Barnes falsely asserted that possibility of looting in Iraq “never occurred” to Bush administration, Pentagon leaders

Written by Raphael Schweber-Koren

Published

On Fox News' Special Report, Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes claimed that Pentagon war planners and the Bush administration had not “expected” the looting that occurred in Baghdad immediately after Saddam Hussein's regime fell. But a 2003 New York Times article reported that the administration and the Pentagon were warned repeatedly by exiled Iraqi leaders that “without a strong plan for managing Iraq after toppling Saddam Hussein, widespread looting and violence would erupt.”


During the May 1 “All-Star Panel” segment of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes claimed that Pentagon war planners and the Bush administration had not “expected” the looting that occurred in Baghdad immediately after Saddam Hussein's regime fell. Said Barnes, “The problem there with the looting ... was that they hadn't expected it at all. ... It came as a complete shock to them. You know, they had -- it was just a miscalculation. They didn't believe that was going to happen. It -- it really never occurred to them.” However, The New York Times reported on November 30, 2003, that the administration and the Pentagon were warned repeatedly by exiled Iraqi leaders that “without a strong plan for managing Iraq after toppling Saddam Hussein, widespread looting and violence would erupt.” The article stated that "[s]enior administration officials acknowledged that they had considered these warnings before the war, but defended their judgments" regarding troop levels.

The Times further reported that despite the warnings from Iraqi exiles, “international relief experts and ... [officials] within the United States government” that Saddam's ouster would lead to what one of the exiled leaders described as a “power vacuum” in which “there would be chaos and looting,” Pentagon officials planning the war in late 2002 “envisioned Iraq after the fall of Mr. Hussein's government as far more manageable.” The article also suggested that the administration's desire to use fewer troops during the invasion limited the options available for controlling the country after Saddam's regime fell:

In many ways the war plan drove the postwar plan, senior military officials said. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the invasion force be kept as small as possible, prompting his commanders to build an attack plan based on speed and surprise. Any recommendations for sending more troops to maintain order afterward would probably have collided with the war plan, the officials said.

Besides, the plan for after the Iraqi government fell assumed that Iraqi troops and police officers would stay on the job -- an assumption that proved wrong. “The political leadership bought its own spin,” said one senior Defense Department official involved in the planning, in part because it “made selling the war easier.”

From the May 1 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, with Roll Call executive editor Morton M. Kondracke:

BARNES: I don't know what -- I don't know what you're talking about: We didn't have enough troops to take over the ministries.

They took over all the -- all the ministries. I don't know. It's never...

KONDRACKE: They were -- they were ransacked.

BARNES: Yeah. Yeah, nobody is -- what, because of the looting?

KONDRACKE: They were ransacked.

BARNES: No, no.

The problem there with the looting, Mort, was that they hadn't expected it at all. It wasn't the number of troops ...

KONDRACKE: Well...

BARNES: ... in town. They all stood back. They were never going to -- they weren't going to stop it. It came as a complete shock to them. You know, they had -- it was just a miscalculation. They didn't believe that was going to happen. It -- it really never occurred to them.

What the -- it has never been proved to me what these troops would do. Mort thinks they would have stopped the looting. I don't. So, I -- I -- you know, I think we have to go along with [retired] General [Tommy] Franks and General [John] Abizaid, who still thinks that -- I mean, General Abizaid, the CENTCOM commander, who is the guy in charge, after all, wants the light footprint. He wants American troops not to be all -- all that heavy in occupation.