Official Ties Iraq’s Troubles to U.S. Success

The Pentagon’s top policy official said Tuesday that the rapid advance on Baghdad by a relatively small U.S. ground force made it easier for saboteurs and looters to undermine the peace after the Iraqi regime fell.

But Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith said it is unfair to assert that the repeated postwar attacks on U.S. troops and sabotage of infrastructure in the Iraqi capital are the result of poor planning.

“We’re facing some of the problems brought on by our very success in the war -- in particular, our ability to use speed to preempt many of the actions that we were afraid Saddam might take,” Feith said at a luncheon given by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Critics have questioned whether there are enough U.S. and British troops to keep the peace. U.S. officials have also acknowledged that in racing toward Baghdad, invading forces swept past smaller cities without engaging local opposition fighters, leaving many in position to eventually attack the occupying troops.

But Feith said that if commanders had moved their forces more slowly toward Baghdad with a contingent large enough to discourage looting, the regime of Saddam Hussein could have had time to burn Iraqi oil fields, blow up bridges and move its forces into better position to impede the American advance, leading to far more combat deaths on both sides, Feith said.

“War, like life in general, always involves trade-offs,” Feith said. “It’s not right to assume that the major problems in Iraq are attributable to poor planning.”

That explanation for the current troubles in Iraq is meeting with some skepticism on Capitol Hill. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a West Point graduate who, along with other members of the Armed Services Committee, recently returned from Baghdad, blamed faulty planning by the Pentagon for the chaos in the city.

“I think it’s fair to attribute it to a misperception of the threats on the ground in the city of Baghdad.... I think it’s a question of not appreciating the threat prior to the campaign and not making the appropriate plans to deal with that threat,” Reed said Tuesday.

The attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq appear to be having an impact on American public opinion, despite continued support for the Iraq undertaking.

A survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released Tuesday found that just 23% of respondents think the U.S. military effort in Iraq is going “very well,” far fewer than during the war, when between 61% and 66% expressed that view.

The survey of 1,202 people found, though, that despite those concerns, 66% favor a major U.S. commitment to rebuild Iraq and establish a stable government there. About the same percentage continue to back the decision to go to war, down from 74% in early April.

Feith said military planners had spent most of their time developing responses to threats that didn’t come to pass -- widespread destruction of oil fields, chemical and biological warfare, massive refugee problems, food shortages, large-scale ethnic bloodletting and “a long list of other horribles.”

Now that Baath Party loyalists, foreign Islamic terrorists and looters are creating havoc in Baghdad and other cities, Feith called the establishment of law and order the toughest and most pressing task facing the military.

Feith acknowledged that problems providing basic services such as electricity and water are hampering stability and security efforts. He blamed that more on sabotage and the “threadbare” condition of Iraq’s infrastructure under Hussein than on shortcomings of the coalition administration.

“Without security, we can’t rebuild the Iraqi infrastructure and protect it from sabotage, nor can we expect Iraqi political life to revive,” Feith said.

But Feith defended the progress made to date in Iraq, saying that U.S. officials are helping Iraqis craft the beginnings of an independent government. He cited Monday’s meeting of the Baghdad City Advisory Council, made up of Iraqis, and the establishment of similar councils in other cities.

“Contrary to some predictions, we haven’t seen any tendency for ethnic and sectarian groups to break away from Iraq and form their own political entities,” Feith said. “As long as the commitment to a united Iraq is maintained, I believe that the prospects for a pluralistic Iraq, in which no one group dominates the others, are good.”

The United States plans to begin organizing a new Iraqi army soon and hopes to have a division of 12,000 troops trained within a year, Feith said. Officials have a goal of training 40,000 Iraqi troops within three years, he said.

Pentagon officials also want to hold trials for some captured leaders of Hussein’s regime, Feith said. He said U.S. officials had not decided which courts would try them, but that Iraqis would probably lead the effort.