And, thus, the Bush/Cheney regime started a war without having a plan to win the peace. Not only did it field too few troops, it gave them no orders about how to handle the looters who ravaged Iraq after the invasion. According to Noah Feldman, an adviser in Iraq, "The key to it all was the looting. That was when it was clear that there was no order. There's an Arab proverb: Better forty years of dictatorship than one day of anarchy." The looting "told them that they could fight against us and we were not a serious force." [Packer, p.138]
Or, as former Reagan administration official, Fred Ikle, characterized the American response to the looting: "America lost most of its prestige and respect in that episode. To pacify a conquered country, the victor's prestige and dignity is absolutely critical." [Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco, p. 136]
The invasion also answered the prayers of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorists. For, as bin Laden's number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, asserted in late 2003: "We thank God for appeasing us with the dilemma in Iraq after Afghanistan…If they [the Americans] withdraw they will lose everything and if they stay, they will continue to bleed to death." [Michael Scheuer, Imperial Hubris, p. xxi]
By its failure to plan to prevent looting, which "caused far more damage to Iraq's infrastructure than the bombing campaign" [Chandrasekaran, p. 46] and reached into the depths of Iraq's (and the world's) cultural treasures, the Bush/Cheney regime not only proved that it was riddled with barbarians, it also violated international law. As noted in a very significant June 2007 report, "War and Occupation in Iraq," issued by the Global Policy Forum, the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Properties in the Event of Armed Conflict "specifies that an occupying power must take necessary measures to safeguard and preserve the cultural property of the occupied country and must prevent or put a stop to 'any form of theft, pillage or misappropriation of, and any acts of vandalism directed against cultural property." ['War and Occupation in Iraq," p. 20]
Yet, when, on April 11, 2003, Rumsfeld was asked about the looting in Iraq, he responded, "Stuff happens!" Perhaps he simply was unaware that even the Nazis felt compelled to protect the Louvre.
The insurgency born of the looting picked up steam in mid-May 2003 with the arrival of L. Paul Bremmer in Baghdad to replace Garner and to head the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). On May 16 Bremmer issued his "De-Baathification" order, which threw some 85,000 members of Saddam's Baath Party out of work. Doctors, professors and other professionals - the kind of people "'that you can't do without' in running a society" [Ricks, p. 161] - were out of work.
On May 23, 2003, Bremmer issued the order, which dissolved the Iraqi armed services, the staff of the Ministry of Interior and the presidential security units. As one expert observed: "Abruptly terminating the livelihoods of these [720,000] men created a vast pool of humiliated, antagonized and politicized men." [Ricks, p. 162] And, as Army Colonel John Agoglia subsequently observed: That was the day "that we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and created an insurgency." [Ibid, p. 163]
But the incompetence didn't end there. As Rajiv Chandrasekaran detailed in his book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone the CPA was teeming with incompetents. "One 24-year old official with no background in finance was given the job of resurrecting the Baghdad stock exchange. Another aide, tasked with devising new traffic regulations, down-loaded those of Maryland from the internet. A 21-year old charged with helping to rehabilitate the interior ministry boasted that his most meaningful job to date had been as an ice cream truck driver." [Chandrasekaran, "Lords of misrule still in charge at the Baghdad bubble," TIMESONLINE, June 24, 2007]
Ignorant of what he had wrought, as well as the implications of Bremmer's incompetent acts, a complacent Wolfowitz told Congress, in June 2003, that the insurgency was the "remnants of the old regime…I think these people are the last remnants of a dying cause." [Ricks, p. 170] Rumsfeld called the insurgents "dead-enders," not knowing that he would be politically dead long before the insurgency. Predictably, Bush uttered the dumbest statement of them all. On July 2, 2003, from the safety of the White House, our brave president observed: "There are some who feel that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: Bring 'em on." [Ricks, p. 172]
And "Bring 'em on" they did! When Bush opened his big mouth in July 2003, insurgent attacks already averaged 16 per day. Moreover, while Bush attempted to bamboozle Americans with one bogus "turning point" after another, the insurgents increasingly brought 'em on.
Thus, when Saddam Hussein was captured in December 2003, the insurgents were averaging 19 attacks per day. When L. Paul Bremmer signed the hand-over of sovereignty in June 2004, it was 45. When Iraq held its elections for a transitional government in January 2005, it was 61. Notwithstanding these mounting daily attacks, Cheney seized a moment in June to make yet another asinine assertion: the insurgency is "in the last throes."
Yet, in December 2005, six months into its "last throes" when Iraqis voted for a permanent government, the daily attack rate had reached 75. And when terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al Zarqawi was killed in June 2006, it was up to 90. [See Tom Lasseter, Miami Herald, Aug. 16, 2006] Worse, in October 2006 attacks surged to a record high of 176 per day.
Even in the teeth of Bush's so-called "surge," attacks averaged 164 per day in February 2007, 157 in March and 163 in April. Thus, enemy attacks for the entire month of April totaled approximately 4,900. "Bring 'em on," indeed!
In addition to nurturing an ever-growing insurgency and civil war, the Bush/Cheney regime's criminal, immoral and incompetent invasion and occupation of Iraq "has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism" that "has metastasized and spread across the globe."
That's the conclusion reached in the April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate titled: "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States." Moreover, thanks to the regime's incompetence, "the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks." [Mark Mazzetti, "Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat," New York Times , 24 Sept. 2006]
And while the attacks increase in Iraq and the terrorist threat grows around the world, the U.S. Army, to quote retired General Colin Powell, is "about broken." As retired Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich has observed: "President Bush has nickeled and dimed the nation's fighting forces to the verge of collapse. Even today he remains oblivious to the basic problem that his administration has confronted for the past four years - too much war and too few soldiers." [Bacevich, "Bushed Army," The American Conservative June 4, 2007]
