Eric Umansky

Riot at Iraq's Camp Bucca; 4 dead

The Pentagon (actually, Centcom) has just released the following statement:

   

January 31, 2005
Release Number: 05-01-120

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

RIOT AT CAMP BUCCA LEAVES 4 DEAD, 6 INJURED

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A riot at the Camp Bucca Theater Internment Facility shortly after noon, Jan.31, left four detainees dead and six injured.

The violence erupted after a routine search for contraband in one of the camp’s 10 compounds. The facility’s commander immediately deployed all available guards to the camp in an attempt to control the situation.

The riot quickly spread to three additional compounds, with detainees throwing rocks and fashioning weapons from materials inside their living areas. The four compounds involved in the riot house more than 2,900 of Camp Bucca’s 5,300 detainees.

Guards attempted to calm the increasingly volatile situation using verbal warnings and, when that failed, by use of non-lethal force. After about 45 minutes of escalating danger, lethal force was used to quell the violence. The situation quickly began to subside after the use of lethal force. Medical personnel on site provided immediate aide to the injured.
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Last year's Taguba report cited "egregious acts and grave breaches" at Camp Bucca. Meanwhile, a piece earlier this month in the LAT passed along commanders' description of it as "model prison." ("Inmates run their own classes on literacy, English and religion and hold soccer games so raucous that the guards sometimes think a riot is in progress.")

That piece also notes that the prison is "fast-growing," with the U.S. "shifting the bulk s of its more than 7,000 Iraqi and foreign prisoners" there.  It's also worth noting that in the run-up to the elections, the U.S.  was making massive sweeps  and had suspended the release of prisoners.  So, at the least, perhaps overcrowding?

More lessons on transparency from the U.S.

From an A.P. piece about the state of Iraqi forces:

Numbers of trained Iraqi troops don't provide a complete picture. The U.S. military no longer supplies figures on how many have been fully equipped with armor, weapons, vehicles and communications gear.

The piece has plenty of other  good nuggets, including:

The actual numbers in the National Guard, however, have ebbed and flowed between 35,000 and 43,000 and are now around 36,000, according to U.S. government figures. Over the last six months, the Guard has lost 10,000 personnel, although some have been replaced through recruiting.

CPA back again

"Audit: $9 Billion Unaccounted for in Iraq" - Associated Press:

The inspector general said the occupying agency disbursed $8.8 billion to Iraqi ministries "without assurance the moneys were properly accounted for.''

U.S. officials, the report said, "did not establish or implement sufficient managerial, financial and contractural controls.'' There was no way to verify that the money was used for its intended purposes of financing humanitarian needs, economic reconstruction, repair of facilities, disarmament and civil administration.

Obviously, there was a legit immediate post-war  tension between expediency and accountability. But there were other issues too.  (See a CPA piece I did back in May.)

Fancy new contracting panel (Orwell edition)

The watchdog folks at POGO  notice that the White House has chosen members of a new advisory group for federal acquisitions. Makes sense, since there have been a number of smelly contracts recently, particularly in the Pentagon. (See previous post.)  So who will be on this new fleece-fighting panel? "Contractor advocates – both inside and outside government – who have embraced Representative Tom Davis’ (R-VA) agenda of gutting taxpayer protections,” says POGO's director.  There have been a growing number of critics of trends in government contracting including Inspectors Generals and the Government Accountability Office but none of them are represented."

Some  appointees (POGO has the full list):

Allan V. Burman, President, Jefferson Solutions and Senior VP
BIO: http://www.jeffersonconsulting.com/bios.htm?id=2
HIGHLIGHTS: Provides training and consulting to contractors and government. Clients include Accenture, Dyncorp, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). Since 2000, has contributed $3,000 to Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA). Source:  www.opensecrets.org

Marshall J. Doke, Jr., Partner, Gardere
BIO: http://www.gardere.com/Attorneys/Attorney_Bio/?id=634
HIGHLIGHTS: Lawyer representing contractors. 

David A. Drabkin, Deputy Associate Administrator for Acquisition Policy, General Services Administration
BIO: http://www.sba.gov/50/David-Drabkin.pdf
HIGHLIGHTS:  Has been a cheerleader for financially-questionable contracting vehicles such as share-in-savings contracting. Since 2000, has made campaign contributions of $1,500 to Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA). Source: www.opensecrets.org

CHAIR: Marcia G. Madsen, Partner Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw
BIO: http://www.mayerbrownrowe.com/lawyers/profile.asp?hubbardid=M968105495&lawyer_name=Madsen%2C+Marcia+G%2E
HIGHLIGHTS: Lawyer representing contractors.

Roger Waldron, Director, Acquisition Management Center, Federal Supply Service BIO: http://www.acq.osd.mil/dpap/about/Procurement2004/bios/WaldronRogerBio.pdf
HIGHLIGHTS: Head of procurement policy for an agency that has taken a lead in promoting interagency contracts which were recently added to the Government Accountability Office’s High Risk series because of waste, fraud, and abuse exposed by the GAO and Inspectors General.

Democracy at work (U.S.-style)

Senator McCain has long been poking around on the Pentagon's  expensive and shady tanker deal. SecDef Rumsfeld has promised the Pentagon's full cooperation in the investigation.   McCain has just written Rummy a letter detailing what that cooperation looks like so far:

As you know, in the Commerce Committee, I first requested documents regarding the proposal in June 2003. Regrettably, since then the DoD’s production of documents has been riddled by disruption, obfuscation and delay. Some documents that were produced were doctored2; others that should have been produced, were improperly withheld.3 To date, after months of assurances, partial production on only about 7 out of 36 request categories have been produced.

More...

From tomorrow's Wash Post:

When the suicide bomber at the high school struck shortly before 11 a.m., the polling site had been growing busy after a slow start. But Hadi Saleh Mohammed, the election official in charge, felt he had no choice but to close it down. There were the wounded to evacuate, a gruesome mess to clean up, security to reassess.

While all that went forward, the voters stood at the end of the block, waiting.

"They wanted to come back in," Mohammed said. "They didn't want to go back home."

So the polling place reopened. On the advice of the U.S. troops, the security perimeter was pushed back a block, so people could be frisked twice before entering the school.

Though performing this duty meant standing amid flecks of the flesh of the last officer who had the job, there were volunteers. In stepping forward to do the first round of pat-downs themselves, local residents explained that they could raise the alert if another suspicious stranger approached.

"The police might not be able to recognize residents; we know them better," said Zaid Abdulhamid, an electronics merchant.

And so, after about an hour, voting resumed.

Whatever the final turnout numbers are,  this is remarkable stuff. And to be honest, I didn't expect it.

Things that make you kvell

The Wash Post has a fascinating series of dispatches from (seemingly, mostly Iraqi) stringers around the country. An excerpt of one:

Special correspondent Khalid Saffar in Baghdad: The Khadra neighborhood in the western section of the capital has consistently been a tough area for the U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces. Many residents maintain family and tribal ties to their brethren in the restive western cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, and some were involved with Saddam Hussein's deposed government.

Few election signs were seen in this neighborhood when the campaign started. And early on election day, it appeared that hardly anyone would vote. The streets were deserted.

But as the day progressed some people ventured out to the polling station. More followed and more followed them.

By the afternoon, the Salahudeen school building in section 633 of Khadra was teeming with voters.

Najia Abbas, 46, came with her husband to cast their votes.

"I came here to exercise my right," she said. "We are originally from Fallujah and were displaced by the fighting there, but I want to vote for Ayad Allawi. Although he devastated our homes, we have trust in him nevertheless."

"Enough fear," she said when asked whether she was afraid of terrorist threats. "Let us breathe the air of freedom."

Another piece says Sunni turnout in Mosul was essentially non-existent. Still...

Path to the elections: the forgotten history

Swopa, who has a knack for  prescient Iraq analysis, adds some context to today's big event. (Frankly, I think he should at least  acknowledge  among other things that Bush might just have been right to stick to his guns and not  delay the elections. Still, the post is valuable.)

UPDATE: Swopa probably rightly points out that the administration  really didn't have "any choice on the date, because Sistani et al. wouldn't have tolerated a postponement."

Nice

From the NYT:

The voting in Baghdad streets of Baghdad were closed to traffic, but full of children playing soccer, and men and women walking, some carrying babies. Everyone, it seemed, was going to vote.

Even in the so-called Sunni Triangle, a hotbed of resistance to the American occupation, people voted, too. In Baquba, 60 miles north of Baghdad, all the polling stations that reported indicated a huge turnout.

In Mosul, the restive city to the north, large turnouts were reported, even in the Sunni Muslim areas.

The photos from the Times are remarkable and moving. Hopefully the early reports of unexpectedly high turnout will hold up--especially in Sunni areas.  And if they do, hopefully that will take some wind out of the "withdraw-now" line, pushed by both some Dems and Republicans.  The U.S.'s stay shouldn't be mainly driven by what the U.S. wants but instead by  Iraqis. It's what we owe them. And for the moment,  the  coalition likely to win power apparently wants us to stick around.   

This is 'relatively quiet'?

From Dexter Filkins in the NYT:

With soldiers and the police swarming the streets, the country was relatively quiet for most of the day. A suicide bomber killed eight people, including a child, in an attack on a police building in the town of Khanaqin, near the Iranian border. A gun battle broke out between Iraqi troops and insurgents on Haifa Street, one of the most dangerous thoroughfares in central Baghdad. Insurgents attacked at least seven spolling places, from Dohuk in the north to Basra in the south.

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That's about a standard level of attacks, which ain't the same thing as 'relatively quiet.'

P.S. This reminds me of the normalization of violence--and the struggle of what qualifies as news. If something horrible were to happen once a year, say a suicide bomb in Iraq, it'd be big news. But a half-dozen daily? Background noise. And Filkin's reference above is worse than that--it's redefining not just what is "normal" but what is "quiet."