Essential reading

By Heraclitus

This is also via Jill at Feministe. It's an article in last Sunday's Washington Post, titled "Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq." You may have already seen it, but if not, it's well worth reading. The ruthless substitution of ideology for competence is staggering. Between Wolfowitz believing that the Iraqis would throw flowers at our feet and Iraqi oil would pay for the occupation, and Rumsfeld threatening to fire anyone who who planned for any occupation at all, it seems as if the Bush administration had no idea what they were doing in invading Iraq (though you'd never be able to tell). It's therefore probably not surprising that the people actually sent by the government were more fit to be stuffing envelopes at Bush-Cheney headquarters than trying to rebuild a country. Here are some of the highlights, which are almost beyond belief:

O'Beirne's [the "political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts"] 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 .

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.

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.

[O'Beirne] 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.