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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600193_\

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Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq

Early U.S. Missteps in the Green Zone

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, September 17, 2006; A01

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.

 

To recruit the people he wanted, O'Beirne sought résumés

from the offices of Republican congressmen, conservative

think tanks and GOP activists. He discarded applications

from those his staff deemed ideologically suspect, even if

the applicants possessed Arabic language skills or postwar

rebuilding experience.

 

Smith said O'Beirne once pointed to a young man's résumé and

pronounced him " an ideal candidate. " His chief qualification

was that he had worked for the Republican Party in Florida

during the presidential election recount in 2000.

 

O'Beirne, a former Army officer who is married to prominent

conservative commentator Kate O'Beirne, did not respond to

requests for comment.

 

He and his staff used an obscure provision in federal law to

hire many CPA staffers as temporary political appointees,

which exempted the interviewers from employment regulations

that prohibit questions about personal political beliefs.

 

There were a few Democrats who wound up getting jobs with

the CPA, but almost all of them were active-duty soldiers or

State Department Foreign Service officers. Because they were

career government employees, not temporary hires, O'Beirne's

office could not query them directly about their political

leanings.

 

One former CPA employee who had an office near O'Beirne's

wrote an e-mail to a friend describing the recruitment

process: " I watched résumés of immensely talented

individuals who had sought out CPA to help the country

thrown in the trash because their adherence to 'the

President's vision for Iraq' (a frequently heard phrase at

CPA) was 'uncertain.' I saw senior civil servants from

agencies like Treasury, Energy . . . and Commerce denied

advisory positions in Baghdad that were instead handed to

prominent RNC (Republican National Committee) contributors. "

 

As more and more of O'Beirne's hires arrived in the Green

Zone, the CPA's headquarters in Hussein's marble-walled

former Republican Palace felt like a campaign war room.

Bumper stickers and mouse pads praising President Bush were

standard desk decorations. In addition to military uniforms

and " Operation Iraqi Freedom " garb, " Bush-Cheney 2004 "

T-shirts were among the most common pieces of clothing.

 

" I'm not here for the Iraqis, " one staffer noted to a

reporter over lunch. " I'm here for George Bush. "

 

When Gordon Robison, who worked in the Strategic

Communications office, opened a care package from his mother

to find a book by Paul Krugman, a liberal New York Times

columnist, people around him stared. " It was like I had just

unwrapped a radioactive brick, " he recalled.

 

Finance Background Not Required

 

Twenty-four-year-old Jay Hallen was restless. He had

graduated from Yale two years earlier, and he didn't much

like his job at a commercial real-estate firm. His passion

was the Middle East, and although he had never been there,

he was intrigued enough to take Arabic classes and read

histories of the region in his spare time.

 

He had mixed feelings about the war in Iraq, but he viewed

the American occupation as a ripe opportunity. In the summer

of 2003, he sent an e-mail to Reuben Jeffrey III, whom he

had met when applying for a White House job a year earlier.

Hallen had a simple query for Jeffrey, who was working as an

adviser to Bremer: Might there be any job openings in Baghdad?

 

" Be careful what you wish for, " Jeffrey wrote in response.

Then he forwarded Hallen's resume to O'Beirne's office.

 

Three weeks later, Hallen got a call from the Pentagon. The

CPA wanted him in Baghdad. Pronto. Could he be ready in

three to four weeks?

 

The day he arrived in Baghdad, he met with Thomas C. Foley,

the CPA official in charge of privatizing state-owned

enterprises. (Foley, a major Republican Party donor, went to

Harvard Business School with President Bush.) Hallen was

shocked to learn that Foley wanted him to take charge of

reopening the stock exchange.

 

" Are you sure? " Hallen said to Foley. " I don't have a

finance background. "

 

It's fine, Foley replied. He told Hallen that he was to be

the project manager. He would rely on other people to get

things done. He would be " the main point of contact. "

 

Before the war, Baghdad's stock exchange looked nothing like

its counterparts elsewhere in the world. There were no

computers, electronic displays or men in colorful coats

scurrying around on the trading floor. Trades were scrawled

on pieces of paper and noted on large blackboards. If you

wanted to buy or sell, you came to the exchange yourself and

shouted your order to one of the traders. There was no

air-conditioning. It was loud and boisterous. But it worked.

Private firms raised hundreds of thousands of dollars by

selling stock, and ordinary people learned about free

enterprise.

 

The exchange was gutted by looters after the war. The first

wave of American economic reconstruction specialists from

the Treasury Department ignored it. They had bigger issues

to worry about: paying salaries, reopening the banks,

stabilizing the currency. But the brokers wanted to get back

to work and investors wanted their money, so the CPA made

the reopening a priority.

 

Quickly absorbing the CPA's ambition during the optimistic

days before the insurgency flared, Hallen decided that he

didn't just want to reopen the exchange, he wanted to make

it the best, most modern stock market in the Arab world. He

wanted to promulgate a new securities law that would make

the exchange independent of the Finance Ministry, with its

own bylaws and board of directors. He wanted to set up a

securities and exchange commission to oversee the market. He

wanted brokers to be licensed and listed companies to

provide financial disclosures. He wanted to install a

computerized trading and settlement system.

 

Iraqis cringed at Hallen's plan. Their top priority was

reopening the exchange, not setting up computers or enacting

a new securities law. " People are broke and bewildered, "

broker Talib Tabatabai told Hallen. " Why do you want to

create enemies? Let us open the way we were. "

 

Tabatabai, who held a doctorate in political science from

Florida State University, believed Hallen's plan was

unrealistic. " It was something so fancy, so great, that it

couldn't be accomplished, " he said.

 

But Hallen was convinced that major changes had to be

enacted. " Their laws and regulations were completely out of

step with the modern world, " he said. " There was just no

transparency in anything. It was more of a place for Saddam

and his friends to buy up private companies that they

otherwise didn't have a stake in. "

 

Opening the stock exchange without legal and structural

changes, Hallen maintained, " would have been irresponsible

and short-sighted. "

 

To help rewrite the securities law, train brokers and

purchase the necessary computers, Hallen recruited a team of

American volunteers. In the spring of 2004, Bremer approved

the new law and simultaneously appointed the nine Iraqis

selected by Hallen to become the exchange's board of governors.

 

The exchange's board selected Tabatabai as its chairman. The

new securities law that Hallen had nursed into life gave the

board control over the exchange's operations, but it didn't

say a thing about the role of the CPA adviser. Hallen

assumed that he'd have a part in decision-making until the

handover of sovereignty. Tabatabai and the board, however,

saw themselves in charge.

 

Tabatabai and the other governors decided to open the market

as soon as possible. They didn't want to wait several more

months for the computerized trading system to be up and

running. They ordered dozens of dry-erase boards to be

installed on the trading floor. They used such boards to

keep track of buying and selling prices before the war, and

that's how they'd do it again.

 

The exchange opened two days after Hallen's tour in Iraq

ended. Brokers barked orders to floor traders, who used

their trusty white boards. Transactions were recorded not

with computers but with small chits written in ink. CPA

staffers stayed away, afraid that their presence would make

the stock market a target for insurgents.

 

When Tabatabai was asked what would have happened if Hallen

hadn't been assigned to reopen the exchange, he smiled. " We

would have opened months earlier. He had grand ideas, but

those ideas did not materialize, " Tabatabai said of Hallen.

" Those CPA people reminded me of Lawrence of Arabia. "

 

'Loyalist' Replaces Public Health Expert

 

The hiring of Bremer's most senior advisers was settled upon

at the highest levels of the White House and the Pentagon.

Some, like Foley, were personally recruited by Bush. Others

got their jobs because an influential Republican made a call

on behalf of a friend or trusted colleague.

 

That's what happened with James K. Haveman Jr., who was

selected to oversee the rehabilitation of Iraq's health care

system.

 

Haveman, a 60-year-old social worker, was largely unknown

among international health experts, but he had connections.

He had been the community health director for the former

Republican governor of Michigan, John Engler, who

recommended him to Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary

of defense.

 

Haveman was well-traveled, but most of his overseas trips

were in his capacity as a director of International Aid, a

faith-based relief organization that provided health care

while promoting Christianity in the developing world. Before

his stint in government, Haveman ran a large Christian

adoption agency in Michigan that urged pregnant women not to

have abortions.

 

Haveman replaced Frederick M. Burkle Jr., a physician with a

master's degree in public health and postgraduate degrees

from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and the University of

California at Berkeley. Burkle taught at the Johns Hopkins

School of Public Health, where he specialized in

disaster-response issues, and he was a deputy assistant

administrator at the U.S. Agency for International

Development, which sent him to Baghdad immediately after the

war.

 

He had worked in Kosovo and Somalia and in northern Iraq

after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. A USAID colleague called

him the " single most talented and experienced post-conflict

health specialist working for the United States government. "

 

But a week after Baghdad's liberation, Burkle was informed

he was being replaced. A senior official at USAID sent

Burkle an e-mail saying the White House wanted a " loyalist "

in the job. Burkle had a wall of degrees, but he didn't have

a picture with the president.

 

Haveman arrived in Iraq with his own priorities. He liked to

talk about the number of hospitals that had reopened since

the war and the pay raises that had been given to doctors

instead of the still-decrepit conditions inside the

hospitals or the fact that many physicians were leaving for

safer, better paying jobs outside Iraq. He approached

problems the way a health care administrator in America

would: He focused on preventive measures to reduce the need

for hospital treatment.

 

He urged the Health Ministry to mount an anti-smoking

campaign, and he assigned an American from the CPA team --

who turned out to be a closet smoker himself -- to lead the

public education effort. Several members of Haveman's staff

noted wryly that Iraqis faced far greater dangers in their

daily lives than tobacco. The CPA's limited resources, they

argued, would be better used raising awareness about how to

prevent childhood diarrhea and other fatal maladies.

 

Haveman didn't like the idea that medical care in Iraq was

free. He figured Iraqis should pay a small fee every time

they saw a doctor. He also decided to allocate almost all of

the Health Ministry's $793 million share of U.S.

reconstruction funds to renovating maternity hospitals and

building new community medical clinics. His intention, he

said, was " to shift the mind-set of the Iraqis that you

don't get health care unless you go to a hospital. "

 

But his decision meant there were no reconstruction funds

set aside to rehabilitate the emergency rooms and operating

theaters at Iraqi hospitals, even though injuries from

insurgent attacks were the country's single largest public

health challenge.

 

Haveman also wanted to apply American medicine to other

parts of the Health Ministry. Instead of trying to

restructure the dysfunctional state-owned firm that imported

and distributed drugs and medical supplies to hospitals, he

decided to try to sell it to a private company.

 

To prepare it for a sale, he wanted to attempt something he

had done in Michigan. When he was the state's director of

community health, he sought to slash the huge amount of

money Michigan spent on prescription drugs for the poor by

limiting the medications doctors could prescribe for

Medicaid patients. Unless they received an exemption,

physicians could only prescribe drugs that were on an

approved list, known as a formulary.

 

Haveman figured the same strategy could bring down the cost

of medicine in Iraq. The country had 4,500 items on its drug

formulary. Haveman deemed it too large. If private firms

were going to bid for the job of supplying drugs to

government hospitals, they needed a smaller, more manageable

list. A new formulary would also outline new requirements

about where approved drugs could be manufactured, forcing

Iraq to stop buying medicines from Syria, Iran and Russia,

and start buying from the United States.

 

He asked the people who had drawn up the formulary in

Michigan whether they wanted to come to Baghdad. They

declined. So he beseeched the Pentagon for help. His request

made its way to the Defense Department's Pharmacoeconomic

Center in San Antonio.

 

A few weeks later, three formulary experts were on their way

to Iraq.

 

The group was led by Theodore Briski, a balding, middle-aged

pharmacist who held the rank of lieutenant commander in the

U.S. Navy. Haveman's order, as Briski remembered it, was:

" Build us a formulary in two weeks and then go home. " By his

second day in Iraq, Briski came to three conclusions. First,

the existing formulary " really wasn't that bad. " Second, his

mission was really about " redesigning the entire Iraqi

pharmaceutical procurement and delivery system, and that was

a complete change of scope -- on a grand scale. " Third,

Haveman and his advisers " really didn't know what they were

doing. "

 

Haveman " viewed Iraq as Michigan after a huge attack, " said

George Guszcza, an Army captain who worked on the CPA's

health team. " Somehow if you went into the ghettos and

projects of Michigan and just extended it out for the entire

state -- that's what he was coming to save. "

 

Haveman's critics, including more than a dozen people who

worked for him in Baghdad, contend that rewriting the

formulary was a distraction. Instead, they said, the CPA

should have focused on restructuring, but not privatizing,

the drug-delivery system and on ordering more emergency

shipments of medicine to address shortages of essential

medicines. The first emergency procurement did not occur

until early 2004, after the Americans had been in Iraq for

more than eight months.

 

Haveman insisted that revising the formulary was a crucial

first step in improving the distribution of medicines. " It

was unwieldy to order 4,500 different drugs, and to test and

distribute them, " he said.

 

When Haveman left Iraq, Baghdad's hospitals were as decrepit

as the day the Americans arrived. At Yarmouk Hospital, the

city's largest, rooms lacked the most basic equipment to

monitor a patient's blood pressure and heart rate, operating

theaters were without modern surgical tools and sterile

implements, and the pharmacy's shelves were bare.

 

Nationwide, the Health Ministry reported that 40 percent of

the 900 drugs it deemed essential were out of stock in

hospitals. Of the 32 medicines used in public clinics for

the management of chronic diseases, 26 were unavailable.

 

The new health minister, Aladin Alwan, beseeched the United

Nations for help, and he asked neighboring nations to share

what they could. He sought to increase production at a

state-run manufacturing plant in the city of Samarra. And he

put the creation of a new formulary on hold. To him, it was

a fool's errand.

 

" We didn't need a new formulary. We needed drugs, " he said.

" But the Americans did not understand that. "

 

A 9/11 Hero's Public Relations Blitz

 

In May 2003, a team of law enforcement experts from the

Justice Department concluded that more than 6,600 foreign

advisers were needed to help rehabilitate Iraq's police forces.

 

The White House dispatched just one: Bernie Kerik.

 

Bernard Kerik had more star power than Bremer and everyone

else in the CPA combined. Soldiers stopped him in the halls

of the Republican Palace to ask for his autograph or, if

they had a camera, a picture. Reporters were more interested

in interviewing him than they were the viceroy.

 

Kerik had been New York City's police commissioner when

terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on Sept. 11,

2001. His courage (he shouted evacuation orders from a block

away as the south tower collapsed), his stamina (he worked

around the clock and catnapped in his office for weeks), and

his charisma (he was a master of the television interview)

turned him into a national hero. When White House officials

were casting about for a prominent individual to take charge

of Iraq's Interior Ministry and assume the challenge of

rebuilding the Iraqi police, Kerik's name came up. Bush

pronounced it an excellent idea.

 

Kerik had worked in the Middle East before, as the security

director for a government hospital in Saudi Arabia, but he

was expelled from the country amid a government

investigation into his surveillance of the medical staff. He

lacked postwar policing experience, but the White House

viewed that as an asset.

 

Veteran Middle East hands were regarded as insufficiently

committed to the goal of democratizing the region.

Post-conflict experts, many of whom worked for the State

Department, the United Nations or nongovernmental

organizations, were deemed too liberal. Men such as Kerik --

committed Republicans with an accomplished career in

business or government -- were ideal. They were loyal, and

they shared the Bush administration's goal of rebuilding

Iraq in an American image. With Kerik, there were bonuses:

The media loved him, and the American public trusted him.

 

Robert Gifford, a State Department expert in international

law enforcement, was one of the first CPA staff members to

meet Kerik when he arrived in Baghdad. Gifford was the

senior adviser to the Interior Ministry, which oversaw the

police. Kerik was to take over Gifford's job.

 

" I understand you are going to be the man, and we are here

to support you, " Gifford told Kerik.

 

" I'm here to bring more media attention to the good work on

police because the situation is probably not as bad as

people think it is, " Kerik replied.

 

As they entered the Interior Ministry office in the palace,

Gifford offered to brief Kerik. " It was during that period I

realized he wasn't with me, " Gifford recalled. " He didn't

listen to anything. He hadn't read anything except his

e-mails. I don't think he read a single one of our proposals. "

 

Kerik wasn't a details guy. He was content to let Gifford

figure out how to train Iraqi officers to work in a

democratic society. Kerik would take care of briefing the

viceroy and the media. And he'd be going out for a few

missions himself.

 

Kerik's first order of business, less than a week after he

arrived, was to give a slew of interviews saying the

situation was improving. He told the Associated Press that

security in Baghdad " is not as bad as I thought. Are bad

things going on? Yes. But is it out of control? No. Is it

getting better? Yes. " He went on NBC's " Today " show to

pronounce the situation " better than I expected. " To Time

magazine, he said that " people are starting to feel more

confident. They're coming back out. Markets and shops that I

saw closed one week ago have opened. "

 

When it came to his own safety, Kerik took no chances. He

hired a team of South African bodyguards, and he packed a

9mm handgun under his safari vest.

 

The first months after liberation were a critical period for

Iraq's police. Officers needed to be called back to work and

screened for Baath Party connections. They'd have to learn

about due process, how to interrogate without torture, how

to walk the beat. They required new weapons. New chiefs had

to be selected. Tens of thousands more officers would have

to be hired to put the genie of anarchy back in the bottle.

 

Kerik held only two staff meetings while in Iraq, one when

he arrived and the other when he was being shadowed by a New

York Times reporter, according to Gerald Burke, a former

Massachusetts State Police commander who participated in the

initial Justice Department assessment mission. Despite his

White House connections, Kerik did not secure funding for

the desperately needed police advisers. With no help on the

way, the task of organizing and training Iraqi officers fell

to U.S. military police soldiers, many of whom had no

experience in civilian law enforcement.

 

" He was the wrong guy at the wrong time, " Burke said later.

" Bernie didn't have the skills. What we needed was a chief

executive-level person. . . . Bernie came in with a

street-cop mentality. "

 

Kerik authorized the formation of a hundred-man Iraqi police

paramilitary unit to pursue criminal syndicates that had

formed since the war, and he often joined the group on

nighttime raids, departing the Green Zone at midnight and

returning at dawn, in time to attend Bremer's senior staff

meeting, where he would crack a few jokes, describe the

night's adventures and read off the latest crime statistics

prepared by an aide. The unit did bust a few kidnapping

gangs and car-theft rings, generating a stream of positive

news stories that Kerik basked in and Bremer applauded. But

the all-nighters meant Kerik wasn't around to supervise the

Interior Ministry during the day. He was sleeping.

 

Several members of the CPA's Interior Ministry team wanted

to blow the whistle on Kerik, but they concluded any

complaints would be brushed off. " Bremer's staff thought he

was the silver bullet, " a member of the Justice Department

assessment mission said. " Nobody wanted to question the [man

who was] police chief during 9/11. "

 

Kerik contended that he did his best in what was,

ultimately, an untenable situation. He said he wasn't given

sufficient funding to hire foreign police advisers or

establish large-scale training programs.

 

Three months after he arrived, Kerik attended a meeting of

local police chiefs in Baghdad's Convention Center. When it

was his turn to address the group, he stood and bid everyone

farewell. Although he had informed Bremer of his decision a

few days earlier, Kerik hadn't told most of the people who

worked for him. He flew out of Iraq a few hours later.

 

" I was in my own world, " he said later. " I did my own thing. "

 

 

As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances,

there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in

such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest

we become unwitting victims of the darkness.

William O. Douglas

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