No End in Sight Page #3

that had served in Yemen, Iraq...

and that had been a hostage

in Kuwait five months...

after the invasion of Saddam in 1990.

It belonged to few experts

in the Middle East...

that the Pentagon ordered Iraq.

One of the few ones.

I believed that they had been wrong...

They believed that it would be easy to handle...

Pero Barbara is

of the hardest of the service.

In 2003, colonel Paul Hughes...

it was taking in the Pentagon 6 years...

in works of planning and strategy...

for expert officials of Defense.

I ended up by being destined...

to the office of reconstruction

and humanitarian aid...

with Jay Garner.

I was his director of strategic politics.

The ORHA started working in

the Pentagon 50 days before the invasion.

They gave us an office complex...

of years...

there were no computers,

the people were coming every day...

was asking:
" Where do I feel? ".

There was no personnel.

It did not even have a secretary.

Only there was a meeting

in the University of National Defense...

and I believe that the unanimous opinion...

of the people who was present at this meeting...

with that I spoke then...

it was:
" This is a madness ".

It was our first meeting...

and they were not offering us

too much safety...

because, basically...

the only thing that we did was to meet us.

It was not structured at all.

There were no plans. None by no means.

On March 16, the ORHA

one displaced Kuwait.

167 persons accompanied us.

167 persons who would turn...

in the government of a country of 25 millions.

BAGHDAD, ON APRIL 9, 2003

After the fall of Baghdad...

we did not know what was going to happen...

and it was obvious that it had not glided at all.

What they were telling us...

the fact was that we would embark...

after one or two months of,

basically, to conquer Iraq.

When the troops of the USA entered

in the capital, they began the plundering.

In Kuwait...

we were so given

to the TV set as the others.

We realized

was reigning the disorder...

and the chaos in Iraq.

The Americans were not doing anything.

They were stopping in intersections...

but they were not going down the vehicles...

or of the tanks to do nothing.

and we did not see any progress.

The only progress

it was the uncontrolled freedom.

The looters wanted to come

of the government...

and even to private companies.

The plundering stemmed partly

at the level of the troops...

and to the sensation that Rumsfeld

it transmitted his commanders...

and these to his subordinates...

of that we were not there

to govern Iraq...

and to go out.

We are not under the martial law.

COMMANDER DE THE ALLIED FORCES

It was not ordained general McKiernan...

that was establishing the martial law.

The martial law never declared itself.

We are in a process

of transition, sincerely...

there is a civil law in Iraq, but there is not...

They already heard that the first two courts

they were opened today...

so, when it is begun from zero...

With the martial law...

that the fourth Convention of Geneva

would have authorized...

perhaps there would have been more safety.

We are a marines' section...

we might have detained the plundering...

if they had arranged it to us.

The big mystery of the Iraqi postwar period...

it is why in one month

after the fall of Baghdad...

NATIONAL PUBLISHER

... the USA did not do anything...

to control the plundering, because...

all the problems since then...

they began the first month.

The Council of National Safety...

the secretary of Powell, I and others...

the director of the CIA, we express

our worries for the plundering.

speak with the president Bush?

I was present at the meeting

in that my chief commented on it to himself.

What did mister Powell say?

This is not our way of acting.

to the president

they are private.

From Washington it was said...

that we would not interfere...

that we would not detain the plundering...

that we would not be police officers...

this is not what we came to do. I think...

There were instructions

explicit from Washington...

not to interfere in the plundering?

Yes.

The plundering of Baghdad

soon they transformed

in a destruction of the city

on a large scale violent and organized.

Hospitals, governmental offices,

universities, departments...

The provisional authority estimated

the losses in the plundering...

in 12.000 million dollars.

The same as the government debts of Iraq

in the year 2003-2004.

I bought a periodic today

and I remained surprised.

I read eight holders who were speaking of...

" Chaos! Violence! Discomfort! ".

It sounds as if it us was going away

to fall down the world above.

where we were seated...

and only you see cement walls,

nothing stays.

We speak about the people who comes

with industrial cranes...

and it takes parts of a power plant.

Compare it with our cities...

when there have been disturbances,

problems and plundering.

!

There were no thefts in the shops.

...

to take a beam.

The images that they see in television...

there are the repeated same...

and it is the same image of someone...

with a vase.

I believe that this was the day

in that we lost the Iraqis.

And you think:
" Golly!

Were there so many vases? ".

It is possible that there was

so many vases in the whole country?

It is when it became clear...

that this liberation did not have

nothing to see with the Iraqis.

One believed that the EE.UU...

they incited the plundering, or that was his desire.

JOURNALIS IN BAGHDAD FROM APRIL, 2003

The destruction of our country...

how could they allow it?

Be already sun or chita...

the plundering was contracting you.

We did a list of 20 places...

that we believed had to be protected...

for history, culture, art or religion.

We send it...

but not surti no effect.

The Department of the Oil was the only one

installation protected by the USA.

None was protected

of the places of the list of the ORHA.

The National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad...

the number one of the list of the ORHA...

it was containing some

of the most important objects...

of the ancient civilizations.

The museum was never protected.

It is a property of our nation,

and the treasure of 7.000 years of civilization.

Why do they allow it?

The National Library

and the National File of Iraq...

that were containing thousands of manuscripts

ancient they were set fire.

wrote himself...

was keeping in this library.

We already have no national heritage.

Three days ago, the doctor Jabar Khalil...

president of the Council of Antiquities,

and I...

we went to the headquarters

of the marines in the Hotel Palestine.

We wait more than four hours...

until a colonel received us.

promised us

that would order armored cars...

to protect the remains of the museum.

This was three days ago, nobody came.

To try to make responsible

it is unfortunate...

activity...

in the defects of a plan of war...

it looks like to me an exaggeration.

They did not receive notices

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