Re: Look who's talking about clowns...

The King of Clowns Himself!
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Callous Bushies shrug as U.S. comes under fire for failure to halt looting

Posted on Saturday, April 12 @ 08:46:28 EDT
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By Ken Fireman and Earl Lane, Newsday

Washington -- The Bush administration shrugged off mounting questions about its plans for curbing rampant looting and lawlessness in Iraq on Friday, saying the spreading disorder was an understandable "reaction against oppression" that was likely to taper off by itself in a short time.

Administration officials insisted that their war preparations had included plans for providing security once Saddam Hussein's regime had fallen, but repeatedly refused to say specifically what those plans entailed or how they intended to curb the looting.

And a senior U.S. commander in the region, Brig. Gen. Vince Brooks, suggested that U.S. forces were inclined to take a laissez-faire attitude toward the disorders. "The Iraqi people have got to make some decisions for themselves as to what sorts of behavior will be acceptable," Brooks said. "At no point do we see really becoming a police force."



Despite these comments, legal experts said the United States and Britain are bound by international law as occupying powers to assume responsibility for maintaining law and order in Iraq -- and a recent study by a national security think tank concluded that the U.S. military was ill-prepared for that task.

The assessment, done before the fall of Baghdad by a group of analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the U.S. military "does not have a standby constabulary capacity" and that there are "no signs of U.S. forces being trained to handle post-conflict civil security needs, in addition to normal combat functions."

An article in the current U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, written before the war by four active-duty military officers, estimates that a constabulary force of 40,000 to 50,000 would be needed in Iraq. "Re-establishing local authority quickly may make the difference between success and failure," it concluded.

Ray Jennings, a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, a federally funded think tank, said that the security problems were predictable given recent experiences in Kosovo and Haiti, but that military officials are reluctant to undertake police duties: "They don't wholly embrace the concept of peacekeeping." But Jennings said what U.S. forces do "from day one" to maintain order "sets the tone for the rest of the intervention."

Questions about U.S. readiness to provide security were prompted by lawlessness in Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, which fell Friday, as well as disorders in Baghdad. Some looters targeted buildings associated with Hussein's regime, but many others turned their attention to hospitals and other facilities.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer called the looting "regrettable" but understandable. "A horrible regime has been lifted from the Iraqi people," he said. "There is a reaction to the lifting of that power, and that is a reaction against oppression. It is on the way to liberty and freedom."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was even more dismissive of security questions. He insisted U.S. forces were seeking to curb the looting, which he characterized as "untidiness," and blamed the news media for exaggerating the extent of the lawlessness.

"The images you are seeing on television, you are seeing over and over and over, and it's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times and you think, 'My goodness, were there that many vases?'" Rumsfeld said.

"Stuff happens ... And it's untidy. And 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."

Fleischer, Rumsfeld and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Richard Myers, all cited events in the southern city of Basra as a hopeful precedent. There, they said, widespread lawlessness in the first few days after Iraqi forces withdrew has gradually subsided.

Brooks, briefing reporters at operational headquarters in Qatar, said U.S. forces do not want to act in a heavy-handed way for fear of alienating the civilian population, and he said the number of troops available for restoring order is limited by the continuing combat. Putting the old police force back on the streets is not an option, he said, because some officers had aided Hussein's forces by directing fire on U.S. units.

Brooks said, "we rely on the population and we try to create conditions ourselves by moving in more and more areas ... "

Brooks also said the improving security situation in Basra did not happen by itself. "In Basra, we know within the last two days there had been some looting reported," he said. "Some bank robbers entered into an area and they were halted by coalition forces. They continued moving and drew weapons and they were shot. Looting went down a lot in Basra."

Copyright (c) 2003, Newsday, Inc.