Blind Into Baghdad - Atlantic Monthly

[JM]

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2004/01/fallows.htm

Blind Into Baghdad

The U.S. occupation of Iraq is a debacle not because the government did no planning but because a vast amount of expert planning was willfully ignored by the people in charge. The inside story of a historic failure

by James Fallows

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2004/01/fallows.htm

[reprehensor]

1. That is a classic. Lurking FReepers should read it. n/t

[struggle4progress]

2. Great article!

<snip>
"On April 9 U.S. forces took Baghdad. On April 14 the Pentagon announced that most of the fighting was over. On May 1 President Bush declared that combat operations were at an end. By then looting had gone on in Baghdad for several weeks. 'When the United States entered Baghdad on April 9, it entered a city largely undamaged by a carefully executed military campaign,' Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, told a congressional committee in June. 'However, in the three weeks following the U.S. takeover, unchecked looting effectively gutted every important public institution in the city—with the notable exception of the oil ministry.' On April 11, when asked why U.S. soldiers were not stopping the looting, Donald Rumsfeld said, 'Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things, and that's what's going to happen here.'

This was a moment, as when he tore up the TPFDD, that Rumsfeld crossed a line."
<snip>