We’ve seen the same pattern repeated many times with the Bush administration. Both the Clinton administration and the CIA provided Bush with warnings about al Qaeda but he ignored them. Many people warned that going into Iraq would be a disaster, predicting the situation we are now in. The Washington Post reports on another example of warnings that were ignored, this time regarding the problems with contractors:
The U.S. government disregarded numerous warnings over the past two years about the risks of using Blackwater Worldwide and other private security firms in Iraq, expanding their presence even after a series of shooting incidents showed that the firms were operating with little regulation or oversight, according to government officials, private security firms and documents.
The warnings were conveyed in letters and memorandums from defense and legal experts and in high-level discussions between U.S. and Iraqi officials. They reflected growing concern about the lack of control over the tens of thousands of private guards in Iraq, the largest private security force ever employed by the United States in wartime.
Neither the Pentagon nor the State Department took substantive action to regulate private security companies until Blackwater guards opened fire Sept. 16 at a Baghdad traffic circle, killing 17 Iraqi civilians and provoking protests over the role of security contractors in Iraq.
“Why is it they couldn’t see this coming?” said Christopher Beese, chief administrative officer for ArmorGroup International, a British security firm with extensive operations in Iraq. “That amazes me. Somebody — it could have been military officers, it could have been State — anybody could have waved a flag and said, ‘Stop, this is not good news for us.’ “
The Bush administration has been one of the most incompetent in our history. Many of the problems could have been prevented if they had simply paid attention to warnings before problems got out of control.
