In Iraq, the Job Opportunity of a Lifetime

BAGHDAD -- It was after nightfall when they finally found their offices at Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace -- 11 jet-lagged, sweaty, idealistic volunteers who had come to help Iraq along the road to democracy.

When the U.S. government went looking for people to help rebuild Iraq, they had responded to the call. They supported the war effort and President Bush. Many had strong Republican credentials. They were in their twenties or early thirties and had no foreign service experience. On that first day, Oct. 1, they knew so little about how things worked that they waited hours at the airport for a ride that was never coming. They finally discovered the shuttle bus out of the airport but got off at the wrong stop.
...
The CPA was designed to be a grand experiment in nation-building, a body of experts who would be Iraq's guide for transforming itself into a model for democracy in the Middle East. Unlike previous reconstruction efforts, it was to be manned by civilians -- advisers on politics, law, medicine, transportation, agronomy and other key areas. They were supposed to be experts, but many of the younger hires who filled the CPA's hallways were longer on enthusiasm than on expertise.
...
For months they wondered what they had in common, how their names had come to the attention of the Pentagon, until one day they figured it out: They had all posted their resumes at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative-leaning think tank.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48543-2004May22.html

Doug Feith only wants true believers working in Iraq.
"Knight Ridder reported that Paul Bremer's request for more than 220 employees for the occupation had yet to be approved. Guess who was to blame? "It is taking forever because Feith only wants true believers to get through the gate," a senior administration official said."

http://slate.msn.com/id/2100899/

They only pick the "true believers" so they're least likely to report on all the screw ups.

Also, older established individuals are more likely to "walk away" from a fucked up situation. They can go back to whatever they were doing before. Young folk need references for their next job. They won't get them if they walk away from Bush's debacle in disgust.

Looks as if PNAC's ultimate goal is tranforming Iraq into an old fashioned Nineteenth Century Imperialist overseas colony. Their favored petroleum companies literally suck out Iraqi oil while Uncle Sucker pays for everything else.

And the corporate TV media beats the drums about forming a "democracy" in the New Iraq.

...when right wing nutcases used to cry about "Uncle Sucker" pouring US tax dollars down the foreign aid sewer during The Cold War?

Dubya truly is as incompetent as we imagine. This article confirms it!

'The young budget advisers are the first to admit that they weren't the most qualified to be managing Iraq's finances. "We knew we were overwhelmed. We wanted help," Ledeen said. "We were doing maintenance, trying to make sure there were no riots, that no one went hungry." The budget team reported to Rodney Bent, a former U.S. Office of Management and Budget official, and Tony McDonald from the Australian Treasury. McDonald said it angers him to hear people criticize the budget team. "The people who came were young and keen -- not necessarily the most experienced -- but they were here. They did a great job in working as hard as they could."'

while we pump out the oil. The traitorous Bush cabal exists solely to support the war-profiteering corporations. The leaders of this criminal conspiracy must be put in prison if we truly believe in the "rule of law."

http://www.cpa-iraq.org/

NeoImperialism with a smiling face. Whitewashed agenda for the rape of a nation.

http://www.brookings.edu

I can't help but notice the similarities

The similarities are uncanny! Is there such a thing as Web site design plagiarism?

eom

So these operatives can be rushed back in time to work on the Bush re-election?

Having had some 35-years experience of working as a government civilian at military installations in Command Comptroller's departments, this article scares the hell out of me.

What does the acronym CPA stand for? From the article I assume it means Civilian Personnel Agency. If so, is this Agency replacing the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), that is/was responsible for all testing, hiring, firing, promotions, and other related personnel actions? Has "The Heritage Foundation," a Republican organization been been given a no-bid contract......much like Haliburlton...to hire civilians to determine funding priorities and accountability. A 30-billion dollar Budget doled out by personnel lacking any experience in accounting and yet hired to perform government accounting. Many of these young, inexperienced hires, have close familial ties to Rebublicans....this is called patronage....considered to be illegal under OPM.

"She arrived on a military transport plane...." Whoever or whatever CPA is, flying groups of hired civilians on military transports for overseas assignments is a no, no. The reason being that it places the US Government at great monetary risk if their is an accident. . When I did fly military transport, it was under specific orders to perform a one-time function, it required mucho paper-work, and permission could only be given by The Commanding General of the Installation. Military transport has never been used to transport civilian employees to a new assignment...not even during Vietnam..they are/were required to fly civilian airlines.

It seems that "Our Pentagon," is being taken over by outside organizations....secret armies (Pearle, etc.)....secret employment agencies (The Heritage Foundation), etc. Our true enemy can be found within and we will not know what happens until we have lost all control.

I read this article months ago in the Wall Street Journal and
it seemed very strange. Now I guess it makes some sense.

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107524435490013389,00.html?mod=home%5Fpage%5Fone%5Fus

How a 24-Year-Old Got a Job Rebuilding Iraq's Stock Market

An Accident, Mr. Hallen Says,
But He Promises Results;
Investors Are Skeptical
By YOCHI J. DREAZEN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 28, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- At Yale University, Jay Hallen majored in political science, rarely watched financial news stations and didn't follow the stock market.

All of which made the 24-year-old an unlikely pick for the difficult task of rebuilding Iraq's shuttered stock exchange. But Mr. Hallen, a private-sector development officer for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, was given the job immediately after arriving in Baghdad in September.

The headquarters of the old Iraqi exchange, where brokers in blue vests scribbled trades on boards, was looted after the war and is now occupied by squatters. Several listed companies no longer exist, and many Iraqi companies' majority shareholders -- Saddam Hussein and his friends and relatives -- are either dead or in prison. A new exchange is supposed to open in temporary quarters next month, but impatient brokers already meet privately in their homes and offices to trade shares.

Mr. Hallen admits that he wound up in Iraq rather by accident. In 2002, he began pursuing a White House job, and though none materialized, he stayed in close contact with the man who interviewed him, Reuben Jeffrey. When Mr. Jeffrey went to Iraq last summer as a senior economic-development adviser, Mr. Hallen e-mailed to ask whether there were any job openings. "Be careful what you wish for," Mr. Jeffrey, who is now an aide to Iraqi administrator Paul Bremer, told him in reply.

spend a ton of time at the site mind you...

Most have a subscription service that allows online access
to 100's of publications for free.

.. That's www.bugmenot.com - a very useful site. Though I'm not sure if it'l give you access to that particular article.

EDIT: Some spelling.

... because they've shown themselves to be incompetent at any hands-on productive work. These are people who infest many financial organizations, not to actually perform direct services but to shmooze, tattle, network, posture, and generally encrust the grunt-level productive activities of the organization with Brooks-Brothers-clad fecal matter so thick it obscures the rape and pillage of the wealthy.

These are incompetent young Republicans, who found work in Iraq, while Berg was a highly competent, liberal Jew, who couldn't.

... that so many of the companies doing "business" there are staffed and populated by Reichbots showing 100% Republican campaign donations. Any business that shows a "100%" (Dem or Rep) partisan bias on campaign donations should have its business licenses revoked for rampant political discrimination in hiring. There's no way in the freaking world that hiring and promotion has but the loosest correlation to merit and competence when such a bias is demonstrated.

Here's the url to the link on DU that was discussing this--
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x576183#576188

link to their "meetings" to learn/brainwash--
http://www.cpac.org/cpaccontents/press/press052004.shtml

link to their many threads of their involvement--
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/keyword/CPAC?more=1284907

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1065893/posts
DC Chapter report from CPAC 2004
January 26, 2004

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1065405/posts
**CPAC 2004 Wrap up: post your reports and pictures HERE!**
Freepers | 1/26/04 | Diotima

asking her father alot of questions.

Son-of- beeech what a crop of stupid asses.

Who was it who said these people are like a fungus? They keep coming back and you can't get rid of them.

Like the Iran-Contra killers who came back to work for the fraudulent, murderous, corporate Shrub admin. so too will these children come back to haunt us in future neofascist (aka republican) admins. Problem is, they re-emerge more virulent everytime.

The Washington Monthly's Who's Who
December 2003


Special Baghdad edition

By Joshua Micah Marshall, Laura Rozen, and Colin Soloway


"Simone Ledeen is serving her country. She is the daughter of Michael Ledeen, the Iran-Contra luminary, AEI scholar, and all-around capo in the neocon mafia. She's 29, a freshly-minted M.B.A., with little to no experience in war-torn countries. But as an advisor for northern Iraq at the Ministry of Finance in Baghdad, she is, in essence, helping shape one quarter of that nation's economy.

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.

It's not that Americans lack such experience. In the last decade particularly, many American officials acquired a great deal of expertise in post-conflict reconstruction in places like Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor and in post-Communist countries in Eastern Europe and around the globe--expertise that could have been put to good use at the CPA. Names frequently mentioned are those of General Bill Nash, who commanded troops in the Gulf War and NATO operations in Bosnia; Robert Perito, former senior foreign service officer and deputy director of the Justice Department's international police training program, who helped advise peacekeeping missions in Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo, and helped organize post-conflict police training in Albania, Croatia, and Macedonia; Bob Gelbard, former U.S. presidential envoy to the Balkans; and retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Jacques Klein, who served in various capacities in the Balkans under the United States and the United Nations. Yet according to experts in the field, few of those with experience in these various deployments got the call to serve or even had their opinions solicited.

In their place, the architects of the war chose card-carrying Republicans--operatives, flacks, policy-wonks and lobbyists--for almost every key assignment in the country. Some marquee examples include U.S. civil administrator Paul Bremer's senior advisor and liaison to Capitol Hill, Tom Korologos, one of the most powerful GOP lobbyists on Capitol Hill. Then there's the man in charge of privatizing Iraq's 200-odd state owned companies, Tom Foley, a venture capitalist and high-flying GOP fundraiser. Foley was one of the Bob Dole's top-ten career donors, Connecticut finance chair for Bush 2000 and a classmate of the president's from Harvard Business School."

more
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.whoswho.html

they just keep coming back for more. True masochists!

I thought patronage that was mentioned in the article was forbidden by the Pendleton Act, which formed the civil service. It seems like a new gilded age is emerging.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

Surely you know this by now!

their "just" rewards.

let's see....

there is a whole bureaucracy devoted to economic development known as U.S.A.I.D that has real grown ups who've been administering programs for decades. Real contract administrators, engineers, educators, etc.

All these junior people in these articles have no knowledge of the government regulations inherent in administration of government contracts. Failure to comply with these regulations results in jail sentences. They have tried to build in plausible deniability by putting Condoleeza Rice in charge of this. Condi can't be legally compelled to testify to Congress under oath like the USAID commissioner can be.

In addition, part of Iraq reconstruction is to privatize the socialistic pre-war economy of Iraq. Billions will be made by a few people with connections and the rest of the people will get screwed.

We've got a beautiful muck raking story in the making. This will be a big story on how people got rich.

and Iraq still has no electricity which is one of the reasons people are hopping mad.