Galbraith on Iraq: Eyewitness Account

Peter Galbraith is a former US ambassador to Croatia and now serves as a fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. In the 80's, he documented Iraqi atrocities against the Kurds for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

On Wednesday, October 27th, the Boston Globe contained an article by Galbraith: Eyewitness to a failure in Iraq. In the article, Galbraith tells of a meeting he had with Paul Wolfowitz in 2003 in which he told Wolfowitz of the catastrophic aftermath of the invasion: the unchecked looting of every public institution in Baghdad, the devastation of Iraq's cultural heritage, the anger of ordinary Iraqis who couldn't understand why the world's only superpower was letting this happen. On the Al Franken Show Friday (Oct. 29), Galbraith said that, during this 2003 meeting, Wolfowitz became angrier and angrier as he told him of the situation in Iraq. At first Galbraith thought Wolfowitz was upset about what was going on in Iraq, but Galbraith soon realized that Wolfowitz was furious with Galbraith for telling him these things.

Galbraith witnessed an extremely alarming incident on April 16, 2003. A mob attacked and looted the Iraqi equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control, taking live HIV and black fever virus among other potentially lethal materials. US troops were stationed across the street but did not intervene because they didn't know the building was important. When the young American lieutenant in charge found out, he was devastated. He shook his head and said, "I hope I am not responsible for Armageddon." About the same time, looters entered the warehouses at Iraq's sprawling nuclear facilities at Tuwaitha on Baghdad's outskirts. They took barrels of yellowcake (raw uranium), apparently dumping the uranium and using the barrels to hold water. US troops were there but did not interfere.

Galbraith pointed out to Wolfowitz that, as long as these sites remained unprotected, their deadly materials could end up not with ill-educated slum dwellers but with those who knew exactly what they were doing. This is apparently what actually happened. According to the IAEA report this month, there was "widespread and apparently systematic dismantlement that has taken place at sites previously relevant to Iraq's nuclear program." This includes the 380 tons of explosives that have disappeared and have been in the headlines this week. Organized gangs simply dismantled entire buildings that housed high-precision equipment, using heavy machinery. A piece of cake with George Bush in the White House.

Galbraith thinks it is a good bet that this equipment is now in Iran.

Galbraith says, "This was a preventable disaster." Of course, it was.

Remember that Peter Galbraith supported Bush's decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein. He helped advance the case for war at Wolfowitz' request. He is simply pointing out that there was no competent postwar strategy, and the US is now much more unsafe than if we had not gone to war at all.

George Bush has made our country and the entire world less safe. He cannot truthfully claim to have made us safer. This flies in the face of reality.

[Click on the blog title to go to the Globe article.]