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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (106794)	1/4/2007 8:51:45 AM
From: Pogeu Mahone	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

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