The Guardian-Man on a mission;Kerik

[Englander]

Despite serious flaws in his bid to rebuild Iraq's police force, Bernard Kerik is on course for the top US homeland security job, writes Rory McCarthy

Friday December 3, 2004

http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,1365914,00.html

In the first weeks after the US invasion of Iraq last year, Bernard Kerik was one of George Bush's most loyal acolytes. The burly former New York police commissioner, who lost 23 of his staff in the September 11 attacks, was sent to Baghdad on a crucial but dangerous mission to rebuild the Iraqi police force.

Now he is reportedly to be appointed as the new chief of the homeland security department, putting him in charge of one of the largest and most powerful departments in Washington. That will make him the first of the Americans sent to Baghdad to be rewarded with a high-profile position in George Bush's administration.

When he was in Iraq last year, Kerik cut a distinct figure, wearing a sand-coloured safari jacket with a handgun always strapped to his belt. Like the others around him he lived in a trailer but worked in a palace. When he travelled around Baghdad he wore a flak jacket and moved in an armoured car. He spoke openly about America's "mission" to defend a "freedom" that was attacked on September 11.

"Iraq is a country that was a threat to that freedom and this is a country in which now we have the opportunity to show the Iraqi people why freedom is so great, why the United States is so great, why the UK is so great," he said in an interview with the Guardian in Saddam Hussein's former palace in Baghdad in June last year. "It's only been two months. It's going to take a while before the Iraqis understand that freedom and what it's really all about."