Of course, most of the experts on the Middle East and nation building opposed the war. The phrase I heard most often in late 2002 and early 2003 was "they (the Administration in general, particularly the Pentagon and White House staff) have no idea what they are getting into." Many experts DID know what we were getting into and from the beginning were reluctant to get involved. In those heady triumphal early days, I'm sure that many thought the doubters had been proven wrong. At the critical juncture they were LESS inclined to listen to advice from the naysayers.

It was eerily like watching the twentysomethings who thought the knew how to run internet companies a few years earlier. Early success made them impervious to criticism and dismissive of advice. It was a new paradigm and the old rules did not apply. The results were more or less the same.

First comment: thank you for not simply copy/pasting from the book. And if you respond to comments, you'll be vying for the TPMCafe Best.Guest.Ever award with Wes Clark and the few others who actually responded...

Second comment: what you described is criminal. Not just incompetent, but criminal. The Iraqi people, let alone our nation, deserved much better.

Dissent Protects Democracy.

I think our efforts in Iraq were doomed to failure when it was in the planning stages.  The key was to get UN/global support for removing Saddam.  We (and the British) decided to act unilaterally with neither country being willing to make the requisite effort needed in terms of man power and resources.

The only way to get Iraq "right" is to get the rest of the world involved.  And I have grave doubts that the rest of the world wants to get involved or we want the rest of the world involved.

Cronyism, a partisan political agenda and profiteering by US multinationals in rebuilding Iraq stand in the way of building a stable government in Iraq.  And I see no indications Bush has any resolve to remove those obstacles.  Until the US starts pursuing policies which are in the best interests of Iraq, instead of the US, the situation in Iraq will not improve.

Something has struck me in the recent reporting, the last couple months, that says "point of no return" for the country of Iraq, U.S. involved or not. Previously, one could always talk theoretical "pie in the sky" stuff like "what if an Arab force was put in there instead of the U.S.?" The point of no return is that everyone that has any means of leaving Iraq seems to have done so, or is planning to do so, and the young dream of doing so. Of course, I am using the many anecdotals I see in the reporting, and I have no figures. But if true, that's a no brainer, equals failed state, no matter what. The Kurdish areas are the only ones that have a chance because people actually still have dreams? You can even survive a civil war if a mixture of classes and education levels of people want to stay and believe in the country, the U.S. is an example.

I think many in the press (and the Democratic Party) were intimidated by Bush's high poll numbers also.

Tom

Rajiv, please define what you mean by pull it off?

Regime Change

Rebuild the infrastructure that Saddam had left to rot

Representative, constitutional government

Acceptance of "universal values" such as equal treatment of women

Democracy

Secular control

Transformation of the Middle East, Road to through ...

I'm just sick of the press's bullshit. They act as though they had no responsibility in this - a fifteen minute conversation with Bremer and this guy becomes a true believer - and so unmindful of the stupidity of it, that he makes it public. And these are the people on whom we depend to tell us the truth - taken in by con men and wishful thinking.

"Daunting challenges?" These were criminal acts perpetrated on a nation and its people.

Great Post, Rajiv.

Now my observation. The Communist Party hierarchy of the USSR promoted people in government based on their adherence to Communist ideology rather than their demonstrated expertise. I learned of this problem by reading U.S. evaluations of the effectiveness of organizational motivation techniques of the Soviet military.

Remember that in the USSR the Party was separate from the government, but the Party approved all promotions. In the U.S. promotions in the government were a government function, not a party function.

This was (in my opinion) a major reason for the collapse of the USSR. I believe that promotion based on ideological purity rather than technical competence was a major reason for the failure of the Soviet government to be able to effectively control a modern industrial state. An organization (government, corporate or non-profit) gets from its employees what it rewards, and fails to get what it fails to reward. Reward comptence, you get competence. Reward ideological purity, you get ideologican purity.

Apparently the American anti-Communist conservatives learned a lot from their soviet enemies during the Cold War. In this case, they seem to have learned how to fail in staffing and managing organizations.

I remember the last orderly withdrawal of troops - the last marine scrambling up a rope ladder into a helicopter while Vietnamese tried to break open the roof door. Of course these are the same arrogant morons that engineered that debacle.

and we had a strategic and moral obligation to get Iraq back on its feet.

This curious, U.S. exclusive "obligation" has killed enough people in Vietnam, Haiti, Iraq, ...

Americans, you have NO obligations neither strategic (what a moronic expression: "strategic obligation") nor moral to kill people who are very well able to take care of themself.

Well I see something fundamentally wrong with a reporter who becomes a "believer" after a fifteen minute conversation with an administration appointee.

He describes criminal negligence and misfeasance in office, and calls them "daunting challenges".

This guy IS a managing editor of the WaPo. Doesn't this scare you?

Bush came out of the oil production industry. Not refining or distribution, both of which require a great deal of industry expertise for anyone to succeed, but production.

Oil Production is a "Bet your company" industry. You don't need a lot of expertise - you can hire that. What you need is the willingness to bet large sums of (other people's) money to a drilling operation. Win and you are rich. Lose and you are bankrupt - and go on to set up a new company and try again. That is the core culture of the industry.

Bush operates by making decisions based on his intuition. He also does not go back and reevaluate his failures. He doesn't even want to hear about his failures, or he wants to blame someone else.

These are techniques which lead to the best chance of success for individuals in the oil production industry. They also consider the organization needed to accomplish the job of drilling the wells as disposable and unimportant.

A person with that professional background needs to be highly intelligent and very intellecuutally curious to make an effective transition into government. Even then it will be extremely difficult.

In government, the organization operates on routine which is based on very wide social acceptance, and is far from disposable. It is one of the sources of stability for the society that it is central to. Replacing a government organization ususally involves revolution and extreme social disruption.

With his lack of intellectual curiosity and his dependence on making decisions based on intuition (meaning based on his socialization and experience), George W. Bush is a guaranteed failure when being placed in a government top management job. He doesn't have a clue, he doesn't want to hear that he is failing, and he doesn't have the curiosity to determine what is actually going wrong with his decisions. Instead he will want to know who is to blame, because it can't be him.

It really is that simple. Bush is the worst single President America has ever had, and it was totally predictable.

Bill Kristol, anyone at National Review, Marshall Wittmann, the WaPo Ed Bd and David Brooks scare me a helluva lot more.

My point is that it's easy to sit here on a blog and judge. You weren't there.

Certainly there are people in Iraq, then and now, with good intentions. All I think RC is saying is he thought Bremer could have been one of those with good intentions. Turns out he was wrong. But that's what I think he means by "believer."

Perhaps our Guest can clarify. 

Dissent Protects Democracy.

if you respond to comments,

Looking at the thread as of 3:05pm, and putting myself in his shoes, I probably wouldn't. There's a lot of emotional venting (that other members are showing approval of by rating highly,) not much opportunity for civil discussion, not much promise of respectful interchange or of it bearing any fruit. I'd think: they don't like me, why did I bother?

I just read an account of this a few months ago. This slant drilling was a major reason why Hussein invaded Kuwait during the first war. If I read about it, are you telling me that this administration doesn't know about it?

I'm not debating this, I'm telling that this is what is going on.

Frankly, I hope everyone becomes angry and outraged at the corruption, the coverups, the steno reporting, the cronyism, the theft, the lies, the hypocrisy, the selfish disdain for others and the barefaced greed in this country.

I am not saying there aren't emotionally charged replies (I have no problem with passion either) on this thread but for the most part the discourse is civil and worthy of responses...so I am hoping he does.

Wouldn't be the first reporter we scared away. But I hope he's got some thicker skin than that...and the discussion's been pretty civil so far. No one's called me a rascist Marxist yet.

Dissent Protects Democracy.

Yes, it's easy to sit here and judge - any sentient person could have told him that this wasn't going to work, a few people even said so before the invasion.

This reporter knew that Bremer didn't have enough troops, that there were not enough resources and there was no comprehensive plan - did he not read his own newspaper?

What is wrong with this country that people accept this kind of incompetence from the media? Would you accept this from a doctor or a lawyer?

"Well, soandso, I talked to the doctor and it seems that while he didn't have an operating room, or instruments or any nurses or any xrays, he had the best of intentions in operating on your now deceased loved one. While you might think he's negligent and his action criminal, I talked with him for fifteen minutes and I believe these weren't criminal acts, they were daunting challenges. There's no need to investigate what he said, he was very convincing."

"I'm very hopeful that the next person he operates on will live."

I think your point about Bush/Cheney/neocons living in the past is a good one Gettysburg.

My only comment is I wish Bush was more like TR in the "Speak softly and carry a big stick" way.  Bush is more like "Yell at the top of your lungs and whack people over the head with a big stick". ;-)

Yeah. It's almost as if he's attempting to play baseball with a plastic bat.

...I asked the questions above because I did not understand Rajiv's starting point but  then I also spoke in an equally cryptic manner. Let me start again.

Rajiv I want to understand what you meant by pull it off so I can understand and comment on what follows.

I begin with the fact that we were there in Baghdad on April 9th, 2003 -- and we had a strategic and moral obligation to get Iraq back on its feet.

So, it is okay to critique the reconstruction but questioning the reasons for invading in the first place isn’t useful? That does kind of let the media off the hook, doesn’t it? The problem is that this was a “pre-emptive” invasion. The media spin was that this preventive war (without a tangibly imminent threat) was not an illegal radical change in policy and was not even that unusual. But the fact that this was an invasion of a country that was not actually threatening us requires that we examine how we got into this war and that means looking at a media that was complicit in selling this war to the American people. That is why your uncritical “faith” in Paul Bremer after a 15 minute interview should be questioned.

The problem is not in the execution of the war in Iraq, the problem is in the very idea itself.

Preemptive war, invading Arab countries, trying to establish secular democracies in countries that seem to want more religious involvment in government. For all those reasons and more, it was a terrible idea and never had a chance of success. If we convince ourselves otherwise, we are more likely to try it again saying "this time we'll do it right".

Admittedly, Bush seems to have made bad judgments at every turn but the only one that really mattered was deciding to invade in the first place.

I've done some major home remodeling, and there were certain things that I knew I didn't know, such as concrete foundation work. I did do the electrical and signal wiring, some of the plumbing, and some framing.

So, it is okay to critique the reconstruction but questioning the reasons for invading in the first place isn’t useful?

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

BevD - It scares me.

It's obvious that the television media are basically megaphones. On the other hand, print media are supposed to be filters, devices that get rid of impurities. Any reporter who does not approach a subject with at least a modicum of DISBELIEF will ever realize that he needs to filter what he is being told.

Too many reporters, too many times in the lead up to this tragic Iraq debacle have "believed" what they were told. In doing so, they have rendered themselves not only useless but propagaters of false information.

So, it is okay to critique the reconstruction but questioning the reasons for invading in the first place isn’t useful? That does kind of let the media off the hook, doesn’t it?

When the decision to invade Iraq was made, there was some possibility that it could be done effectively. I will admit that I had some hope it would work. But when Lt. Gen. (Ret) Jay Garner was abruptly removed and replaced by Jerry Bremer six weeks into the invasion, I lost all hope.

What Rajive Chandrasekaran is writing about is the total incompetence with which the actual implementation of the invasion decision was conducted. He does not go beyond his data. He does not explain the replacement of Garner (something I am still looking for) nor does he focus on the decision to invade in the first place (somethiing which he has no reason to know, and which is going to be covered in numerous other books and articles.)

I'm just happy to get this rather limited but quite clear explanation of the strange but typically conservative method of making a disaster out of a problem.

The failure of the Bush administration is a general failure of both Bush/Cheney and of the right-wing Republican party. No single book will ever encompass how total their failure really is. Take this one for what it is. Rajive has done a good job of describing the idiocy of right-wing administration of Iraq.

There is a lot more of the right-wing idiocy to be described, and it will take a lot more than one book to describe it.

I'd like to see someone catalogue all the failures, and then refer to the specific books and investigations which describe each element of the failure. It will take an equivalent of an encyclopedia to cover it all. No single book and no single author will ever do it.

I suspect that his critics here would consider themselves among those wishing them spread most widely.

Bingo. Well said. 

Dissent Protects Democracy.

I disagree. In many cases the way a manager deals with a problem is simply to make a decision, then beat it into shape as it runs into problems. A really bad decision can sometimes be made to work if the managers will consider their actions as experiements and learn from their failures.

This is not possible for an ideologue. When an ideologue makes a decision and it fails, the solution is to redouble the effort to apply the ideology. This is not an experimental method. It starts with assuming the answer is known, and the failures to achieve success are failures of the person who attempts to change things.

A good manager starts by getting all the possible information, then making a decision and starting to act. But at this point, all actions change the situation and become experiments. When they fail they provide new informatino and require a new decision. A good manager will recognize this and make new decisions not limited by the ideology with which they started.

Theory is always less important than facts. Always. But an ideologue will be bound by the theory, so the solution for the ideologue is to either redouble the effort or replace the manager. (Why was Jay Garner replaced? No one has ever said.) Conservatives are, by definition, ideologues.

Why was Lt. Gen. Jay Garner replaced by Jerry Bremer less than six weeks into the occupation of Iraq? Garner was not an ideologue. Bremer was.

There were a lot more bad decisions made than just the one to invade Iraq. In fact, if you want to know what decisions are bad, just look at every decision that the Bush administration has made since 2001. They have made effective decisions only by accident.

The sub-thread was about hoping to get the writer to reply to comments. People are criticizing his career "product" and expecting him to reply. I think that's like inviting him to fight to defend his product. Maybe he's not interested in fighting, doesn't find it productive. (Also, it's also clear that such people are not interested in buying his book, it would be a hard sell.) Look, I'm talking simple psychology, how to get a conversation going. Sometimes forums get so venty/ranty that people think everyone is like that, that everyone wants to rant and fight. Everyone's not like that, we don't all enjoy that game.

There's better ways to go about introducing the topic you mention (i.e., have you learned anything from that? have you changed your reporting technique since that?) Think like you were meeting him in person, in a coffee shop. How would you initiate a conversation? If you started yelling at him like a protestor about things he wrote that you read, wouldn't he be smart to just walk away from you? Responding to emotional, angry people is just not wise in many cases. What is it you expect? In retail you say "I'm sorry" and then just listen, because you have to be there and deal with it. He doesn't have to be here, you have to entice him to reply, just like any other person here. Would you think it interesting for him to say "I'm sorry" over and over? That's an interesting reply?

In the same vein, I've never seen a writer responding to a bad review come out of it looking good, they always look pitiful; better to remain silent.

=== Sometimes forums get so venty/ranty ===

I have been hearing that word "vent" since I was about 11 years old (a looong time ago), and I regret to admit I have never understood what it is supposed to mean. _I_ argue forcefully for deeply thought-out positions based on superior understanding; _you_ vent.

I understand your point; I really do (although I noticed you neatly sideslipped my question as to whether the clerk who sells inferior goods bears any responsibility for working there). I am not sure that committing the United States to a war that had the potential to knock it out of Great Power status forever was really the right venue for credulous reporting though. And reporters above anyone should be vaccinated against the power of charisma and charismatic people.

sPh

I'm curious as to how Rajiv Chandrasekaran would respond to Dan Senor's op-ed in the Washington Post today. He argues that the top levels of the CPA were staffed with experts, even if the lower level positions were not. The failure, Senor contends, reflects the difficulty of the task, not the lack of relevant talent and expertise.

Not knowing Rajiv was going to be here today (I never read the advertising), I had caught the Si Senor? piece in the Washington Post today. I also wrote an entry in my blog, Logical Consequences, on this website.

I'm not Rajiv, but perhaps you'll find my take - and some of the background on Si Senor? - to be interesting and give you a better idea on how his WaPo piece was "framed."

Yes. If you read Fallows article in the Atlantic from fall 2002, in which he follows his usual procedure of talking with everyone who might know anything about the subject, he essentially predicted everything that has come to pass in Iraq.

How did he know...and not everyone else in the media?

But it's also true that the people didn't rise up in protest...much. There was a huge desire to believe that things were going to "work out."

When you consider the scale and cost of this disaster, it's hard to believe, but there it is.

I think commenters are criticizing the media in general and not attacking Rajiv personally. I understand that he is discussing his book here and I, too, thank him for posting. But discussion shouldn't be limited to only what is in his book. Rajiv is a reporter and editor in Iraq for a major newspaper that had a lot of influence on the path to Iraq.

I really do appreciate his exposing of this cronyism=incompetence that was part of the failure there. The cravenness of these political appointments is incredible, even for these guys. But why wasn’t this reported on before now? Why weren’t facts like this used to refute the lies, day after day after day for two years, about how great things were going in Iraq.

My only point above was that the blind faith in Bremer that the author describes is a continuation of the uncritical media “reporting” that took us there in the first place, and it is justifiable to discuss it in those terms. I like the idea of the encyclopedia of failures (maybe in volumes A to Z).

There were a lot more bad decisions made than just the one to invade Iraq. In fact, if you want to know what decisions are bad, just look at every decision that the Bush administration has made since 2001.

I agree, but to Bush they aren't "bad decisions." Has he ever admitted to being wrong....to making a mistake? He's always "staying the course"; good times are just around the corner.

artappraiser. Your retail examples are not helpful as far as they go. A pro-active approach in dealing with an angry customer is far more preferable than the behavior you describe. Your response(s) tend to make matters worse as the customer perceives them as proforma at best and passive-aggressive at worst. The customer gets even more frustrated by this type of non-response.

I'd like to hear a response to Mr. Campbell Brown, i.e. Dan Senor, who had a piece in WaPo today.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/09/AR2006100901036.html

He basically does the opposite of what you do, which is cite a few very qualified people who worked for the CPA and suggest that only a few people were in over their heads.

Do you think a few bad apples spoiled the whole bunch, or were a few incompetents inevitable, as Senor suggests?

He also accuses you of shifting opinions on what should be done in Iraq.

Also, do you really think it made any difference, and that there was really a possible plan that would have worked in Iraq? In hindsight, I think it's very hard to see how even the best possible plan, executed flawlessly, would have worked in the end.

Senor is a hack, totally compromised by his connections.

See Mark Raven's blog.

For Bush's Brain, Karl Rove, and the Cheney administration, 'pulling it off' clearly meant kicking Democratic butt. War President. Mission accomplished on that score in 2004.

In a weird way I am fascinated by the psychological disposition of the legions of smart, educated liberals who believed we could "pull it off."

To me it was always completely obvious this could never work. I wish I could say "Man, that was some insight, wasn't it?" But I take no pride -- not because pride would be a misplaced feeling under the circumstances -- but because my conclusion always struck me as so embarrassingly obvious: like stating that 2+2 is 4.

And I debated with people who would say: But what about Japan, what about Germany? We pulled it off then! And I wondered to myself: how can those smart people be suddendly so stupid.
I had never witnessed such depletion of collective IQ in my life!

Why? I am only interested in people who meant well (like Rajiv). Not the Ledeens, Rummy, and sundry racist jerks who believe whatever crap fits their agenda.

Many good people believed that we could "pull it off." Why?

Why did the US elite got so dumb?

9//11? Panic attacks? Self-admiration? Plain hubris?

Now people apologize for being wrong. No! Everyone can be wrong without being stupid. Marxists were wrong but they were not stupid.

They should apologize for having been so incredibly stupid. And that's a little tougher to forgive.

Great catch, Tom. There are far too many of Mr. Senors "connections" to list here. This is the money quote from Mark's blog:

Mr. Senor claimed that the Clinton Administration should be held responsible for George W. Bush's Rumsfeldian Follies in post-Mission Accomplished Iraq.

When neocons screw-up, they blame it on Clinton.

"...it was not always a given that the United States and America would have a close relationship." GWB, 6/29/06

Hello there everyone. Apologies for not responding sooner. As one of you rightly pointed out, I have a day job at The Washington Post, restricting the time I have to respond during the day. I'm also doing book-related events. (I was speaking at Georgetown tonight.)

To those wanting a response to Dan Senor's op-ed in today's Washington Post, stay tuned. Tomorrow's blog entry will be all about it. Rest assured, I've got plenty to say about it.

As for the approximately $8 billion in Iraqi oil funds that are unaccounted for, according to the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, I don't know where the money went. If I did, or if the inspector general did, you can bet that you'd see some stories about it in the newspaper. That said, I'm not sure all of it was lost to corruption. The CPA had fairly shoddy accounting practices. (I write about how one contractor, Custer Battles, was given $2 million in start-up funds in shrink-wrapped bundles of $100 bills.) It seems that some of this money was spent on legitimate projects but the paperwork wasn't processed properly. It also seems clear that some of this money simply vanished. There were published reports in early 2005 that large sums of money were being spirited out of Iraq by members of former interim prime minister Ayad Allawi's government. To date, however, I'm not aware of anyone who has discovered where that money went.

Mark Raven, I enjoyed your response to the Senor piece. I didn't mention Simone Ledeen because she doesn't get more than a mention in my book. Others have written about her time in Iraq and I wanted to highlight the lack of qualifications of other CPA staffers.

For another rebuttal to the Senor piece, see this:

http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2006/10/10/43345/677

For those of you who take issue with my statement that I thought we could "pull it off," my response is that I am trying to be as honest as I can here. I know some will brand me as naïve for even thinking it was possible. (By "possible," I don't mean things would have been prefect. There still would have been an insurgency, albeit smaller and less violent, and there still would have been some tension between various ethnic and religious groups, but something far, far from the disaster that it is today.) But had the U.S. government done the requisite planning before the war, had the necessary resources been marshaled, had there been enough troops to prevent the looting, had more Iraqis been involved in the reconstruction effort, had there not been an open-ended occupation, had the Bush administration not sent a viceroy over there, had the U.S. government tried to quickly stand up an interim Iraqi government, had the Americans allowed Iraqis to hold local elections in 2003, had Bremer not issued his orders to disband the Iraqi army and ban many mid-level Baathists from government employment, had more skilled Americans participated in the reconstruction effort -- then, perhaps, Iraq might have turned out differently. All of the things I outlined could have been accomplished. It's just that the administration -- and it's appointees in Baghdad -- chose not to do them.

 For those of you who are wondering why I didn't report this earlier, let me quote from my response to a similar question posed by The Post's ombudsman, Deborah Howell: "This wasn't a case of holding back the juicy details because it would make for a better book. Had I known how the CPA's hiring practices worked while I was The Post's bureau chief in Baghdad, I certainly would have written about it. But it wasn't something I learned about until I returned home and began working on the book. We should also keep in mind that the CPA was run much like the Bush White House. Reporters weren't allowed to troll the halls without an escort from the Strategic Communications Office. And even if you could get a CPA staffer alone, it was tough to determine what was really going on. Many of them were told, in no uncertain terms, that they were not speak to reporters without a minder present. It wasn't until many of those CPA staffers returned home to the United States that I was able to get them to open up to me." 

For those of you who take issue with my initial views of Bremer, please read the book. I am very, very critical of Bremer, both his management style and the decisions he made. I feel that my critique has more honestly because it comes from someone who didn't begin with a snap-judgment that he was the wrong man for the job. I began by giving him the benefit of the doubt. Had he listened to the Iraqis, had he pursued different policies, had he approached the whole job differently, then his tenure would have been very different. At the time, it wasn't clear what he was going to do. Sure, he has issued the deBaathification order, but it was still early days. The United States still enjoyed goodwill and political capital among Iraqis. Of course, I didn't go soft on Bremer in my stories for The Post. But for the purposes of the book, I felt it was important to trace my views of the man too. Ok. More from me tomorrow.

Mr. Chandrasekaran,

Thank you both for your reply and for your compliment.

Also, I read the marvelous piece at ePluribusmedia, which, I believe, does a superb job of providing a litany of facts to simple melt Mr. Senor's rather feeble argument. I would expect the Fox News crowd to eat up such a column.

Quite frankly, I am a bit surprised that the Washington Post editorial staff was not more diligent in this matter. I know. You are a member of the news department. Editorial is a separate division. More important, I would never ask you to blog ill of your employer. Not only would that be foolish, but I am a Post fan.

Perhaps I'll take up the matter with Howie Kurtz. We're very close, Howie in D.C. and I in upstate New York. So very close. Not in the Mark Foley sense, mind you. More in the Shootout at the O.K. Corral sense, Howie and I each armed with water pistols.

I could, of course, address this issue and Mr. Senor's numerous factual flaws with Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell. Ms. Howell and the general public do get along just so. Well, maybe not so well, but it never hurts to ask.

Imagine, to be reviewed by Ms. Howell! To be casually dismissed by the esteemed Ms. Howell, perhaps it's too much for such a humble upstate New York blogger to even dream. (chuckle)

Also, thanks for the information regarding Simone Ledeen. I knew Daddy Mike had been mighty upset, seeing his little cooking school co-founder questioned in the press. Glad to see that it didn't get you down.

Lastly, I've noticed that everyone from Ramesh Ponnuru (another pal of mine) to his National Review buddy and Ralph Peters's whipping boy, Andrew McCarthy, to David "Axis of Evil" Frum to Mr. Senor has stepped forward to denounce your work. All have used a litany of half-truths, innuendos, and fact-light accusations to present their point(s) in defense of Jim O'Beirne, Simone Ledeen, and the CPA. Do you think this may well be a case of the Neoconservatives protesting a bit too much?

He does not explain the replacement of Garner (something I am still looking for)

RickB - Check Woodward's Denial.

I'm halfway throught Woodward and I have already learned alot about Garner, why they picked him, what he did do and why they no longer wanted him around. Until reading this book my picture of him was of not much substance and an easy flunky for the Administration. Instead from what I read he emerges as an activist in his sphere, sent to the task too late and still made some progress. He comes off as a man of integrity at the transfer to Bremer and Bremer comes off as petty.

The attack on you by Senor certainly piqued my interest. Why this attention? Is it connected to the fact that he and Bremer have recently tutored Mitt Romney on the real deal re Iraq? Wounded pride? Are you threatening his current billing status as an Expert?

After reading reviews of your book, I found myself hoping that the collaboraters on Syriana would snap up the film rights. Thanks to the thorough manner in which you paint the pictures of life in the Zone, there would be no credibility to accusations of taking cinematic licsense.

Speaking of reviews, my favorite is this one by a CPA employee hired to perform duties akin to Senor's:

"I had arrived in the five-square-mile area of Baghdad where I would spend over a year living and working, first as a press officer for America's occupation government, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and later as spokeswoman for the British Embassy. And so I entered the "Green Zone," as brilliantly dissected in Rajiv Chandrasekaran's fascinating and significant new book, "Imperial Life in the Emerald City – inside Iraq's Green Zone". This was the subject of Chandrasekaran's talk before a full auditorium at the Wilson School on Sept. 28.

A read which is by turns gripping, sobering, tragic and comic, Imperial Life in the Emerald City is an acutely observed and meticulously reported account of how the United States attempted to build an Iraq that would be a shining example of democracy and development in the Arab world, and why this failed. The picture it draws of American decision-making in Iraq is disturbing, and as a former CPA staffer, it is difficult to read the book without wincing.

Chandrasekaran was the Washington Post's bureau chief in Iraq both before the war and during the occupation, and I first met him through one of his regular visits to the "Strategic Communications" office in the Palace. His easy manner and disarming smile concealed his determination not to be put off by Coalition spin.

Chandrasekaran reported the book both using his notes from Iraq and from extensive interviews with former CPA staffers when returned to the United States. 'I like to joke that I gave people from the CPA some free therapy,' he told me."
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/10/05/arts/16069.shtml

Congratualtions on the increasingly higher profiles of your enemies.

Hopefully, Chalabi is among them.

If comments are about the general "news media," they should be specified as such. There are at least 2 posts here directly questioning RC's reporting without actually looking at his reporting. 

Dissent Protects Democracy.

It's hard to take seriously anybody defending a media which has been so unbelievably bad.

If you are under some delusion that the media is our friend, that the media has some interest in reporting the information that we need to know in order to make educated decisions about our government.

You are deluded.

The media has gotten so lazy over the years, they think reporting means sitting at your desk and waiting for the phone to ring with some juicy leak from a government political appointee. As such, all the government political appointtees use them. Call it the Bob Woodward syndrome if you want.

As such, the media is only interested in protecting their sources... i.e. whoever is in government. Supporting the status quo of power.

Bronto, Thank you for your reply but I can't let the $9 billion question go and neither can the Iraqis, according to what Riverbend said in her blog.

My understanding is that the $9 billion was in cash and the Bush administraton had to arrange for the money to be released from the custody of the UN.

We have no idea if all of the $9 billion ever even reached Iraq.

L. Paul Bremer just blew the $9 billion question off by claiming that it was just too hectic to keep track of the $9 billion. Yeah, right.

I watched Bill Maher ask Dan Senor about it on his show last year and Senor just shrugged. I was furious because both Maher and Senor were smiling about $9 billion being stolen.

Here is Dan Senor's official White House bio:

"Dan Senor Former Advisor to the U.S. Presidential Envoy in Iraq Dan Senor, Former Advisor to the U.S. Presidential Envoy in Iraq Dan Senor served as a Senior Advisor to then-Presidential Envoy L. Paul Bremer III, Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Senor traveled to Baghdad in mid-April in one of the first civilian convoys to enter Iraq following the fall of the former regime. He advised Amb. Bremer on a variety of policy and communications issues. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, Senor was based at Centcom Headquarters in Qatar, where he was Director of the Coalition Information Center.

Senor has also served as a Legislative Aide, Press Secretary, and Communications Director for then-Senator Spencer Abraham (R-MI). Senor completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Western Ontario and Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He earned his MBA from Harvard Business School."

From Wikipedia:

Daniel "Dan" Senor is currently working as a crisis management and communications strategy consultant with his newly founded firm, Senor Strategies. Senor also appears regularly on Fox News. He previously served as spokesman and senior advisor to United States Presidential Envoy Paul Bremer, when he was Administrator of the Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority. Dan was born in upstate New York. He went to high school in Toronto, Ontario earned his B.A. from the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario and his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and worked previously for the Carlyle Group (2001-2003). He also held a number of posts in the office of former Senator Spencer Abraham, R-MI.

In September 2004, the White House employed Senor to coach and ghostwrite the speeches of Iraq's interim prime minister Iyad Allawi during his visit to the US, in an effort to enhance the Bush reelection campaign. At the same time, Senor appeared on cable news programs asserting that Allawi's positive remarks (vetted by him) supported the Bush Administration's rosy view of the Iraqi occupation.

Senor married Campbell Brown, anchor of the weekend edition of The Today Show on NBC, on April 2, 2006, in Colorado [1]. His sister is Wendy Singer Senor, who runs AIPAC's Jerusalem office [2].

Senor's mother is a Holocaust survivor, and he keeps kosher. [3]

At one point, there was an announcement that Dan Senor would join Google as vice president of communications but that did not happen apparently.

Michael Ledeen's daughter, Simone Ledeen, was another member of the CPA.

I want to know the nuts and bolts of how the cash was dispensed.

Some questions:

How was the $9 billion converted to cash?
Where was the cash kept in the US?
How was it transported to Iraq?
Who had custody of the cash in Iraq?
Who physically handled the cash in Iraq?
Who counted the cash in the US and in Iraq?
Who approved the transfer of cash to an Iraqi?
What paperwork was prepared?
How often was cash dispensed? Monthly, weekly, daily?
What was the average amount of a disbursement?
How did the Iraqis transport cash from where it was stored to where it was disbursed?
Was cash dispensed to the same Iraqis over a period of time or different ones?
Was there a list of Iraqis who were approved to receive cash? if so, who apporved them?

Even if there is no papaerwork, L. Paul Bremer can answer these questions or he knows who could answer them.

One of my concerns is that the $9 billion could fund Republican efforts for years to come.

Don't think that it could not happen. James A. Baker and Madeline Albright tried to pull a fast one last year by setting up a deal with the Kuwaitis in which the Kuwaitis would benefit financially by being excluded from Baker's efforts to reduce Iraq's international debt.

Here on Long Island, two top school district officials just went to prison for stealing a lousy couple of million dollars.

If the Democrats refuse to investigate L. Paul Bremer and the CPA about the missing $9 billion, I will assume that some Democrats were in on the theft.

If the Democrats refuse to invesitigate, I would urge the Iraqis to hire some thugs to corner L. Paul Bremer and Simeone Ledeen in a dark alley and force them to give answers about the stolen $9 billion.

That $9 billion belonged to the Iraqis and the US had an obligation to ensure that it was spent for the benefit of the IRaqis, not L. Paul Bremer.

President Bush gave L. Paul Bremer a medal and I think I know why.

You’re absolutely right, CSCS. BevD’s initial comments confronted Rajiv about his reporting. Rajiv is a member of a media that has failed us in many respects but especially regarding this war. She is not attacking him personally but lets him have it regarding media’s regurgitation of the Bush spin of the war, pre- and post-invasion (and I appreciate her comments).

I think she asks a fair question about why more people are not angry about uncritical reporting on Iraq. That 70% of Americans at the start of the war believed Saddam was responsible for 9/11 is a scathing indictment of the press in this country. I (and other commenters) questioned Rajiv’s and WaPo’s acquiescence in broader terms of the entire media delinquency of its duty as a check on government.

Ha! I've been saving a list of Bush era cliches. I knew there'd be a time when they'd come in handy. Have fun.

git 'em
dead or alive
smoke 'em out
shock and awe
hearts and minds
roll up
connect the dots
spider hole
boots on the ground
can't let the terrorists make us change
embedded
chatter
breathin' down their neck
shaking the trees
stay the course
cut and run
keep terrorists on the run
it's hard work
stuff happens
stay the course
we're fighting them over there so we won't have to fight them here
in their last throes
the terrorists hate our way of life
take the fight to them
now is not the time
no one could have imagined
strategy for victory
clear strategy for victory
no artificial timetable
murderous ideology
shake our will
complete our mission
I'm the decider and I decide what's best
cut and run
milestone
a new day
a new chapter
fully understand
watershed event
turning point
addicted to oil
no one should think
blame game
heckuva job

Unfortunately, the moronic powers that "were" are also the moronic powers that "be".

Tom