H.D.S. Greenway, 11 July 2003, Boston Globe
The Pentagon seems to have believed that Iraqi army units and policemen would come over to the American side with their forces intact and begin working for the Americans. It seems not to have occurred to them that another scenario might unfold, that the soldiers and police would simply melt away and that chaos would take over. The great failure of Pentagon planning was that there was no Plan B if Plan A failed. After trying to run Iraq on the cheap, Rumsfeld this week doubled his estimates for the cost of maintaining troops in Iraq.
It is not as if the Pentagon was not warned. In the lead-up to war, there were many voices from experienced experts and think tanks warning that the United States would need a substantial military police force to go in right after the troops. All were ignored, just as Robert McNamara ignored all advice about Indochina, only to say years later that he never knew.
Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz presided over what one diplomat calls a "colossal miscalculation" that may have more impact on this country than did the miscalculation at the Bay of Pigs four decades ago. All the effort that the armed forces took not to destroy vital civilian infrastructure went for naught because all was destroyed by postcombat looting. Although American soldiers quickly secured the Oil Ministry in Baghdad, nothing was done to protect museums, hospitals, vital offices - even nuclear facilities where radioactive material might have fallen into terrorist hands. Vital records that might have led us to weapons of mass destruction were also destroyed.
The damage done is incalculable, and not just in material terms. The political damage has been worse and will be far more lasting in its consequences. The Pentagon civilian leadership has squandered much of the good will that Iraqis felt after the yoke of the Ba'ath Party was lifted. Policy is in drift. Forces that are inimical to American interests are rushing in to fill that vacuum. A guerrilla war is gathering.
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