Month: October 2003

Remember that post I wrote about ten hours ago or so about the discretionary fund available to American commanders in Iraq? Well, fugeddaboutit. Instapundit reports that the program has been canceled:

Yes, it was the most powerful tool commanders have had. But as of now, it has been cut off. LTG Sanchez has informed all the resource managers this past week that the funding is done and there will be no more. All of our humanitarian projects we had going are now stopped and some projects (including those in the troubled Sadr City) are put on hold.
Given the utter disorganization of CPA, the battalion commanders here were making a significant impact. We fixed schools, sewage, markets, and got trash picked up. We put thousands of people to work. Now it’s over, at one of the most critical times in this fight. Everyone on the line is dumbfounded over this decision.

This is utter foolishness. It’s Murphy’s Law writ large. At the very least, we should get an explanation of why it was canceled and what’s to be its replacement.

Normally, I’d say that anyone who has to make a public statement like this has a blinding grasp of the obvious … but seeing as how he’s French:

A U.S. pullout from Iraq (news – web sites) would be “catastrophic,” French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said Thursday, urging countries to take a strong united stance to stabilize Iraq. … When asked whether he could envision the United States pulling out of Iraq, de Villepin responded, “Obviously, a pullout from Iraq today would be catastrophic and would absolutely not correspond to the demands of the situation.[“]

De Villepin managed to say all this without his characteristic statements about unilateralism or demands that the UN be put in charge. Seeing as how the UN is high-tailing it out of Baghdad, that may be too ridiculous even for the French. (Hard to believe.)

American military commanders are using confiscated Hussein funds to speed the reconstruction of Iraq:

The speed and ease with which reconstruction money is being handed out by the military here contrasts sharply with the delays and controversy surrounding the handling of major reconstruction funds by the Pentagon and U.S. Agency for International Development.
The fact that the money comes from seized Iraqi assets, the Saddam Hussein regime’s overseas bank accounts and cash stockpiles found in palaces and the walls of government buildings in Iraq has provided a fortuitous loophole. Since the money was not appropriated by Congress, officials of the U.S.-led occupation government in Iraq believe that it does not have to be disbursed under the usual contracting regulations.
The money for most military projects in Iraq goes through something called the commander’s emergency response program. About $100 million has been allocated so far and the 101st Airborne Division, which oversees northern Iraq, has spent about $31 million of it. It has been used, officials said, for more than 11,000 projects such as hiring a civil defense corps, patching roads and fixing an oil refinery and a sulfur plant.

So far, according to the Post, this program has been a fabulous success, both in the speed of the reconstruction and in showing that the US military presence is intended to be helpful to ordinary Iraqis. While there is risk in this process of misdirected funds or inefficiency in effort, this is a small distribution channel and shouldn’t be closed down in favor of a single, large bureaucracy. A combination of efforts will hasten the return to normalcy for Iraqis and ensure the broadest benefit of US aid. Hats off to the Post for featuring this good news from Iraq. (via Instapundit)

Read this post from Andrew Sullivan on the latest meme from the media — that Bush promised us an easy aftermath in Iraq. For those of us who paid attention to what Bush said, this is a ridiculous idea, but it’s getting play lately. I won’t excerpt Sullivan’s post, as it’s just easier to read the whole thing there. It’s good.

The UN … the organization that supposedly holds all international prestige in dealing with terrorism and liberation … is bugging out of Baghdad:

International organizations continued their exodus from Iraq, with the United Nations announcing it was withdrawing staff from Baghdad following this week’s string of car bombings in the capital and attacks against coalition troops. … The U.N. decision to pull its remaining international staff out of Baghdad was announced on Wednesday, two days after a deadly suicide car bombing at the Baghdad headquarters of the Red Cross. “We have asked our staff in Baghdad to come out temporarily for consultations with a team from headquarters on the future of our operations, in particular security arrangements that we would need to take to operate in Iraq,” U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe said. She said it was not an “evacuation” and staff in the north would remain.

Saddam’s Fedayeen have scored a major victory in chasing out the UN and the Red Cross from Baghdad, and I’m sure that the news will portray this as a failure on the part of the Coalition, and specifically the US as we’re the ones in charge of Baghdad. But what this proves is the folly of entrusting security matters to the UN in the first place. Just as in Rwanda, the UN is worse than useless: they take up space and do nothing to improve the situation, and when any setbacks occur, they either do nothing and watch it happen (Rwanda) or leave entirely. There is no worse message to send to terrorists. A few car bombings and the UN runs squealing. A few more, they are no doubt thinking, and the Americans will be next.
The UN has become a nest of vipers and cowards. Any notion that the US should entrust its national security to an organization that allows Libya to chair its Human Rights committee and Syria to sit on the Counter-Terrorism Committee is suicidal.