Emerald City
The author of “Imperial Life in the Emerald City”, Rajiv Chandrasekaran was in Baghdad for the 11 months Paul Bremer was in charge of Iraq. In his book, Chandrasekaran gives details of life in the heavily fortified green zone. He reports that Washington consistently selected people, who were unqualified for the job. They should have hired our best and brightest, but the Pentagon looked for loyalty to the Republican Party.
Arabic language skills, a background in the Middle East, and expertise in post war reconstruction were needed, but the Bush regime only wanted true believers, people who voted for Bush and supported their vision for Iraq. In pre-deployment interviews some were asked their views on Roe versus Wade and views on capital punishment.
Washington drafted the de-Baathification plan and Bremer issued the order to disband the Iraqi army. Bremer insisted, “We’re not going to use a lot of existing Iraqi institutions. We’re going to try to remake it from scratch in the best American way possible.”
Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Reform Committee, is looking into the $8.8 billion that can’t be unaccounted for. Bremer has no receipts for 360 tons of our currency, he claims to have passed out in $100 bills to somehow buy loyalty.
Some of the tension between Sunnis and the Shia arose from decisions made by Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority. He used a quota system, when hiring members for the governing council. Thus, sending a message to Iraqis that your religious affiliation and your ethnicity matters in terms of political representation.
It wasn’t the unqualified staff that destroyed the enormous goodwill right after the liberation of Baghdad. It was Bremer’s decisions to disband the army and fire Baathists. Thus enshrining a formal occupation. The manner in which he went about governing Iraq, turned Iraqi attitudes against the Americans.
This mismanagement and outright corruption can be traced up the chain from Bremer to Rumsfeld to Cheney and to Bush. The mismanagement seems to have been calculated to ensure a power vacuum, which provides an excuse to keep our troops involved as “gangsters for capitalism.” What better way to expropriated the Iraqi economy than “to remake it from scratch?”
Arabic language skills, a background in the Middle East, and expertise in post war reconstruction were needed, but the Bush regime only wanted true believers, people who voted for Bush and supported their vision for Iraq. In pre-deployment interviews some were asked their views on Roe versus Wade and views on capital punishment.
Washington drafted the de-Baathification plan and Bremer issued the order to disband the Iraqi army. Bremer insisted, “We’re not going to use a lot of existing Iraqi institutions. We’re going to try to remake it from scratch in the best American way possible.”
Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Reform Committee, is looking into the $8.8 billion that can’t be unaccounted for. Bremer has no receipts for 360 tons of our currency, he claims to have passed out in $100 bills to somehow buy loyalty.
Some of the tension between Sunnis and the Shia arose from decisions made by Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority. He used a quota system, when hiring members for the governing council. Thus, sending a message to Iraqis that your religious affiliation and your ethnicity matters in terms of political representation.
It wasn’t the unqualified staff that destroyed the enormous goodwill right after the liberation of Baghdad. It was Bremer’s decisions to disband the army and fire Baathists. Thus enshrining a formal occupation. The manner in which he went about governing Iraq, turned Iraqi attitudes against the Americans.
This mismanagement and outright corruption can be traced up the chain from Bremer to Rumsfeld to Cheney and to Bush. The mismanagement seems to have been calculated to ensure a power vacuum, which provides an excuse to keep our troops involved as “gangsters for capitalism.” What better way to expropriated the Iraqi economy than “to remake it from scratch?”
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