Looting

WaPo reported Iraq's deputy ambassador to the United Nations yesterday drew a comparison between the way U.S. troops have been sent to New Orleans to put down looting and the failure in 2003 of coalition forces to halt looting in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.

Emphasizing that he was speaking as an individual and not in his official capacity, Deputy Ambassador Feisal Amin Istrabadi said at a meeting of the American Political Science Association that he thought about the U.S. forces' lack of action two years ago to halt the extensive looting in Baghdad as he followed the events in New Orleans. He added: "I hope others did, too."

In Iraq Saddam emptied his jails of all but political prisoners and the looting was just criminals doing what they had been trained to do

In New Orleans the prisoners were kept in jail (in fact I heard a story about the Chief of Police swimming over with handcuffs in his mouth so he could remove the prisoners one by one and get them to safety). The looting and shooting in New Orleans was done by the gangs (which the New Orleans police had never gotten control of) that did not evacuate, but stayed behind to do exactly that.

Arthur Chrenkoff: blogged For the angry left, this is the perfect storm; everything they said Iraq was - chaos, bloodshed, confusion, humanitarian nightmare, looting, not enough troops, negligent Administration, no contingency plans - except it's better because it's not on the other side of the world but in the heart of America.