions -- about 60,000 to 80,000 troops -- to maintain law and order long-term. Collins was optimistic that U.S. allies could provide up to three-quarters of those troops.

Military analysts doubt allies would produce that many troops. Even if they did, using a patchwork force would be a ''bad idea,'' said Andrew Bacevich, a military analyst at Boston University.

''It would be OK if you were just babysitting,'' Bacevich said. ''The truth is, however, that the war is not over.''