The US made a series of mistakes in Iraq and is continuing to make grave errors. It gave secondary importance to the security and welfare of the people of Iraq in its strategies for postwar Iraq. Its plans focused more on other priorities, like consolidating its occupation of the country, and let the law and order situation slip out of control. The American strategists failed to realise that they were unleashing a potentially massive source of resistance and threat to law and order when they disbanded the Iraqi army and the Baathist Party � by firing all civil servants.
They did not realise that the unemployed soldiers and bureaucrats � who need not necessarily have any Baathist ideology or loyalty to the ousted regime � would have nowhere to turn, but the streets, to make a living.
This was reflected in the accounts from Iraq, last week, that an explosion at an arms dump was caused by careless handling of ammunition by unemployed soldiers who sought to empty shells and sell their copper casings. Being former military personnel, they should have known the danger in handling ammunition. The risk they continued to undertake highlights their desperation to make a living.
Jordan Times July 6 2003
