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WASHINGTON (AP)
-- The suspected suicide attack inside an Army mess
hall in Iraq represents a breach of the most basic
principles of military security and points to
significant weaknesses in the screening of Iraqis
who are allowed onto the base, experts say.
"This is an incredible occurrence, that someone
could have come in undetected with some kind of
bomb," said Mitch Mitchell, a retired Army officer
who helps design security training for the military.
"It blows my mind that force protection on the base
is that poor."
Tuesday's explosion at a base near Mosul killed 22
people, including 14 U.S. service members, injured
scores more and put Pentagon officials on the
defensive against new criticism of holes in the
protections for troops in Iraq.
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, defended the security plans put in place by
the U.S. commander in northern Iraq, Brig. Gen.
Carter Ham.
"We have had a suicide bomber apparently strap
something to his body and go into a dining hall. We
know how difficult this is, to prevent people bent
on suicide and stopping them," Myers said Wednesday
at a Pentagon news conference. "This was the
insurgents that did this. So it's not General Ham
that attacked his dining hall."
Military officials initially said a 122 mm rocket
was the likely cause. Myers would not comment on
specific evidence in the ongoing investigation of
the attack, but said, "If it was a rocket, you'd
find remnants of the rocket. If it were an
improvised explosive device you would find remnants
of the improvised explosive device."
Like Myers, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
defended U.S. troop security in Iraq, saying it was
"an enormous challenge to provide force protection."
"They have to be right 100 percent of the time," he
said, standing at Myers' side. "An attacker only has
to be right occasionally."
Elsewhere in Iraq, an international construction
company, Contrack International Inc., which led a
coalition of firms working on a $325 million
contract to rebuild the country's roads, bridges and
railways, withdrew from that contract last month
after a surge in attacks on reconstruction efforts,
Lt. Col. Eric Schnaible of the Pentagon's Project
and Contract Office in Baghdad, said Wednesday.
"It's hard to do construction in a place where
people are shooting at you or intimidating your work
force," Schnaible said in a telephone interview.
"It's a challenge across the country."
Mitchell and other experts said it was obvious the
military was not taking basic protective actions for
U.S. troops in Iraq. On most bases, troops have
their meals in large dining hall tents like the one
attacked Tuesday, for example, instead of in small,
scattered groups. That presents a tempting target
for insurgents, Mitchell said.
"It shows you the level at which force protection
was addressed on that base, and it wasn't very
high," said Mitchell, an analyst with the Institute
for National Strategic Studies at the military's
National Defense University.
Rumsfeld said he was saddened that anyone could
believe he was not fully committed to security for
U.S. forces. Still, he said the explosion should be
put into the context of the larger war.
"I mean, think about the murders that take place in
every major city in the world. One could say, 'Well,
why aren't they stopped?' ... And they are terrible
things. And the loss of life is heartbreaking and
it's a normal human instinct," Rumsfeld said.
"But the other way to think about it, or an
additional way to think about it is, think about
turning that country over and letting them win,
those people who are doing those things. It would be
a terrible loss for civilized society," the defense
secretary said.
The explosion was the deadliest single attack on
U.S. forces since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
A radical Shiite Muslim group, the Ansar al-Sunnah
Army, has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Infiltration of insurgents onto U.S. military bases
has been a concern for some troops in Iraq,
particularly because of the fighters' ability to
penetrate the Iraqi security forces.
For example, the former police chief in Mosul was
arrested by Kurdish forces last month after a wave
of insurgent violence in the city. Kurdish officials
said the former chief had turned over some police
stations to insurgents. At the time of the November
violence, U.S. military spokesmen said they believed
some Mosul police officers were working with the
insurgents.
In October, 50 new Iraqi soldiers were killed
shortly after they finished their U.S.-sponsored
training. An Iraqi official who warned that the
incident showed insurgents penetrated the Iraqi
security forces was assassinated a week later.
Besides Iraqi soldiers and other security officers,
Iraqis enter U.S. bases as workers for the civilian
contractors which handle functions such as food
service, laundry and trash collection. Weeding out
insurgents from those workers should be a priority,
said military analyst Michael O'Hanlon of the
Brookings Institution think tank.
"We have to work with Iraqis, and employing them has
to be part of any reconstruction plan. So we will be
vulnerable, but we don't want to have dozens of
people vulnerable at the same time," he said.
Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and
International Studies said the U.S. forces must be
careful not to completely separate themselves from
the country's civilians.
"If you want to work with Iraqi allies and win this
war politically, you can't separate the U.S. forces
from the Iraqis," said Cordesman, a frequent critic
of U.S. tactics in Iraq.
AP
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