Doug Henwood wrote:
> Yup, you've got a point. But so many things that should have been
> accomplished haven't been. Why did they look the other way when the
> "looting" was going on last April? Why haven't they guarded water mains
> and oil pipelines more effectively? Why was Saddam able to get the
> electricity running after GW I while the U.S. forces can't? There may be
> good answers that don't include intentional chaos-mongering, but I can't
> think of any.
One reason that things are still such a mess is that the military has locked up the people who know how to fix things in Iraq. I read that the fellow who helped Saddam get the electricity back on-line after the first Gulf War has been held incommunicado for several months. His wife said, it was reported, that he turned himself in so that he could help Iraq get on its feet again and instead was confined by the U.S. army. He was a prominent Baathist. It stands to reason that most of the people who were good at running things and liked running things and fixing things were prominent Baathists. That was one of the job requirements. It had to be right there on your resume, "member of the Baath party." I would think that, as was evident in a similar situation in post-communist Eastern Europe, these people really were more interested in doing the actual job, than being the embodiment of their political party's ideology. I can't understand why the U.S. doesn't take that into account.
Bush's firing of the Iraq army and his locking up of all the people who know how to get things done has certainly put a monkey wrench into everyone's efforts to put Iraq back together again.
So I guess we are back to the question of willful stupidity or just plain incompetence. -joan
> Doug
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