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Ärende: How Bush hires people
=============================
GOP party loyalty? Yes.
Loyalty to Bush? Yes.

Competence? "We don't want you."
  
Media ignored front-page Washington Post report that White House 
hampered Iraq rebuilding efforts by hiring unqualified individuals based 
on "loyalty to the Bush administration"

Summary: A Media Matters for America review of cable and broadcast 
networks and major newspapers showed no coverage of a September 17 front-
page Washington Post report by Rajiv Chandrasekaran detailing the 
process by which many individuals who "lacked vital skills and 
experience" were assigned to positions in the Coalition Provisional 
Authority in Iraq based on their "loyalty to the Bush administration."

A Media Matters for America review* of cable and broadcast networks and 
major newspapers showed no coverage of a September 17 front-page 
Washington Post report by Washington Post assistant managing editor 
Rajiv Chandrasekaran detailing the process by which many individuals who 
"lacked vital skills and experience" were assigned to positions in the 
Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq based on their "loyalty to 
the Bush administration." The CPA governed Iraq from April 2003 to June 
2004 and was tasked with rebuilding the country. Chandrasekaran's report 
quoted multiple sources detailing a process conducted by a political 
appointee within the Pentagon, who screened applicants for key CPA posts 
and passed over more qualified candidates in favor of people, who, 
"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." Despite the report's disclosure that the CPA's hiring process 
"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," the broadcast networks, NBC, ABC, and CBS, as well as the cable 
news channels, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, have all ignored it, as have 
all other major newspapers. Chandrasekaran's September 17 article was 
adapted from his book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's 
Green Zone, which was released today by Knopf.

Chandrasekaran's report confirms the prediction of a December 2003 
Washington Monthly article, co-written by then-Washington Monthly 
contributing writer Joshua Micah Marshall, The American Prospect senior 
correspondent Laura Rozen, and journalist Colin Soloway:

When the history of the occupation of Iraq is written, there will be 
many factors to point to when explaining the post-conquest descent into 
chaos and disorder, from the melting away of Saddam's army to the 
Pentagon's failure to make adequate plans for the occupation. But 
historians will also consider the lack of experience and abundant 
political connections of the hundreds of American bureaucrats sent to 
Baghdad to run Iraq through the Coalition Provisional Authority.

The Washington Monthly article quoted one CPA official as saying that 
many CPA appointees saw their jobs "as a stepping stone to a better job 
in the next Bush administration." Another CPA official was also quoted 
as saying: "Everything is seen in the context of the election, and how 
[many younger Republicans in Iraq] will screw the Democrats." 

In his Washington Post report, Chandrasekaran reported that "[a]s more 
and more of" the individuals hired by Pentagon political appointee Jim 
O'Beirne "arrived in the Green Zone, the CPA's headquarters in Saddam 
Hussein's marble-walled former Republican Palace felt like a campaign 
war room." Chandrasekaran also wrote that several CPA appointees 
intended to pursue jobs with the Bush-Cheney 2004 re-election campaign. 

Chandrasekaran cited, in particular, "[a] 24-year-old who had never 
worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent 
to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange." 

Further, the article reported that, to oversee the "rehabilitation of 
Iraq's health care system," the administration tapped James K. Haveman 
Jr., "a 60-year-old social worker, [who] was largely unknown among 
international health experts, but ... had connections." According to 
Chandrasekaran, Haveman replaced Frederick M. Burkle Jr., a deputy 
assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development 
(USAID), who had received a master's degree in public health and had 
worked in northern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War and later in 
Somalia and Kosovo. Burkle reportedly received an email from a "senior 
official at USAID," who wrote that Burkle was being replaced because 
"the White House wanted a 'loyalist' in the job." According to the 
article, "When Haveman left Iraq, Baghdad's hospitals were as decrepit 
as the day the Americans arrived."

From Chandrasekaran's September 17 Washington Post article:

After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the 
opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq 
attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-
speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. 
But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's 
office in the Pentagon.

To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens 
prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, 
applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-
conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the 
Bush administration.

O'Beirne's 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.

Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition 
Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to 
June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had 
never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was 
sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. 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.

The CPA had the power to enact laws, print currency, collect taxes, 
deploy police and spend Iraq's oil revenue. It had more than 1,500 
employees in Baghdad at its height, working under America's viceroy in 
Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, but never released a public roster of its entire 
staff.

Interviews with scores of former CPA personnel over the past two years 
depict an organization that was dominated -- and ultimately hobbled -- 
by administration ideologues.

"We didn't tap -- and it should have started from the White House on 
down -- just didn't tap the right people to do this job," said Frederick 
Smith, who served as the deputy director of the CPA's Washington office. 
"It was a tough, tough job. Instead we got people who went out there 
because of their political leanings."

Endowed with $18 billion in U.S. reconstruction funds and a 
comparatively quiescent environment in the immediate aftermath of the 
U.S. invasion, the CPA was the U.S. government's first and best hope to 
resuscitate Iraq -- to establish order, promote rebuilding and assemble 
a viable government, all of which, experts believe, would have 
constricted the insurgency and mitigated the chances of civil war. Many 
of the basic tasks Americans struggle to accomplish today in Iraq -- 
training the army, vetting the police, increasing electricity generation 
-- could have been performed far more effectively in 2003 by the CPA.

But many CPA staff members were more interested in other things: in 
instituting a flat tax, in selling off government assets, in ending food 
rations and otherwise fashioning a new nation that looked a lot like the 
United States. Many of them spent their days cloistered in the Green 
Zone, a walled-off enclave in central Baghdad with towering palms, posh 
villas, well-stocked bars and resort-size swimming pools.

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.

To recruit the people he wanted, O'Beirne sought résumés from the 
offices of Republican congressmen, conservative think tanks and GOP 
activists. He discarded applications from those his staff deemed 
ideologically suspect, even if the applicants possessed Arabic language 
skills or postwar rebuilding experience.

Smith said O'Beirne once pointed to a young man's résumé and pronounced 
him "an ideal candidate." His chief qualification was that he had worked 
for the Republican Party in Florida during the presidential election 
recount in 2000.

O'Beirne, a former Army officer who is married to prominent conservative 
commentator Kate O'Beirne, did not respond to requests for comment.

He 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.

There were a few Democrats who wound up getting jobs with the CPA, but 
almost all of them were active-duty soldiers or State Department Foreign 
Service officers. Because they were career government employees, not 
temporary hires, O'Beirne's office could not query them directly about 
their political leanings.

One former CPA employee who had an office near O'Beirne's wrote an e-
mail to a friend describing the recruitment process: "I watched résumés 
of immensely talented individuals who had sought out CPA to help the 
country thrown in the trash because their adherence to 'the President's 
vision for Iraq' (a frequently heard phrase at CPA) was 'uncertain.' I 
saw senior civil servants from agencies like Treasury, Energy ... and 
Commerce denied advisory positions in Baghdad that were instead handed 
to prominent RNC (Republican National Committee) contributors."

As more and more of O'Beirne's hires arrived in the Green Zone, the 
CPA's headquarters in Hussein's marble-walled former Republican Palace 
felt like a campaign war room. Bumper stickers and mouse pads praising 
President Bush were standard desk decorations. In addition to military 
uniforms and "Operation Iraqi Freedom" garb, "Bush-Cheney 2004" T-shirts 
were among the most common pieces of clothing.

"I'm not here for the Iraqis," one staffer noted to a reporter over 
lunch. "I'm here for George Bush."

When Gordon Robison, who worked in the Strategic Communications office, 
opened a care package from his mother to find a book by Paul Krugman, a 
liberal New York Times columnist, people around him stared. "It was like 
I had just unwrapped a radioactive brick," he recalled.

© 2006 Media Matters for America.

From Archae's Roost, Sheboygan, WI

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