Political Appointee Whines About Politicization

I was happy enough to discover that the Obama transitionwill dismiss 90 political appointees at the Pentagon after Inauguration Day. But as Billmon notes (ahh, it's so could to write that), the icing on this cake is that it brings back to the spotlight the pathetic Pentagon career of Jim O'Beirne.

Those calls and emails were followed up by an email from Jim O'Beirne, the special assistant to the secretary of defense for White House liaisons, who expressed exasperation that Gration informed the employees directly instead of letting O'Beirne's office know first.

"With regard to the process, I am unable to provide an explanation," O'Beirne wrote on Tuesday in the email, which was obtained by The Hill. "I played no part in it, and I will not speculate why matters were handled as they were."
A spokesman for the Pentagon said Gates was "absolutely satisfied" with the way the transition was handled.

O'Beirne is uniquely responsible for one of the biggest clusterfucks of the entire Bush era - the irresponsible and nakedly ideological hirings at the Coalition Provisional Authority shortly after the invasion. He was the guy that asked applicants their views on Roe v. Wade to make sure they were able to build the traffic system in Baghdad. As Billmon says,

In other words, Jim O’Beirne did as much as anyone in the US government -- and more than most -- to turn the first few years of the Iraq occupation into a complete clusterfuck, thereby contributing to the deaths of thousands of US troops and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Iraqi civilians. All for the greater political glory of George W. Bush and the Republican Party. And now he’s throwing a hissy fit because "the opposition" is getting an early start on shoveling the cow crap out of the stable?

"O'Beirne made it clear in the email that in some cases of dismissal, he thinks the employee's politics played a role in their being let go."

What can you say? Your modern conservative movement: Clueless, humorless, self-absorbed assholes, right to the bitter end.

The only regret here is that all 250 political appointees aren't being led to the door right away, though obviously with two wars we can't leave the entire cupboard bare immediately. Hopefully there will be an expedited hiring process, with the first casualty, one would hope, to be Jim O'Beirne.

The Mustache of Misunderstanding

One of the more irksome qualities of Tom Friedman's writing is his earnest statements of the obvious that this Mustache never applies to any sort of larger Understanding.

Friedman opens today's column thus:

One of the most troubling lessons of the Iraq invasion is just how empty the Arab dictatorships are. Once you break the palace, by ousting the dictator, the elevator goes straight to the mosque. There is nothing in between — no civil society, no real labor unions, no real human rights groups, no real parliaments or press. So it is not surprising to see the sort of clerical leadership that has emerged in both the Sunni and Shiite areas of Iraq.

Now, the first obvious point is that this shouldn't come as a news flash for this friend of cabbies everywhere known to sidewalk idlers traversing the length and breadth of the Arab Street. Surely Mr. Friedman thought such an obvious point relevant before now? Might such conclusions even have caused this Mustache to re-evaluate his Understanding of the chances for success in Iraq?

Unfortunately Mr. Friedman can count, but he can't add.

One could unwind the tangled skeins of Friedman's banal gee-wiz pensees until the cows come home. Short work, really. But our focus today shall be one glaring bit of horse puckey in the aforementioned opening graf. Here's the offending sentence again:

There is nothing in between — no civil society, no real labor unions, no real human rights groups, no real parliaments or press.

Really? One of the reasons the "elevator goes straight to the mosque" is that Iraq has no institutions of civil society - such as labor unions? Funny he should mention that. I wonder if there's any special reason Iraq doesn't have strong unions?

From a 2005 Washington Monthly article by Matthew Harwood:

But from the time the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) took possession of Iraq, the Americans running the country not only declined to engage the labor movement in the process of building a nation, but also worked actively to undermine labor's ability to play a constructive role.

First, during his tenure, CPA chief L. Paul Bremer repealed virtually the whole Iraqi legal structure with his so-called 100 Orders. He did not, however, repeal Saddam's 1987 Labor Code, which forfeited the right of public sector workers to bargain collectively. That decision, though deeply foolish for purposes of nation-building, made perfect sense to the movement ideologues staffing the U.S. occupation. Much of the CPA's effort in Baghdad was devoted to helping create a conservative's ideal state, complete with a 15 percent flat tax on individual and corporate income. Bremer's crew was so zealous that they tried, in September 2003, to privatize virtually the whole economy--200 state-owned firms. Legalizing labor unions would not have been helpful, to say the least, to these privatization plans. As Bjorn Brandtzaeg, a former CPA team leader for trade and industry, wrote in the Financial Times, "Instead of focusing on restarting the main industrial complexes as soon as possible after the end of hostilities, a team of ideologically motivated CPA officials with close ties to the US administration pursued a narrow privatization strategy. The result…[s]everal hundred thousand people remained out of work."

What the Mustache doesn't quite Understand (nor does he seem to recall or even have read), is that these "lookee here!" bits of flotsam Friedman believes have just washed ashore are instead durable realities constructed with intent. Friedman holds up these shiny objects for our inspection, but unlike Friedman, those of us who have actually read the news over the years have seen it all before and know its source.

And we can both count and add.

Continuing:

What's especially maddening about the U.S. government's attitude towards the IFTU [Iraq's largest trade union] is that organized labor has repeatedly played a vital stabilizing and democratizing role in situations that, in some cases, come close to that which Iraq finds itself in today. In Poland, Solidarity quickly evolved from a labor crusade into a social movement that peacefully brought down the communist regime and, once in power, established a system of regular, free elections. The trade-union movement in Brazil had a similar effect, helping to end 21 years of oppressive military rule and usher in 15 years of representative government. But perhaps the most significant precursor comes from South Africa. There, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) not only agitated for the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, but, as the apartheid government was losing power, helped keep the country from splintering along racial and tribal lines. "Labor organizations are based on social class identity and as a result cut across divisions of tribe and culture so that you'll find Zulu and Xhosa workers of COSATU," said Professor Mike Bratton of Michigan State University. "In that sense, COSATU is one of the major organizations that helps build a sense of national, non-tribal identity." Instructively, all of these countries have remained democracies: According to Freedom House's annual survey, each country is ranked "free" in its commitment to both political rights and civil liberties.

Groups like the IFTU, then, are precisely what Iraq needs to make a successful transition to stable self-government. Iraqi political leaders seem to understand this. In January 2004, the Iraqi Governing Council recognized the IFTU as "the legitimate and legal representatives of the labor movement in Iraq." America's allies in Iraq also seem to get it. By March of that year, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, speaking before the House of Commons, named the IFTU as the legitimate representative of Iraq's labor movement, England's union partner in the rebuilding of the war-tattered nation.

Well shoot. Too bad we just discovered that the country we went in to smash had no alternative social structures beyond its radical clerisy? Too bad we found out too late that there aren't any labor unions to buttress a fledgling citizenry after three decades of autocratic rule!

Too bad the Mustache lives in a Mystery Spot of his mind.

The Iraq Coverups Are Starting to Unravel

The coverup is usually more important than the crime, and that's certainly the case in this unfortunate friendly fire incident which is just now coming to light. And I don't think it's the only one we don't know about, either.

A cockpit recording of a US pilot opening fire on UK forces in Iraq was leaked today, exposing the errors that led to the death of a British soldier.

In the recording, the pilot of one of two US A-10 Thunderbolt jets involved in the attack says, after they realise their mistake: "We're in jail dude".

The other pilot, who opened fire, weeps, saying: "God dammit."

The Sun newspaper today published the transcript after obtaining a tape of the recording of the moment that one of the jets launched two devastating attacks on a British armoured convoy, killing Lance Corporal of Horse Matty Hull.

The Ministry of Defence initially told L/Cpl Hull's family the recording did not exist, but it found its way into the hands of Oxford coroner Andrew Walker, who is hearing the inquest into the soldier's death.

US authorities would not release the tape for use in the inquest, but they got out anyway. Friendly fire incidents are unfortunate but a fact of war. What's not acceptable is the downplaying of them or outright lying about them, as we see here.

Here's another cover-up, and while military intelligence is spinning this as something they just discovered, I'm highly dubious. After all, the guy's using the same name!

A man sentenced to death in Kuwait for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. and French embassies now sits in Iraq's parliament as a member of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's ruling coalition, according to U.S. military intelligence.

Jamal Jafaar Mohammed's seat in parliament gives him immunity from prosecution. Washington says he supports Shiite insurgents and acts as an Iranian agent in Iraq.

U.S. military intelligence in Iraq has approached al-Maliki's government with the allegations against Jamal Jafaar Mohammed, whom it says assists Iranian special forces in Iraq as "a conduit for weapons and political influence."

They're using the Iranian red herring to obfuscate the fact that, in their Purple Finger haste, they pushed through a set of elections where candidates couldn't even disclose their names for fear of being assassinated, and where ethnic identity was the only thing that mattered. Ordinary Iraqis didn't know who they were voting for. So this is a consequence of the US putting all its faith in the Purple Finger and forgetting about the consequences, and then covering this up (surely it was known as soon as they saw the guy's name) when they desperately needed evidence to justify an attack on Iran.

The final coverup concerns the loss of $8.8 billion in Iraqi funds by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the subject of four days of hearings by new cop on the beat Henry Waxman and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The ideologues and incompetents responsible for this theft from the public treasury have never had to answer for this, which has enabled the corruption. And now that they're being asked questions, they're showing the arrogance you'd expect:

What happened to billions in Iraqi funds that were overseen by the Coalition Provisional Authority? That's not "important," according to David Oliver, the former Director of Management and Budget of the agency.

A recording of the unfortunately candid remarks, previously made by Oliver to the BBC, were played during this morning's oversight hearing by Rep. Diane Watson (D-CA). The hearing has focused on the CPA's administration of nearly $9 billion in Iraqi funds in 2003 and 2004 -- money that Stuart Bowen, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, has said was inadequately accounted for.

"I have no idea, I can't tell you whether or not the money went to the right things or didn't - nor do I actually think it is important," Oliver says on the tape . "Billions of dollars of their money disappeared, yes I understand, I'm saying what difference does it make?"

Via Digby, The Financial Times of London is reporting that $5 billion in funds were just handed out in huge bricks from the backs of pickup trucks. In fact, I've seen this alleged before, but now the source is a Democratic lawmaker. This, in fact, is a symptom of turning over the functions of government to private contractors who aren't as interested in foreign policy or winning hearts and minds as they are making profits for their shareholders.

Without a public debate or formal policy decision, contractors have become a virtual fourth branch of government. On the rise for decades, spending on federal contracts has soared during the Bush administration, to about $400 billion last year from $207 billion in 2000, fueled by the war in Iraq, domestic security and Hurricane Katrina, but also by a philosophy that encourages outsourcing almost everything government does.

Contractors still build ships and satellites, but they also collect income taxes and work up agency budgets, fly pilotless spy aircraft and take the minutes at policy meetings on the war. They sit next to federal employees at nearly every agency; far more people work under contracts than are directly employed by the government. Even the government’s online database for tracking contracts, the Federal Procurement Data System, has been outsourced (and is famously difficult to use).

This is why residents of the Gulf Coast can't figure out where there money is at, because there's no incentive for it to get to them in a timely manner. Iraq under the CPA was handled in much the same way, and there are now investigators in Congress who aren't happy with how cavalierly their money has been spent.

Iraq was a lab experiment for conservative ideas, and an opportunity for the venal and the dishonest, as well as a war zone where tragedy was happening on a daily basis. You cannot sweep all of this under the rug, and some of the strands of evidence are slowly coming to light.