The Green[e]house Effect: a Weblog

Welcome to the Occupation

President Bush:

I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President — maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation.

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William Butler Yeats :: "The Second Coming":

The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer:

The president said that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa. That still may be absolute fact. This revisionist notion that somehow this is now the core of why we went to war or a fundamental underpinning of the president’s decisions is a bunch of bull.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice:

We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

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The New York Times // Michael Gordon :: "A Perfect War?"

The Defense Department has come up with a novel explanation for the looting, robberies and shootings that have afflicted Iraq since Saddam Hussein was overthrown: They are the unavoidable consequence of a triumphant war plan. ...

"We are facing some of the problems brought on by our very success in the war, in particular, our ability to use speed to pre-empt many of the actions that we were afraid Saddam might take," [undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas] Feith said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "War, like life in general, always involves trade-offs. It is not right to assume that any current problems in Iraq can be attributed to poor planning."

In short, the Pentagon seems to be asserting that there was nothing it should have done differently. The disorder that afflicted Iraq in recent months was a necessary and acceptable consequence of a broader strategy for quickly winning the war. It was not preventable, and the strategy accepted this risk.

The assertion that Pentagon planning for the occupation of Iraq was flawless is quite a claim, given the mounting allied casualty toll, the difficulty the United States has had in restoring basic services and the continued threat of economic sabotage.

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The New York Times // Steven Lee Myers :: "Anxious and Weary U.S. Soldiers Face New Mission in Iraq":

Sergeant Jaime Betancourt was there in March when a taxi loaded with explosives killed four of his company’s soldiers at a checkpoint.

He was there in April when his battalion seized the road out of the international airport and Saddam Hussein’s army made its last desperate defense.

He was there later that month when his company, part of the 1st Brigade of the Army’s 3d Infantry Division, crossed the Tigris River and began to restore order in Baghdad’s eastern half as chaos threatened to unravel the victory the brigade had helped win.

Betancourt is still here today, enduring infernal heat and fetid quarters in the ransacked headquarters of Iraq’s Interior Ministry, as much of the 3d Infantry Division remains in the city.

"I think that was the most scary thing — trusting civilians, especially after the car bomb," Betancourt said, referring to the taxi bombing, the worst single attack against the brigade’s troops, on March 29, near Najaf, about 85 miles south of Baghdad. "We didn’t want nothing to do with these people anymore."

As he stood guard at a hospital, as he enforced curfew at checkpoints, as he patrolled streets once again bustling with Iraqis, even the children terrified him, said Betancourt, who, at 21, appears barely older than a boy.

"At the end," he said, "it was like, 'Get that kid away from me.'"

It was not supposed to end this way for the brigade’s 5,000 soldiers and officers, who were accompanied by a reporter during the war and again this month in Baghdad. After fighting their way from the Kuwaiti border to the international airport outside Baghdad in three fierce weeks, they believed that the war — or at least their part of it — was over.

Six months after arriving in Kuwait and almost three months after entering Iraq, they were ready to go home. Then they discovered that, at least from a soldier’s-eye view on the ground, there seemed to be no American plan for a postwar Iraq.

The mayhem that followed the collapse of Saddam’s government on April 9 has thrust them into a new mission: keeping peace, even as their weary minds and bodies may still feel at war.

"You call Donald Rumsfeld and tell him our sorry asses are ready to go home," said Private First Class Matthew O’Dell, an infantryman in Betancourt’s platoon, as he stood guard Tuesday. "Tell him to come spend a night in our building."

Two months after surging into Baghdad, the 1st Brigade’s soldiers and officers have found themselves enmeshed in yet another campaign — less intense, perhaps, but still exhausting, still perilous and, at times, still psychologically taxing.

Some said they were haunted by the deaths they caused — and suffered — and have sought counseling. All seemed tired and hot and increasingly bitter. Morale seems to have plummeted as sharply as the temperature has risen.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution // Ron Martz and Jingle Davis :: "Fort Stewart Troops Kept on Duty in Iraq":

In Fallujah, about 40 miles west of Baghdad, Army Lt. Col. Eric Schwartz, commander of Georgia-based Task Force 1-64, made an announcement Monday afternoon to hushed staff members.

"We were extended in theater. Units will now stay one year," he said.

Schwartz said later, "They know it ripped my heart out to stand up there and tell them we weren't going home."

The news hit especially hard because soldiers with the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) from Fort Stewart were told July 9 that they could start packing this week to come home to Hinesville.

About 10,000 soldiers, including troops in Task Force 1-64, learned Monday their homecoming will be delayed indefinitely. The same day, a 3rd Infantry Division soldier was killed in an ambush near Baghdad and 10 others were wounded, three seriously. ...

Schwartz told company commanders and staff officers Monday not to set their sights on any specific date for going home. The extension order, expected to be announced by the Pentagon today, will specify that units sent to Iraq or Kuwait will spend "a minimum" of one year, Schwartz said.

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International Herald-Tribune // Brian Knowlton :: "Rumsfeld Says More GIs May Be Needed":

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld predicted Sunday that attacks on coalition troops in Iraq could grow "more vicious" this summer, and said for the first time that an increase in U.S. force levels was at least a possibility.

"We're still in a war," he said on one of two television appearances. Since May 1, when President George W. Bush declared that major hostilities had ended in Iraq, 31 U.S. soldiers have died in the hostilities there.

President Bush:

I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President — maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation.

Posted by Greg Greene at July 15, 2003 2:00 AM