| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq |
| US General who governed Iraq exposes errors |
| 2003-11-26 |
| from the London Times General Jay Garner, the American first put in charge of running postwar Iraq, has revealed the extent of rivalry in Washington that affected plans for rebuilding the country. The General, former chief of Iraq’s interim administration, said that the communication between his bosses at the Pentagon and the State Department was so bad that he was unaware that Colin Powell’s team had carried out a year-long project to plan for post-conflict Iraq until just weeks before the invasion. When he learnt of the existence of the project by chance in February, he immediately co-opted one of its senior planners onto his team. But he said that he was the ordered against his will to sack him by Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary. "There’s enormous rivalries between the agencies, but that didn’t start with this war," he said. "That is just part of Washington". The decision to hand over power more quickly to an Iraqi government was something that should have been done much earlier, General Garner said. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: "I don’t think we are speeding things up now, I think we are trying to catch up to where we should have been. I think we are finally placing more trust in Iraqis, which we should have done to begin with." Garner’s expertise is post-disaster recovery. He’s less than impressive at counter-insurgency and made some major errors early on, which is why he had to be replaced. This smacks of self-justification .... General Garner said that the failure to administer Iraq properly had attracted foreign terrorists to Iraq to fight the coalition. The General added: "That’s not all bad. Bring them all in there and we will kill them there". The General was replaced by Paul Bremer, a civilian administrator, within weeks of beginning his work in Iraq, amid claims that he had failed to restore essential services or impose order quickly enough. General Garner also reserved some criticism for Mr Bremer, saying that his decision to disband the Iraqi army, which effectively threw hundreds of thousands of breadwinners out of work and provided potential recruits for insurgency, was a mistake. The original plan had been to pay the army to take part in reconstruction work. And if Garner had been better at the security work early on, this might have been feasible. He also acknowledged that not enough effort was put into winning over ordinary Iraqis by getting America’s message across to them after the war. "We did a bad job of executing that. There’s no excuse for that. The consequence of that is all they got to listen to was [the Arab-language satellite TV station] al-Jazeera," he said. Again, Garner was supposed to be good at outreach, but somehow this never made his radar. His comments are in stark contrast to those of Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, who made a surprise visit to Iraq today. He said that the transition of power in Iraq was on course in spite of the continuing security problems. He said that he strongly believed the handover of power to Iraqis would go ahead as planned by June, although he declined to give a date when British troops could be withdrawn. He said: "There has been a great deal of progress in many areas. The security situation remains difficult. But I am very clear that the combination of political progress and military effort will ensure that there is a transition on schedule by the end of June, and unquestionably that Iraq not only is a better place, but will become a far better place as a result of that transition and the work of the coalition and our partners internationally, but above all by the work of the Iraqi people." He said the security situation in Iraq would improve with the transfer of power. He said: "Everybody understands that there are security problems, and I for one never sought to underestimate those. But what I’m told, and I believe, is that life for a very large number of people in Iraq is considerably better in terms of their living standards, and would be infinitely better when we can get on top of the security situation. One crucial way of doing that is by ensuring as rapid a transfer of power as possible, and that’s what we’re seeking to achieve." Rapid is not the same thing as effective, though. On the other hand, playing hardball just might be a winning strategy in a few places: US forces said today that they have captured a wife and daughter of Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri today in Samarra, north of Baghdad. Al-Douri stands accused by the coalition of playing a leading role in the persistent attacks on its troops. The United States is offering a reward of up to $10 million (£6m) for the capture of al-Douri. He is the former vice-president of Iraq’s Revolution Command Council and is believed to have more than one wife. He is the most senior Iraqi leader still at large after Saddam himself. |
| Posted by:rkb |
| #7 |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2003-11-26 7:12:50 PM |
| #6 |
| Posted by: Tancred 2003-11-26 12:24:20 PM |
| #5 |
| Posted by: rkb 2003-11-26 10:55:33 AM |
| #4 |
| Posted by: Jarhead 2003-11-26 10:19:09 AM |
| #3 |
| Posted by: eyeyeye 2003-11-26 9:50:16 AM |
| #2 |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2003-11-26 9:29:42 AM |
| #1 |
| Posted by: Jarhead 2003-11-26 9:25:53 AM |