Iraq Sense

In a what's good for the goose is good for the gander statement, Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said that recent Bush administration negative statements about his government would help the terrorists. He also complained about his army not receiving good equipment from the U.S. and claimed that if the U.S. supplied that equipment, our troops could come home sooner.

While some speculate that this only shows that the U.S. doesn't really trust what the Iraqi army would do with more sophisticated firepower, retired General Barry R. McCaffrey--in an interview on Countdown-- seemed to agree wth Maliki that the Iraqi army is not properly equipped, and would benefit if it were. (McCaffrey also told Congress he thought Bush's escalation plan is "nonsensical.")

Whatever the truth of the claim about Iraqi army equipment, it does suggest other questions that few have asked and nobody has really answered about the U.S. in Iraq---questions that may not be very sophisticated, but are basic and important. The first one is this: where did all the money go?

We've heard about U.S. troops not having body armor, and more recently about troops not being provided the proper armored vehicles. If the money isn't going to equipping the Iraqi army or the U.S. forces, where is it going?

It doesn't seem to be going towards rebuilding the country, or fixing the electricity and water systems, which remain in desperate condition. Baghdad apparently hasn't had electricity fully restored since the first American bombing well over three years ago. It still functions only a few hours a day. So if the money went to rebuild Iraq, it was wasted.

One answer is the 14 or so U.S. military bases built in Iraq, each the size of a large town or perhaps a small city. Why?

This is a question that Congress must finally answer: where did all the money go? Because we're going to be paying for whatever it was spent on for generations.

The second question is related. Before the U.S. invasion, Iraq was a functioning society. It had cities where people worked, and which had electricity and water, bridges and highways, power plants and so on. Presumably Iraqis built and maintained all these things. Iraq had an army that was powerful enough to fight Iran to a standstill, and police that kept the domestic peace, apart from the political repression and crimes of Saddam. In fact, Iraq managed to hold itself together through the privations of the trade embargo, even though many died, mostly children we're told.

So how in less than four years, did Iraqi become helpless? The U.S. apparently made no effort from the beginning to involve Iraqis in a meaningful way in the reconstruction of their own country. Why not? Even before armed violence got out of control, unemployment was rampant. Why? Lots of stuff to rebuild would seem to mean lots of jobs, from top to bottom.

Why is the Iraqi army so helpless now? We think we know why the police can't keep order--they're not trying to. The police allegedly are little more than tribal militias in uniform. How did that happen?

Now the U.S. has been training the Iraqi army for several years, with almost no success. Why? And apparently the Iraqis are not only terrible soldiers, they can't fix the stuff they built, and they can't rebuild the stuff they built that the U.S. bombed. Now the U.S. has total responsibility for a dependent society that four years ago was a functioning society of adults, including professionals in everything from architecture to computers.

So what happened to that Iraq? If somebody can answer that question, we might be long way to understanding why Iraq is in the middle of a civil war.