When the whole looting and rioting hubbub arose I wasn’t among those on the left overly decrying Bush’s failure to immediately preserve order. It’s a big country and the war wasn’t over. It simply wasn’t possible to safely position policing forces at every major Iraqi resource. Bush was forewarned the museums would be targeted, and he chose to protect the oil ministry instead. It was a tactical decision and on at least one level I understood it. Oil is the most valuable commodity in Iraq and it’s not within the purview of conspiracy theory to assume Bush has had that in mind.
But for christsakes you think he could have spared a marine or two for the damn nuclear facilities?
Not only is this a major humanitarian crisis, it means unspecified amounts and types of radioactive material and equipment to process it are circulating the Arab street. That’s a comforting thought. So not only did Bush fail to find the weapons he so decisively invaded Iraq to dispose of, his blunder may have inadvertently given the terrorists new potential for destruction.
Exactly. Which is why the article specifically mentions that none of the nuclear facilities were found to contain weapons despite close scrutiny. You might consider actually reading the article before commenting, december. The terrorists may not have gotten enriched uranium, but they probably got a few hazmats that could be rigged to explosives. It would make an Israeli café bombing all the more deadly, and would contaminate the environment as well. I don’t know if that qualifies as a WMD, but I doubt it’s a pleasant sight.
Well, since it seems that very few of the ‘arts and antiquities’ were actually looted, it would seem logical to wipe the egg off the face of the reactionaries by rationalization. “EEK! Some idiots poured uranium oxide powder on the ground because they wanted the barrels! Impeach!”
The endless searching for potentials doesn’t do much in the way of creating facts. The citizens looted just about every television set in the country too, which, in the hands of determined terrorists, could have the appalling impact of having nearly the entire population watching ‘Everyone Loves Raymond.’ Civilization would crumble within days.
"Not only is this a major humanitarian crisis . . . " C’mon now – declaring a crisis every five minutes rather devalues actual events. How about waiting to see what the outcome is, if any, instead of declaring an emergency that must certainly be the president’s fault? Knee-jerk hysteria doesn’t help anyone’s cause.
I’ve read somewhere in the vicinity of 150,000 pieces were stolen from Iraqi museums, but that’s beside the point. Nuclear equipment and toxic materials were stolen because Bush was asleep at the switch. Not only does it play into the terrorist threat but it is indeed a major humanitarian crisis. I mean are you daft… they were ladling yogurt out of barrels containing uranium oxide days or hours earlier. There are going to be cancer clusters, birth defects, and environmental damage.
And knee jerk hysteria? More like appropriate criticism. This was a fuck up plain and simple. Somehow though Bush had the foresight to protect the oil ministry. Signs of a one track mind perhaps?
december do you think that dangerous material that if in terrorist hands could be used against the US/UK or any other country should have been protected by the invading army? Considering that was the fucking reason why they said they were there in the first place I have to say I do.
First of all, there’s still a lot we don’t know. How much nuclear material was stolen? What form was it? Who stole it? When did they steal it? How did they steal it?
Second, ISTM that any nuclear material possessed by Saddam was for the purpose of developing nuclear weapons. With all that oil, he sure didn’t need a nuclear power plant! I think the US did a wonderful thing for the world by removing Saddam from power before he could use this material to actually build atomic bombs.
Third, we don’t know whether the US even had the wherewithall to prevent this looting. We don’t know whether the looting was done before or after the US had control of the country. We may not have known where the nuclear material was in time to protect it.
Fourth, there’s a lot of criticism of the US and of Bush, specifically seeking to find flaws in what was a very successful war. The approach is often to blame President Bush for any deviation from ideal perfection, a preposterous post-war standard. Some of the criticism is valid IMHO, such as the the current disarray in the governance of the Iraq. Some is bogus, like the 170,000 objects allegedly looted from the museum. Much of the criticism is one-sided – focusing on problems, rather than on all the things that are going well. Much of the criticism is exaggerated.
The silliest of the exaggerated criticism was ABC News reporting that our military unnecessarily damaged some doorknobs!
Let me echo Gairloch’s words: How about waiting to see what the outcome is?
No one in this thread is making a prediction regarding the outcome of the war, nor has anyone made grandiose claims about the consequences of this particular blunder. Bush and the pentagon made a tactical choice to protect the oil ministry. Apparently it didn’t occur to them to guard the nuc facilities as well, that much has been established. Will it result in dangerous materials falling into the wrong hands? We can’t say, but mark me down under the probably category. Will it result in a humanitarian disaster? From the looks of things it has already.
As to your remark about the US’s great service to the world in removing Saddam, I can fully agree with you there. But perhaps I’d be more willing to look at us in such a saintly light if I wasn’t so aware of our role in Saddam’s rise to power or his durability as the tyrannical leader of Iraq, or if I didn’t think we were planning on placing the Iraqis under the yoke of a new pro-west strong man.
Actually this story is a myth that has been spread by people looking for an excuse to criticize Bush and the American military. If you look for cites, you will not find any primary source for the story.
Depends on what you mean by “primary source”. Many reporters have reported this without naming any particular source. Which is not that surprising given that they were themselves in Baghdad at the time, and that information was readily available to anyone living there who took the time to walk down to the oil ministry and check it out for themselves.
“Apparently it didn’t occur to them to guard the nuc facilities as well, that much has been established.”
Um? Would this be the “nuc” facilities that didn’t exist, or have there been others? Uranium oxide powder is an industrial chemical, not a “nuc facility” component. We are heartily sorry, as a nation, a civilization, and a leader in education on all levels, that we did not start many years ago to enlighten the Iraqi population against the idea of dumping uranium oxide on the ground then using the barrels for food service. Despite our best expenditures towards public education, and years of pleading with Mr. Bush personally, our pleas to have this vital fact communicated to the Iraqi people have been ignored. Clearly, as is suggested, Mr. Bush is personally to blame.
Had the Iraqi people, despite our failure to educate them, been about the task of lighting chemical factories on fire instead of oil wells (which, they might admit, are the sole source of the economy which feeds them), we might have rushed in to guard against the possibility of some fool doling yogurt out of chemical barrels, especially since the soldiers we sent had nothing else to do. A clear failure on our part, not to anticipate just how stupid people can be and take all steps to prevent that. We admit our guilt. Lord knows, those poor people have suffered enough, what with being forced by Mr. Bush to loot their own country and all.
By way of recompense, I propose that we double the number of Starbucks franchises in the current ‘reparations to the conquered’ budget, and buy them all a cotton candy, on us.
Gairloch
(And if anyone pays attention to facts, the real ones seem to suggest that hardly anything in the way of ‘arts and antiquities’ were actually looted.)
If the US did not, then that is something of an issue, indeed a rather oversight and sign of rather bad planning insofar as among the stated pretexts for this rush to invasion was the danger of NBC materials [ again let us drop the scare phrase “Weapons of Mass Destruction” for the rather less dramatic but rather more descriptive and less propagandistic “Nuclear, Biological & Chemical.” ] falling into or passing into terrorist’s hands. Given such a concern, one might expect * some attention * to the state and status of the radioactive materials, above all insofar as the UN inspection teams had already identified the sites in question. Of course our dear December, in his general rush to excuse, has rather abstracted away from this.
The reality is, my dear December, that if such materials were of such danger as per your own beloved administration, some bloody attention should have been paid to them – although it seems rather as if it is largely a question of some fairly unrealistic expectations on the part of the Bush Admin. theoricians on the post-War period, for all that those of us with regional expertise expected many of the issues that now present themselves, among which are the resurgence in the Shiite community, the collapse of civil society and the divisions into factional infighting and score settling, and no real greeting or welcome to the Americans – no honeymoon.
Oh, poor babies, the Bush Administration. They’ve crushed a second rate little dictatorship with a fourth rate little army, without too many problems, and we have not quite applauded enough. Clap Clap.
However, as I pointed out the problem was never defeating Sadaam, although luckily it went fairly fast. The problem was and is the post-War period. Indeed, it’s a rather non-trivial problem that to date does not show very much progress – even by what one might expect.
There is nothing bogus about the looting of the museums criticism, for all that you want to focus on that early estimate, guestimate of 170 k objects. What is clear is that some important part of the ancient artifacts were looted – as of yet unclear, and the national archives – the Islamic documents were burned, in some part.
The importance of that my dear December is not the bloody number, but the fact that it happened, and that the symbolism played into international and Iraqi doubts – in short it was a propaganda motherfucking disaster and your ad hoc excuse making over the oversight – whether driven by too few forces driven by an utterly unnecessarily premature invasion schedule, obviously no imminent danger – is bankrupt and pitiful.
As for the exaggeration in the criticism, well, it is rather hard to say. Perhaps some is, every bit as much as your yammering praise is exaggerated.
It is very clear to those of us in the region closely following the issues, and I do not mean only by reporting, that the post-war preparations by the Bush Administration were not based on a realistic analysis of the post-War period. The Bush Administration clearly is not yet prepared for the challenges, nor do present preparations bode well for a positive reconstruction. The continued connection with Chalabi, the incoherent approach to internal politics and the continued blind, idiotic reluctance either to commit serious troops or to compromise with the international community to get a serious international presence to assist in helping restore order.
The steps taken to date, one month into an occupation that shows little clear thought, do not inspire confidence, nor do I believe the theoricians of the Bush Admin. foreign policy have an adequate understanding of this region to put such together, and are too … arrogant and blind to realize the same.
What I hear from people who have been in country and done assessments is the American Administration for Iraq appears paralyzed by in-fighting, lack of clear ideas on how to address the situation, lack of clear direction on how to deal with the political ferment and more interested in cutting out dis-favored countries and political groups (UN and connected orgs) than with solving problems, including emerging choleral issues, etc. Those are assessments from the horses mouths, not journos.
Ohh, poor boys…. I am sure your feelings were hurt.
If one is following the facts my dear fellow, one would know that the UN inspection teams had identified and secured numerous nuclear reseach facilities, many of which were mothballed due to sanctions – e.g. the remnants of the Osirus reactor complex.
The question might be then, if we are not to play straw man games and chase red herrings, is whether there was an extent and functioning nuclear program with the goal of making nuclear weapons.
I further note, that in pure economic terms it makes perfect sense to diversify one’s power sources away form pure reliance on hydrocarbon burning generation to others, even if one is sitting on massive oil reserves.
That is not to say this is the real justification for Sadaam’s past nuclear efforts, quite clealry not, however the mere existence of oil & nat gas reserves does not make nuclear power ipso facto redundant or nonsensicial, any more than it might make hydro development redundant. There are good economic reasons for it.
So, for that matter, I hope I will not have to see the stupid argument "well they gots oil so … " – there is fine evidence that Sadaam was exploiting the nuclear program for weapons purposes, we need no further argumentation.
While there is no excuse for people to continue the illiteracy of repeating the 1,700 guestimate of the first days, equally there is no call for the equal illiteracy of the 29 figure, a quick est. of one museum’s formally id’ed missing items and not an exhaustive list – others remained to be clarified. Not hardly any looting, but fairly decent recovery efforts. Should you and december want a point of argument that would be the factually supportable one.
RTFCite: “Besides Tuwaitha and the adjacent Baghdad Nuclear Research Center, the Ash Shaykhili Nuclear Facility, the Baghdad New Nuclear Design Center and the Tahadi Nuclear Establishment have all been looted.” Here’s a clue free of charge, Iraq’s nuclear program goes back a ways. If you recall there was quite a bit of controversy over the Israeli air strike on an Iraqi nuclear power plant in '81.
Not to be ironic, but you’re message isn’t coming across as clear as it could, might I suggest just a skoch more sarcasm?
Consider two things; one, Rumsfeld has said at press conferences that chaos during the transitory period was normal and expected. Two, we know that radical Arabs are trying to get their hands on nuclear material. Given that information, do you think it might have been wise or practical to anticipate nuc sites would be targeted? I’m not saying I saw this coming, but I’m not the one running this war.
Is Bush to blame? Of course not, do you blame Kermit when his jokes bomb? Seriously though, I’d say Rummy, Powell, Tommy Franks, and Cheney dropped the ball on this one big time.
“The soldiers, he said, assured the men they would secure Tuwaitha, but two weeks later they returned to find there were no Americans, only hundreds of people looting the facility and dogs rolling around in spilled uranium oxide.”
Spent materials from what? Also, if the looted stuff was merely “spent materials”, then why the hysteria about the looters using it to build nuclear weapons?
“Suggests”? Maybe so. But, it was hard to be certain one way or the other before the war. In fact, it’s still not clear whether Iraq was currently pursuing nuclear weapons. They certainly did so in the past. And, of course, in the future they might well have repeated their past efforts to get nuclear weapons.
It’s true that the US supported Iraq against Iran in their war. But, it’s not true that the US put Saddam and the Baath Party in power. If I’m wrong, please provide a cite.
It’s unfortunate that any looting took place. And, no doubt a perfect US would have prevented all looting, all civilian deaths, and all property damage. The perfect war would have been over in less than a day, so that the Coalition and Iraqis could sit down and have tea together.
In the real world, every conquest of a country has involved looting You know more history than I do, **
Collounsbury**. How much looting was there in Iraq by the standards of other wars?
That’s a fair point, although any flaw would have served the same purpose. There would have been similar criticism if the US hadn’t prevented environmental and economic damage from numerous oil well fires, or if thousands of civilians had been killed, or if there were post-war starvation, or if Baghdad had been leveled, or if the war had dragged on and become a quagmire, or if there had been uprisings in the “Arab stree”, etc. The critics looked for an aspect that didn’t go optimally and focused on it.
You may be right. You’re closer than I am. However, I’d be willing to bet that a month from now, the current problems will be solved. The critics will ignore the success. Instead they will have found something else to carp about.
Seriously though, I’d say Rummy, Powell, Tommy Franks, and Cheney dropped the ball on this one big time.