Robert Fisk: US guards only oil and intelligence as looters ransack government buildings

BAGHDAD - Iraq's scavengers have thieved and destroyed what they have been allowed to loot and burn by the Americans - and a two-hour drive around Baghdad shows clearly what the United States intends to protect, presumably for its own use.

After days of arson and pillage, here's a short but revealing scorecard.

US troops have sat back and allowed mobs to wreck and then burn the Ministry of Planning, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Irrigation, the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Information.

They did nothing to prevent looters from destroying priceless treasures of Iraq's history in the Baghdad Archaeological Museum and in the Museum in the northern city of Mosul, nor from looting three hospitals.

However, the Americans have put hundreds of troops inside two Iraqi ministries, which remain untouched - and untouchable - because tanks and armoured personnel carriers and Humvee jeeps have been placed inside and outside both institutions.

And which particular ministries proved to be so important for the Americans? Why, the Ministry of Interior, of course - with its vast wealth of intelligence information on Iraq - and the Ministry of Oil.

The archives and files of Iraq's most valuable asset - its oil fields and, even more important, its massive reserves, perhaps the world's largest - are safe and sound, sealed off the from the mobs and looters, and safe to be shared - as Washington almost certainly intends -- with US oil companies.

It casts an interesting reflection on America's supposed war aims.

Anxious to "liberate" Iraq, it allows its people to destroy the infrastructure of government as well as the private property of Saddam's henchmen.

Americans insist that the oil ministry is a vital part of Iraq's inheritance, that the oil fields are to be held in trust "for the Iraqi people". But is the Ministry of Trade - re-lit on Sunday by an enterprising arsonist - not vital to the future of the Iraqi people? Is the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Irrigation - still burning fiercely yesterday -- not of critical importance to the next Iraqi government? The Americans, as we now know, could spare 2,000 soldiers to protect the Kirkuk oil fields, containing probably the largest reserves in the world, but couldn't even invest 200 soldiers to protect the Mosul museum from attack.

There was much talk of a "new posture" from the Americans yesterday.

Armoured and infantry patrols suddenly appeared on the middle-class streets of the capital, ordering young men hauling fridges, furniture and television sets to deposit their loot on the pavement if they could not prove ownership.

It was pitiful.

After billions of dollars of government buildings, computers and archives have been destroyed, the Americans are stopping teenagers driving mule-driven carts loaded with worthless second-hand chairs.

There was a special anger yesterday to the crowd which now gathers every afternoon opposite the Americans lines outside the Palestine Hotel.

On Saturday, they chanted "Peace-peace-peace - we want a new Iraqi government to give us security." Yesterday, some of them shouted "Bush-Saddam, they are the same."

Herald Feature: Iraq war