`American troops serving as police in shooting gallery'
Jul. 20, 2003. 01:00 AM
thestar.com
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Below are excerpts from a speech by Democratic Senator Edward M. Kennedy, delivered last week at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Our policy toward Iraq is adrift. Each day, our troops and their families are paying the price.
Our clear national interest in the emergence of a peaceful, stable, democratic Iraq is being undermined.
On May 1, President Bush announced aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln that the United States and our allies had prevailed and that "major combat operations" in Iraq had ended.
Not exactly. American troops in Iraq are now serving as police officers in a shooting gallery.
In recent weeks, they've been subjected to 10 to 25 violent attacks a day by hostile fighters or forces.
In the 76 days that have passed since the president spoke, 81 more American troops have died.
For the men and women of our armed forces who are dodging bullets in the streets and alleys of Baghdad, and other parts of Iraq, the battle is far from over.
President Bush says of the attackers, "Bring 'em on." But how do you console a family by telling them that their son or daughter is a casualty of the post-war period?
The debate may go on for many months or even years about our intelligence failures before the war began.
As we now know, despite the claim made in the State of the Union address, Saddam Hussein was not purchasing uranium from Africa to build nuclear weapons.
Despite all the intelligence we were shown in the months leading up to war, despite the additional intelligence they said was there but could not be shared, we have yet to uncover any evidence that Iraq was stockpiling chemical or biological weapons.
There was and is no evidence that Saddam was conspiring with Al Qaeda.
What was the imminent threat to the United States that required us to launch a preventive war in Iraq with very little international support?
What was the imminent threat to the United States?
It's a disgrace that the case for war seems to have been based on shoddy intelligence, hyped intelligence and even false intelligence.
All the evidence points to the conclusion that they put a spin on the intelligence and a spin on the truth.
They have undermined America's prestige and credibility in the world — and undermined the trust that Americans should and must have in what their nation tells them.
How many will doubt a future claim of danger even if it is real?
The failures of intelligence were bad enough. But the real failure of intelligence was our failure to understand Iraq.
There is no question that long before the war began, a serious issue was raised about the danger of winning the war and losing the peace.
In fact, it was one of the principal arguments against going to war.
Before the war began, 11 separate agencies of the United States government worked with 280 Iraqi citizens in the State Department's so-called "Future of Iraq" working groups.
In numerous briefings, Pentagon officials assured us on the Senate Armed Services Committee that firm plans were in place to secure and rebuild Iraq.
But the reality is that the administration had paper, but not a real plan — and precious little paper at that.
We knew the post-war rebuilding of Iraq would be enormously difficult.
Based on our experience in Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor and Afghanistan, we knew security could be a profound problem and that there would be challenges from a restless population.
We knew that building a national police force and a credible judicial system would be enormously complicated tasks. These are not new issues.
But rather than learning lessons from the experiences in these four conflicts, the administration was blinded by its own ideological bravado.
It rushed ahead without planning for contingencies or raising even basic questions about likely events.
The foundation of our post-war policy was built on a quicksand of false assumptions and the result has been chaos for the Iraqi people and continuing mortal danger for our troops.
The truth, as my colleague Senator John Kerry starkly stated, is clearer with each passing day and each new casualty: "The administration went to war without a thorough plan to win the peace."
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Reprinted with the permission of Senator Kennedy's office. |
