This guy writes about how the US Green Zone was
stocked with wild-eyed college conservatives who were
placed in POWERFUL jobs for which they hadn't the
foggiest credentials....one guy who was to take over
an Iraqi ministry was 21 years old and counted his
most meaningful
past job as driving an ice cream truck-----REALLY!
Another 23 year old with no financial training in
college or private life was given the task of setting
up a Baghdad Stock Exchange!!!!
-----guys who got such jobs had to pass a
loyalty test though----had to have voted for bush/had
an affiliation with some conservative group on
campus/were asked how they stood on abortion, etc.
You have to ask yourself, why? What thinking led this
nation's leaders to send over such unqualified
individuals to run a freshly occupied, newly conquered
nation?
The only explanation that makes sense to me has to
components: 1/the "thinkers" back in D.C. really
thought doing such work was a snap-----follow market
theory and the economics works out, etc-----such
things as culture, language, customs do not matter;
and 2/these young men (and a few women) will find
their experience in Iraq the most meaningful in their
lives/
they will then return home with kudos galore ringing
in their ears/they will run for office in state
legislatures and win and then congress and
then-------they will be the backbone of the BUSH-ROVE
REPUBLICAN PARTY and will oversee the continuation of
the Bush-Rove policies that will turn america into a
one-party state..........in short, they were part of
the Bush-Rove fantasy world.
Below are a couple of reviews of the book.......
Iraqi men love to smoke!
You will note that one of the reviews tells how the
incoming college Bushies tried to establish a "no
smoking policy" for Iraqis.
Does not that in a nutshell tell you that our
occupiers had nary a clue?
No, then how about this? "There the Halliburton-run
(and Muslim-staffed) cafeteria served pork at every
meal."
/////////////
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green
Zone (Hardcover)
by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
From Publishers Weekly
As the Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post,
Chandrasekaran has probably spent more time in
U.S.-occupied Iraq than any other American journalist,
and his intimate perspective permeates this history of
the Coalition Provisional Authority headquartered in
the Green Zone around Saddam Hussein's former palace.
He presents the tenure of presidential viceroy L. Paul
Bremer between May 2003 and June 2004 as an
all-too-avoidable disaster, in which an occupational
administration selected primarily for its loyalty to
the Bush administration routinely ignored the reality
of local conditions until, as one ex-staffer puts it,
"everything blew up in our faces." Chandrasekaran
unstintingly depicts the stubborn cluelessness of many
Americans in the Green Zone—like the army general who
says children terrified by nighttime helicopters
should appreciate "the sound of freedom." But he
sympathetically portrays others trying their best to
cut through the red tape and institute genuine
reforms. He also has a sharp eye for details, from
casual sex in abandoned offices to stray cats adopted
by staffers, which enable both advocates and critics
of the occupation to understand the emotional toll of
its circuslike atmosphere. Thanks to these personal
touches, the account of the CPA's failures never feels
heavy-handed. (Sept. 22)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of
Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The New Yorker
This revealing account of the postwar administration
of Iraq, by a former Baghdad bureau chief for the
Washington Post, focusses on life in the Green Zone,
the American enclave in central Baghdad. There the
Halliburton-run (and Muslim-staffed) cafeteria served
pork at every meal—a cultural misstep typical of the
Coalition Provisional Authority, which had sidelined
old Arab hands in favor of Bush loyalists. Not only
did many of them have no previous exposure to the
Middle East; more than half had never before applied
for a passport. While Baghdad burned, American
officials revamped the Iraqi tax code and mounted an
anti-smoking campaign. Chandrasekaran's portrait of
blinkered idealism is evenhanded, chronicling the
disillusionment of conservatives who were sent to a
war zone without the resources to achieve lasting
change.
Copyright © 2006 |
