"Uncovered": The Seeds Of Destruction In Iraq
In May 2003 CBS National Security Correspondent David Martin and I were supposed to board a Chinook helicopter for a flight from Baghdad to Mosul to spend some time with the 101st Airborne Division in northern Iraq. But the weather socked in and the flight cancelled.
So we drove to Mosul -- on our own. Accompanied by security guards on contract to CBS News, we formed our own little convoy and hit the highway. It was a memorable journey -- not just because it would be unthinkably risky today. What I remember most is the roadside littered with scud missiles, artillery shells and rockets.
Four years later the General Accounting office has released a report detailing the US military's failure to secure Iraqi weapons during the invasion. The artillery shells I was seeing on the highway to Mosul were future improvised explosive devices, the roadside bombs that have killed and maimed so many Americans and Iraqis.
Whole munitions depots – some of them with hundreds of tons of explosives – were not secured during the invasion. Nor were they secured in all the years that followed. According to GAO, an undetermined number of munitions sites were still unguarded as recently as six months ago.
Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold, who was so unhappy with the Iraq war plan he retired from the United States Marine Corps just months before the invasion, told a congressional committee commanders didn't take control of the arms depots because they simply did not have enough troops to do it.
"They were aware of ammunition storage areas," Newbold said. But there was no way to stop and guard them.
"Speed was essential in the march to Baghdad," Newbold said. "And of all the things they could accomplish, the forces driving north made a troubling decision, but the only decision they could make and that was to leave some of these uncovered."
"Uncovered," in military speak is unguarded. In insurgent speak, perhaps, it means free for the taking.
Newbold also contends that with unemployment at 40%, the Iraq political factions at odds with each other and the Americans seen as an occupying force, an insurgency inevitable.
"If they don't have IEDs," Newbold said, "they will use AK 47s. If they don't have those they'll use sticks. The military is trying very hard to solve a problem that in its nature is not military."