Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Fables of the Reconstruction
This article by Jason Vest details a memo circulated to CPA officials that is damning of the work we're now doing in Iraq.
The first two grafs:
As the situation in Iraq grows ever more tenuous, the Bush administration continues to spin the ominous news with matter-of-fact optimism. According to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Iraqi uprisings in half a dozen cities, accompanied by the deaths of more than 100 soldiers in the month of April alone, is something to be viewed in the context of "good days and bad days," merely "a moment in Iraq's path towards a free and democratic system." More recently, the president himself asserted, "Our coalition is standing with responsible Iraqi leaders as they establish growing authority in their country."
But according to a closely held Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) memo written in early March, the reality isn't so rosy. Iraq's chances of seeing democracy succeed, according to the memo's author—a U.S. government official detailed to the CPA, who wrote this summation of observations he'd made in the field for a senior CPA director—have been severely imperiled by a year's worth of serious errors on the part of the Pentagon and the CPA, the U.S.-led multinational agency administering Iraq. Far from facilitating democracy and security, the memo's author fears, U.S. efforts have created an environment rife with corruption and sectarianism likely to result in civil war.
Read the whole thing. It sounds like Civil War could be on the horizon.
UPDATE: From Kos; Rumor has it that the author is Michael Rubin, card-carryng neoconservative and "scholar" at the American Enterprise Institute. Working out of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, he is a staff adviser for Iran and Iraq and a member of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He is also an Iraq adviser for the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans.
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This article by Jason Vest details a memo circulated to CPA officials that is damning of the work we're now doing in Iraq.
The first two grafs:
As the situation in Iraq grows ever more tenuous, the Bush administration continues to spin the ominous news with matter-of-fact optimism. According to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Iraqi uprisings in half a dozen cities, accompanied by the deaths of more than 100 soldiers in the month of April alone, is something to be viewed in the context of "good days and bad days," merely "a moment in Iraq's path towards a free and democratic system." More recently, the president himself asserted, "Our coalition is standing with responsible Iraqi leaders as they establish growing authority in their country."
But according to a closely held Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) memo written in early March, the reality isn't so rosy. Iraq's chances of seeing democracy succeed, according to the memo's author—a U.S. government official detailed to the CPA, who wrote this summation of observations he'd made in the field for a senior CPA director—have been severely imperiled by a year's worth of serious errors on the part of the Pentagon and the CPA, the U.S.-led multinational agency administering Iraq. Far from facilitating democracy and security, the memo's author fears, U.S. efforts have created an environment rife with corruption and sectarianism likely to result in civil war.
Read the whole thing. It sounds like Civil War could be on the horizon.
UPDATE: From Kos; Rumor has it that the author is Michael Rubin, card-carryng neoconservative and "scholar" at the American Enterprise Institute. Working out of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, he is a staff adviser for Iran and Iraq and a member of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He is also an Iraq adviser for the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans.
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