"Hey Dude! I just got hired to go Iraq!" Loyalty to * and the RP

[LuckyLib]

was apparently the prime criterion for getting work at the Coalition Provisional Authority during Year I of the war in Iraq. A new book by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, (WP's Baghdad Bureau Chief at the time, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, is reviewed by Michael Goldfarb in the NY Times Book Review: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/books/review/Goldfarb.t.html?_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin


<snip>
To determine their suitability for positions in Iraq, some prospective employees were asked their views on Roe v. Wade. Others were asked whom they voted for in 2000. Republican congressmen, conservative think tanks and party activists were all solicited by the White House’s liaison at the Pentagon, James O’Beirne, to suggest possible staffers.

Before the war began, Frederick M. Burkle Jr. was assigned to oversee Iraq’s health care system. He had a résumé to die for: a physician with a master’s degree in public health, and postgraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and Berkeley. He also had two bronze stars for military service in the Navy, as well as field experience with the Kurds in northern Iraq after the 1991 gulf war. A week after the liberation, he was told he was being replaced because, Chandrasekaran writes, “a senior official at USAID told him that the White House wanted a ‘loyalist’ in the job.”

That loyalist was James K. Haveman Jr., who had been recommended by the former Michigan governor John Engler. Haveman’s résumé included running a Christian adoption agency that counseled young women against abortions. He spent much of his time in Iraq preparing to privatize the state-owned drug supply firm — perhaps not the most important priority since almost every hospital in the country had been thoroughly looted in the days after Hussein was overthrown.<snip>

As even the Frontline analysis of the first year revealed, young men found themselves facing insurmountable responsibility in the rebuilding of a shattered country.

<snip>
But how could these young Americans have known what life was like for ordinary Iraqis since they never left the Green Zone? Instead, they turned the place into something like a college campus. After a hard day of dreaming up increasingly improbable projects, the kids did what kids do — headed for the bar and looked for a hookup. As for the Iraqis, they were conspicuous by their absence. <snip>

This whole sorry mess just smells of Republican rot. The only explanation is the intended looting of Iraqi oil under the pretext of terrorism and WMD -- setting up frat boys for nation rebuilding was just the beginning.

[tanyev]

1. Which goes a long way toward explaining the current FUBAR.

This really needs to get a lot more exposure.

[kegler14]

2. Sounds a lot like a female Freeper named Allegra

who's working relatively safely in the Green Zone sucking up our tax money and assuring everybody at FR that things are just fine in Iraq -- or they were until Democrats were elected. Now of course things are worse because the terrorists are "emboldened." Yeah, right, like they were cowering in fear before. I questioned her perspective once by asking how often she left the green zone and got out into the thick of things and she refused to answer. Typical Freeper.

[NI4NI]

3. I asked Santa for a copy

Two years ago, I remember hearing about Republican cronies from think tanks who were given important positions in the coalition government, especially Grover Norquist.
This book will possibly place as much (if not more) blame for the failure in Iraq on political appointments then on the Pentagon, and deservedly so, considering the fact that despite Rumsfield our military men and women did exactly what they were sent there to do.

[underpants]

4. Resumes posted on the Heritage Foundation's website

there was a 21 year old college drop out managing the Baghdad police budget while Iraqi accountants and engineers and what have you were unemployed and sitting on the curb (on the other side of the Bremmer walls mind you).

[NI4NI]

5. Thanx for the info,

Now I'll be able to match the Heritage resumes with the names mentioned in the book.
It might be interesting to compile a "Where Are They Now?" list.

[sinkingfeeling]

7. Now don't you wonder why that nasty 'insurgency' sprang up?

[MADem]

6. Some significant praise in that review, I'd say! Sounds like the basis for a film, too!

This is a clearly written, blessedly undidactic book. It should be read by anyone who wants to understand how things went so badly wrong in Iraq.