Heritage Foundation "Whiz Kids" managed $13 b. Budet in Iraq! Disgusting!

In Iraq, the Job Opportunity of a Lifetime
Managing a $13 Billion Budget With No Experience

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 23, 2004; Page A01

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.

Occupied Iraq was just as Simone Ledeen had imagined -- ornate mosques, soldiers in formation, sand blowing everywhere, "just like on TV." The 28-year-old daughter of neoconservative pundit Michael Ledeen and a recently minted MBA, she had arrived on a military transport plane with the others and was eager to get to work.

They had been hired to perform a low-level task: collecting and organizing statistics, surveys and wish lists from the Iraqi ministries for a report that would be presented to potential donors at the end of the month. But as suicide bombs and rocket attacks became almost daily occurrences, more and more senior staffers defected. In short order, six of the new young hires found themselves managing the country's $13 billion budget, making decisions affecting millions of Iraqis.

(An incredible article. Register and read..if you can. NYT's also has an article similar to this following one of the "whiz kids" in this a.m.'s edition)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48543-2004May22.html

operated as a business.

The occupation was pretty desperate as I saw an e-mail where they where trying to recruit high level, or even mid level civil service types, and SESs for tour of duty in Iraq.

We had a good laugh about that in our office.

So, I guess since the experienced govt types decided to take a pass on this turkey they where stuck with "the interns".

"Reverend" Moon. Despicable cult leader from the 1970s who still performs, amongst other things, "multiple matrimonies" (looking at the pics, a lot of the "happy couples" ain't so happy...), is a BIG supporter of * and the Apostatic Party. Oops, Republican Party.

$13 billion? Damn. It's nice to see that * wants to make live so wonderful for the Iraqis, a people he ordered the decimation of. With that in mind, it's also deploreable that * has allowed corporate dictators to run around amok and piss on American workers.

Bush can go Freedom himself straight to Hell and NOT collect $200.

article exposing more bumbling that cost thousands of Iraqi lives.

It's easy to get the two names mixed up... Dyslexia is a pain.

More bumbling and lives. How much worse can this madness get? :scared:

Sometimes they just have to prove that they aren't working for the Administation to keep their cover up. :D

:kick:

Ledeen's journey to Baghdad began two weeks earlier when she received an e-mail out of the blue from the Pentagon's White House liaison office. The Sept. 16 message informed her that the occupation government in Iraq needed employees to prepare for an international conference. "This is an amazing opportunity to move forward on the global war on terror," the e-mail read.

For Ledeen, the offer seemed like fate. One of her family friends had been killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and it had affected her family deeply. Without hesitation, she responded "Sure" to the e-mail and waited -- for an interview, a background check or some other follow-up. Apparently none was necessary. A week later, she got a second e-mail telling her to look for a packet in the mail regarding her move to Baghdad.

<snip>

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.


There you have it. This whole thing is driven purely by ideology. No background checks or interviews are necessary when you're a true believer. And competence? Who needs that when God's on your side?

Wonder which repug MBA thought that one up. The Iraqi children are starving and dying from lack of medical care, but hey, lets make a new flag! Who do we send to rebuild a country traumatized by war and years of sanctions? Xenophobic, paranoid, suburban jingo-belles.

This is one for the record books, a woeful tale of blinkered ideology run amuck. This is what happens when you cling to the naive notion that good intentions trumps all, that competence is of little import. Un-freakin-believable!!! I love some of the quotes from the frustrated people that had to work with these boobs:

"I wanted to pull their heads off oftentimes"

"There were a lot of people who, being political science majors, didn't know what an income statement was, who were asking the impossible. . . . That was giving us ulcers, quite frankly"

Totally flabbergasted.

The "adults" are in charge, eh? Cram that wingnuts.

The happy face, these nice young people with the best of intentions.

But clearly they knew nothing about Iraq, nor did they think that they needed to. Their only qualifications were that they were Americans and conservative enough to have applied to Heritage, which is an extreme-right wing institution, set up by Paul Weyrich (just do a google on him to see how extreme he and Heritage are).

They are doing this for their careers, clearly they do not even think about the effects on the people in Iraq.

This is exactly what the US did in Kosovo, in Bosnia, and everywhere else the US sends its "aid", it sends in these clueless Americans who are claiming to want to "help" the locals, but in fact know nothing about the local society, and end up bailing out, going home while they leave the local people to suffer the consequences of their good intentions.

The road to hell, after all, is paved by the good intentions of these Americans.

The most generous interpretation is that they were dupes of the neocons. But clearly they were willing dupes.

These kids are the only people you ever see, even here in the U.S.!

Talk about frightening.

:kick:

I mean...really...this has to be a joke...right?

Right?