Corruption: George Bush's emphasis on CRONYISM in Iraq 'reconstruction' contracts, has become a DEATH SENTENCE for American troops sent there...
Make no mistake: George W. Bush's incompetence, boldfaced lies, and corruption, and the arrogance that propels those lies and incompetence, have become a DEATH SENTENCE for thousands of American men and women sent to Iraq - not to mention the tens of thousands more wounded, traumatized, and missing limbs from Mr. Bush's war of lies and illegal international aggression. Not only will American workers and taxpayers be paying for Mr. Bush's folly for decades to come, but American families who will seem to have avoided bearing any heavy cost for the violence and aggression unleashed by Mr. Bush will get their bill from the grim reaper in the future: both Timmy McVeigh and the DC sniper were PTSD (war traumatized) Gulf War 1 combat veterans, and that was the "good war" with genuine American-led coalition against clear and present aggression, (the invasion of Kuwait), with a comparatively small US WIA and KIA bodycount, over a relatively brief timespan. Timmy McVeigh, distraught over unemployment and a bill from the US Army for repayment of overpayment (of just $1,000!), planned and unleashed his bomb on the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995.... just as the Clinton economy was ramping up to almost full employment and a booming stock market. Traumatized war veterans returning to America today must contend with George W. Bush's economy, of OUTSOURCED American jobs, SLASHED BENEFITS, crony-corruption huge tax cuts for the wealthy, and the comensurate MORE TAXES on everyone else to pay for, not only the share of taxes the hyper-wealthy no longer pay, but the BUSH DEFICITS and INTEREST ON THE BUSH DEFICITS, as well.
Cowering Democrats say "As long as we don't have to muss up OUR hair, we will be happy to send untold American billions ($$s), and thousands of American lives, over to the nightmare quagmire Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney (and Wolfowitz, et al) have made of Iraq."
The fact that the Democrats in 2006 CAN NOT or WILL NOT formulate an AGGRESSIVE, VOCAL, and consistent confrontation to Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney's BLATANT, IN-YOUR-FACE CORRUPTION re the Iraq war, lies-to-war, and occupation, is a betrayal of historic proportions.
--------------------------------------
<< That common wisdom holds that while the decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein is still open to debate, American mismanagement of the country after the invasion is not. Even the Bush administration's staunchest supporters now accept that "mistakes were made" and admit that, for example, dismantling the Iraqi army and driving out officials tied to the old dictatorship's Baath Party (both policies that Bremer championed) were bad ideas. But often implicit in this dominant interpretation is a complacent understanding, even a justification, of U.S. mistakes made during the occupation. After all, goes the thinking, ethnic divisions, suicidal Islamist fanatics, decades of oppression and decay, and all sorts of other obstacles conspired against the success of the bold American enterprise.
It is hard to hold that view after reading this book. Chandrasekaran, now an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, was The Post's Baghdad bureau chief in 2003-04 and has a keen eye for the small detail that illuminates larger truths. He clearly suggests that the self-inflicted wounds created by CPA ineptitude, arrogance and ignorance were far from inevitable. Nor, he shows, were they minor causes of the mess the United States faces today in Iraq. Imperial Life in the Emerald City documents the way that an avalanche of unjustifiable mistakes transformed a difficult mission into an impossible one. >>
=========================================
Mistakes Were Made How L. Paul Bremer's occupation paved the way for today's chaos in Baghdad -
IMPERIAL LIFE IN THE EMERALD CITY- Inside Iraq's Green Zone
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
book Reviewed for Washington Post by Moisés Naím
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401329.html
==========================================
Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 17, 2006; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600193.html
Adapted from "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, copyright Knopf 2006
After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.
To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.
O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .
Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.
The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort.
The CPA had the power to enact laws, print currency, collect taxes, deploy police and spend Iraq's oil revenue. It had more than 1,500 employees in Baghdad at its height, working under America's viceroy in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, but never released a public roster of its entire staff.
Interviews with scores of former CPA personnel over the past two years depict an organization that was dominated -- and ultimately hobbled -- by administration ideologues.
"We didn't tap -- and it should have started from the White House on down -- just didn't tap the right people to do this job," said Frederick Smith, who served as the deputy director of the CPA's Washington office. "It was a tough, tough job. Instead we got people who went out there because of their political leanings."
Endowed with $18 billion in U.S. reconstruction funds and a comparatively quiescent environment in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion, the CPA was the U.S. government's first and best hope to resuscitate Iraq -- to establish order, promote rebuilding and assemble a viable government, all of which, experts believe, would have constricted the insurgency and mitigated the chances of civil war. Many of the basic tasks Americans struggle to accomplish today in Iraq -- training the army, vetting the police, increasing electricity generation -- could have been performed far more effectively in 2003 by the CPA.
But many CPA staff members were more interested in other things: in instituting a flat tax, in selling off government assets, in ending food rations and otherwise fashioning a new nation that looked a lot like the United States. Many of them spent their days cloistered in the Green Zone, a walled-off enclave in central Baghdad with towering palms, posh villas, well-stocked bars and resort-size swimming pools.
By the time Bremer departed in June 2004, Iraq was in a precarious state. The Iraqi army, which had been dissolved and refashioned by the CPA, was one-third the size he had pledged it would be. Seventy percent of police officers had not been screened or trained. Electricity generation was far below what Bremer had promised to achieve. And Iraq's interim government had been selected not by elections but by Americans. Divisive issues were to be resolved later on, increasing the chances that tension over those matters would fuel civil strife.
===========================
Washington Post assistant managing editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran will be
Online Monday, Sept. 18, at noon, E.T. to discuss his new book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone, and to answer your questions.
Mistakes Were Made- How L. Paul Bremer's occupation paved the way for today's chaos in Baghdad.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401329.html
Graphic
Special Report- Bremer's Politically Connected Brain Trust
Some of the people with close political ties to the Bush administration who served in senior-level posts with the Coalition Provisional Authority:
Cowering Democrats say "As long as we don't have to muss up OUR hair, we will be happy to send untold American billions ($$s), and thousands of American lives, over to the nightmare quagmire Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney (and Wolfowitz, et al) have made of Iraq."
The fact that the Democrats in 2006 CAN NOT or WILL NOT formulate an AGGRESSIVE, VOCAL, and consistent confrontation to Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney's BLATANT, IN-YOUR-FACE CORRUPTION re the Iraq war, lies-to-war, and occupation, is a betrayal of historic proportions.
--------------------------------------
<< That common wisdom holds that while the decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein is still open to debate, American mismanagement of the country after the invasion is not. Even the Bush administration's staunchest supporters now accept that "mistakes were made" and admit that, for example, dismantling the Iraqi army and driving out officials tied to the old dictatorship's Baath Party (both policies that Bremer championed) were bad ideas. But often implicit in this dominant interpretation is a complacent understanding, even a justification, of U.S. mistakes made during the occupation. After all, goes the thinking, ethnic divisions, suicidal Islamist fanatics, decades of oppression and decay, and all sorts of other obstacles conspired against the success of the bold American enterprise.
It is hard to hold that view after reading this book. Chandrasekaran, now an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, was The Post's Baghdad bureau chief in 2003-04 and has a keen eye for the small detail that illuminates larger truths. He clearly suggests that the self-inflicted wounds created by CPA ineptitude, arrogance and ignorance were far from inevitable. Nor, he shows, were they minor causes of the mess the United States faces today in Iraq. Imperial Life in the Emerald City documents the way that an avalanche of unjustifiable mistakes transformed a difficult mission into an impossible one. >>
=========================================
Mistakes Were Made How L. Paul Bremer's occupation paved the way for today's chaos in Baghdad -
IMPERIAL LIFE IN THE EMERALD CITY- Inside Iraq's Green Zone
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
book Reviewed for Washington Post by Moisés Naím
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401329.html
==========================================
Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 17, 2006; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600193.html
Adapted from "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, copyright Knopf 2006
After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.
To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.
O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .
Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.
The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort.
The CPA had the power to enact laws, print currency, collect taxes, deploy police and spend Iraq's oil revenue. It had more than 1,500 employees in Baghdad at its height, working under America's viceroy in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, but never released a public roster of its entire staff.
Interviews with scores of former CPA personnel over the past two years depict an organization that was dominated -- and ultimately hobbled -- by administration ideologues.
"We didn't tap -- and it should have started from the White House on down -- just didn't tap the right people to do this job," said Frederick Smith, who served as the deputy director of the CPA's Washington office. "It was a tough, tough job. Instead we got people who went out there because of their political leanings."
Endowed with $18 billion in U.S. reconstruction funds and a comparatively quiescent environment in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion, the CPA was the U.S. government's first and best hope to resuscitate Iraq -- to establish order, promote rebuilding and assemble a viable government, all of which, experts believe, would have constricted the insurgency and mitigated the chances of civil war. Many of the basic tasks Americans struggle to accomplish today in Iraq -- training the army, vetting the police, increasing electricity generation -- could have been performed far more effectively in 2003 by the CPA.
But many CPA staff members were more interested in other things: in instituting a flat tax, in selling off government assets, in ending food rations and otherwise fashioning a new nation that looked a lot like the United States. Many of them spent their days cloistered in the Green Zone, a walled-off enclave in central Baghdad with towering palms, posh villas, well-stocked bars and resort-size swimming pools.
By the time Bremer departed in June 2004, Iraq was in a precarious state. The Iraqi army, which had been dissolved and refashioned by the CPA, was one-third the size he had pledged it would be. Seventy percent of police officers had not been screened or trained. Electricity generation was far below what Bremer had promised to achieve. And Iraq's interim government had been selected not by elections but by Americans. Divisive issues were to be resolved later on, increasing the chances that tension over those matters would fuel civil strife.
===========================
Washington Post assistant managing editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran will be
Online Monday, Sept. 18, at noon, E.T. to discuss his new book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone, and to answer your questions.
Mistakes Were Made- How L. Paul Bremer's occupation paved the way for today's chaos in Baghdad.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401329.html
Graphic
Special Report- Bremer's Politically Connected Brain Trust
Some of the people with close political ties to the Bush administration who served in senior-level posts with the Coalition Provisional Authority:
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