AN OUNCE
OF PREVENTION
LOOTED HOPES
SHORTER
There has been much commotion over the lack of armor
on Iraq vehicles and vests, but that’s always
been a trade-off: if you reinforce a HUMV
enough to survive an RPG strike, you may
make it too heavy to accelerate enough to
avoid getting hit, and full body armor suits
are great, except when 120° temperatures
causes heat prostration. As our death toll
passes 2000, the far more egregious outrage
is why these hundreds of thousands of tons
of ordnance were allowed to be looted by insurgents in the first
place.
enlarge photo
The
Pentagon admits a breathtaking 250,000 tons of heavy ordnance (out of 650,000
tons total): aircraft bombs, artillery and tank shells, mines, rockets were
allowed to be looted by our undermanned army in the 4-30 weeks after invasion
through gross negligence at the top- equivalent to 1 million 500 lb
bombs. At ten 500 lb. roadside mines or market closeouts a day,
that's enough for 274 years of attacks.
---"During the fall
of 2003, what you would see was Iraqis going in at night, individually and in
trucks," US weapons inspector David Kay told U.S. News . "They would
pull ordnances out and drive off." Security was so bad after Saddam
Hussein's regime fell, Kay recalled, that his team was often shot at by
insurgents when they went to inspect the sites: "There were just not
enough boots on the ground, and the military didn't give it a high enough
priority to stop the looting. Tens of thousands of tons of ammunition were
being looted, and that is what is fueling the insurgency." -US News+WR
report
David BeBatto, a Military counterintelligence
officer at the massive Camp Anaconda 50 miles
north of Baghdad, in charge of hunting the
deck-of-cards Baathists, found a 5 square
mile ammo dump under 2 miles south of the camp in April 2003
“littered with anti-aircraft missiles, land mines, rocket-propelled grenades, plastic explosives” in
dozens of bunkers. He reported it again and again in written reports to his
battalion commander Lt. Col. Timothy Ryan, even giving him a tour of the dump.
“Local Iraqis told us- ‘these guys’ – and they would point to looters in the
distance- ‘are fedayeen. They’re going to take this and make it into bombs and
use it against you,’” he said in an interview.
Nothing was done. “We had enough people.. if we had placed 4,5,6 guys
at the main entry to that facility, that would have been enough!.. Every time I
went back there, there was less.”
2 other intelligence agents also reported
seeing that and many unsecured ammo dumps
all over Iraq bursting with deadly material-
all of which were massive looted. “They were
wasting people for really menial things:
KP, when there were a thousand Iraqis begging
to do it for a jug of water. I would have
feasts with shieks and ministers- when I
came back me and my team of counterintelligence
special agents would be.. emptying out latrines.
Bottom line is they ignored it- (because
of) a lack of people, ignorance, and .. absolute
lack of planning
for the occupation. Every day was a new day- you made it up as you went
along.” Ryan’s commander from July 2003
was Col. Thomas Pappas, convicted of dereliction of duty and relieved for his
part in Abu Graib abuse scandal, who directed Ryan to take no action about the
looting.
When questioned about the looting*, Donald
Rumsfeld, famously replied
with the blithe insolence of a drunken teenager who had crashed the family car,
“Freedom's untidy. And free people are free to commit mistakes, and to
commit crimes and do bad things…. Stuff happens.” The looting was "part of the
price" for the liberation of Iraq and not uncommon for countries that
experience significant social upheaval. Incredibly Rumsfeld seemed to think the
looting was a finger in Saddam’s eye and a healthy release of “pent-up
feelings that may result from decades of repression”, although after the
invasion America owned Iraq and would have to fix any damage.
* questions were about looting of Baghdad infrastructure and
Museum; deadly munitions never came up
The First Rule
of Occupation since the Sumerians is: disarm the population,
but Rumsfeld knew better, wanting to test his faster lighter cheaper invasion
theories, and blindly convinced we would be feted as liberators. DeBatto says,
“They made a decision at the highest level- Rumsfeld- to just let it go. They
wanted not to be seen as brutal occupiers and didn’t react at all. You had
these heavily armed Americans who could have stopped anything, yet they let
these looters take everything they wanted. We have given every weapon Saddam
stored for 30 years.. to every terrorist and 2-bit thug in the Middle East.”
Worst was the
Manhattan-sized weapons dump of Al Qaqa'a (an issue before the 2004 US
election), loaded with 380 tons of HMX, RDX, PETN high explosives, so powerful
they are used in nuclear bombs, and useable in making near undetectable IED's
out of rubble (no metal). The 101 Airborne Div., who swept the area April 7-10,
2003, said they "did not receive orders to search and secure the entire
facility or search for high explosive-type munitions." By May 27, it was
stripped of all explosives by looters.
Even the Tuwaitha
Nuclear Research Facility was allowed to be looted under
the noses of US troops, putting a lie to the entire WMD excuse for invasion,
and releasing dangerous radioactive compounds. Although only the IAEA knew what
existed there, the administration blocked them from inspecting it for 2 months.
Debatto found empty shells meant to be filled with chemicals and bills of
lading from the late 80’s. “The only WMD I found in Iraq was supplied by the
USA… sanctioned by George Bush Sn. when we were still buddies.”
The cost has been borne by soldiers blasted
by massive IED’s and car bombs, which were
easily available only because of the looting: 783 coalition deaths2 (Iraq
Coalition Casualty Count) and 2000-5000 wounded. Insurgents have
destroyed everything short of Abrams tanks
with these artillery shell or air bomb IED’s,
sometimes daisy chained together or shaped
to penetrate armor. Although US forces are
stopping half of them, IED’s now cause the
majority of US deaths in Iraq, 176 (59%) from IED or car bomb in the last 4 months alone (May-Aug 2005) compared to only 77 from the
same period in 2004. The Marines have really
suffered: this June, 24 of 28 Marine fatalities, 85%, were from IED’s
and car bombs†. In addition,
helicopter crash deaths from anti-aircraft missiles, RPG and missile attacks on
vehicles, even mortar fatalities could be largely blamed on the unlimited
looting.
America initially had enormous authority
as the new overlord who had easily vanquished
a brutal dictator. The looting of all institutions
first caused amazement among Iraqis, then
outrage, then disgust, finally contempt;
which allowed the insurgency to flower. America
wasn’t all powerful;
but seemed incompetent, careless, impotent, reckless; and the
protective aura of invincibility evaporated. The one thing Iraq required was
order, but the USA refused to keep it, although an explosion of looting was to
be expected once the pressure cooker lid was finally released on totalitarian
Iraq (where no heavy weapons were in the hands of the populace). Even
hundreds of high power transmission towers and lines were destroyed.
We were ignorant towards their culture too.
“Iraq is a tribal country- everything revolves
around the sheiks,” explains DeBatto. “They
came hundreds of miles and said, ‘We will
contain our tribe, we guarantee there will
be no problem in this sector as long as you
deal with (pay) me and don’t go in on your
own.’ The Army refused
to deal with that. They said, ‘Nope… we are the law and you don’t tell us what to do.’” As in Afghanistan,
we could have bought Sunni sheiks' cooperation
and secured these stolen armaments at a penny
on the dollar. The British, with more Mideast
experience, were far more amenable to local
authorities, and have had exponentially fewer
problems.
“It all comes back to Rumsfeld: he tried
to do the war on the cheap at the expense
of the miltary,” fumes DeBatto. “If we had
contained the looting, I firmly believe,
Iraqis would have still liked us, we could
have sent the vast majority of our people
home, and left a small number to train their
people, instead of 150,000. Things would
be very different today.”
Rumsfeld said in the
2004 Congressional hearings on Abu Graib that, “I would
resign in a minute if I thought that I couldn't be effective.” He wasn’t- he cavalierly ignored the most
basic rules of invasion and at least 1000
Americans have paid the ultimate price for
his arrogance and hubris. He should resign
or be fired, or suffer the endless chants
of Cindy Sheehans camped at his door, or
the doorstep of his mind.
They say an ounce of
prevention is worth a pound of cure; or in this case, a quarter million tons
and 140,000 soldiers of it.
Copyright
©2005 Michael Hammerschlag
† 490 Iraq Marine deaths as of June 3,’05; total 565 Aug 31, inc. attached Navy; 30% of all US fatalities (1882-Aug 31)
2 (as of 11-11) Includes categories “explosion”, “bomb”,
"car bomb", “suicide car bomb”
which are also IEDs (as of 11-11). Grenade, RPG, mine, etc
listed separately
Michael Hammerschlag's commentary and articles (HAMMERNEWS.com)
have appeared in Seattle Times, Providence. Journal, Columbia Journalism
Review, Hawaii Advertiser, Capital Times, MediaChannel; and Moscow
News, Tribune, Times, and Guardian. He's been a TV reporter,
foreign correspondent, and produced documentaries. He spent 2 years in Russia
from 1991-94, while multiple wars raged in the Islamic southern republics.
hammerschlag@bigfoot.com