US post-Iraq invasion policies 'incompetent': US diplomat

Published: Wednesday February 28, 2007

The US policy in Iraq following the 2003 invasion was "incompetent, foolish, dubious," the new US coordinator for Iraq's economic development said Wednesday.

Ambassador Timothy Carney told NPR radio that the US policy to exclude Iraqis from governing the country in the two years following the invasion was "an enormous foolishness" which contributed to the deterioration of security and lengthened the conflict in the country.

"We don't need to go into detail on that, but I think words such as incompetent, foolish, dubious in all of its aspects are the most charitable way to look at that period," he said.

Carney went to Iraq shortly after the March 2003 invasion to manage the country's industry and minerals ministry, but quit after two months and became an outspoken critic of US occupation policy.

"The major failing of policy and operations in 2003 was the failure to invite Iraqis into our councils. We actually thought we could govern this country," he told NPR.

"It was enormously costly in terms of time, and consequently in terms of our and Iraqi blood and the blood of many of our allies."

"What an enormous foolishness that was."

Carney, recently named by the White House to return to oversee rebuilding of the country, said he was appalled by the deterioration in the security situation since he was first there.

But he said he thought the United States still had a chance to achieve some if not all of its policy goals in the country.

"The Iraqis I've met with remain the very same smart, imaginative, creative and impatient people whom I met in 2003.

"It's for those reasons that I continue to believe that this effort can come out to the benefit of Iraq, perhaps not realizing all of the policy goals the United States seeks here, but certainly far more than we deserve, given the way we approached this in 2003 and 2004."

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