Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Washington Post
January 14, 2007
Pg. 1
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post Staff Writer
First of an occasional series
Timothy M. Carney went to Baghdad in April 2003 to run Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Minerals. Unlike many of his compatriots in the Green Zone, the rangy, retired American ambassador wasn't fazed by chaos. He'd been in Saigon during the Tet Offensive, Phnom Penh as it was falling to the Khmer Rouge and Mogadishu in the throes of Somalia's civil war. Once he received his Halliburton-issued Chevrolet Suburban, he disregarded security edicts and drove around Baghdad without a military escort. His mission, as he put it, "was to listen to the Iraqis and work with them."
He left after two months, disgusted and disillusioned. The U.S. occupation administration in Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), placed ideology over pragmatism, he believed. His boss, viceroy L. Paul Bremer, refused to pay for repairs needed to reopen many looted state-owned factories, even though they had employed tens of thousands of Iraqis. Carney spent his days screening workers for ties to the Baath Party.
"Planning was bad," he wrote in his diary on May 8, "but implementation is worse."
When he returned to Washington, he made little secret of his views. They were so scathing that his wife lost a government contract. He figured his days of working on Iraq were over.
Until a phone call on Tuesday.
David Satterfield, the State Department's Iraq coordinator, was on the line with a question: Would Carney be willing to go back to Baghdad as the overall coordinator of the American reconstruction effort?
The decision to send Carney back to Iraq -- and to abandon the policies that so rankled him in 2003 -- represents a fundamental shift in the Bush administration's approach to stabilizing the country. Desperate for new approaches to stifle the persistent Sunni insurgency and Shiite death squads that are jointly pushing the country toward an all-out civil war, the White House made a striking about-face last week, embracing strategies and people it once opposed or cast aside.
Indeed, Carney's rushed selection came just days after the administration announced two other key Baghdad appointments from among the ranks of dissenters in 2003: Ambassador designate Ryan Crocker and Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who will take over command of all coalition forces in Iraq.
Crocker, who spent the summer of 2003 helping to form Iraq's Governing Council, left the country frustrated with the CPA's reluctance to reach out to minority Sunnis. Even before the invasion, he wrote a blunt memo for then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell warning of the uncontrolled sectarian and ethnic tensions that would be released by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Petraeus, who spent 2003 commanding the 101st Airborne Division in Mosul, grew dismayed by the heavy-handed tactics fellow military commanders were using to combat insurgents. He also opposed the methods by which Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army and fired Baathists from government jobs. And he chafed at the way reconstruction funds, personnel and decision-making were centralized in Baghdad. The CPA's policies, he said in 2004, should have been "tempered by reality."
It's a view the White House now seems to accept.
The plan unveiled by Bush last week calls for many people who lost their jobs under Bremer's de-Baathification decree to be rehired. It calls for more Sunnis, who were marginalized under the CPA, to be brought into the government. It calls for state-owned factories to be reopened. It calls for more reconstruction personnel to be stationed outside the Green Zone. It calls for a counterinsurgency strategy that emphasizes providing security to the civilian population over transferring responsibility to local military forces.
Carney believes such measures could have been effective three years ago. Today, he worries they will be too little, too late.
During the phone call, Satterfield told him that the new reconstruction effort might not succeed. The two men agreed that if it was to have a chance, Americans would have to work more closely and collaboratively with Iraqis.
To Carney, it suggested "a sense of reality."
"It's certainly different than anything I saw out of the CPA or the aftermath of that," he said. "It seemed a little refreshing, actually."
He paused.
"It's been a long time coming."
A Plan in Need of a Leader
Bush and his national security team began working on their new Iraq strategy in earnest shortly after the Nov. 7 midterm elections, which amounted to a rebuke of the president's war policy. They met among themselves. They talked to diplomats and military commanders in Iraq. They conducted a videoconference with Iraq's prime minister. They consulted with retired generals, experts at think tanks and academics.
By late December, the president and his closest security advisers -- Vice President Cheney, new Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley -- had coalesced around the need for more troops in Iraq. They had settled on Crocker to handle political strategy on the ground, replacing Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. And they had picked Petraeus to take over from Gen. George W. Casey Jr., whom they deemed to be too focused on the handover of responsibility to the Iraqis instead of on restoring peace to Baghdad's strife-torn neighborhoods.
But it wasn't until Monday, when Bush was going over a draft of the address he planned to deliver on television Wednesday, that they confronted the issue of who would coordinate the administration's new economic initiatives for Iraq.
Bush was planning to propose increasing the number of province-level reconstruction teams operating outside the Green Zone from 10 to 18. There would be new efforts to help the Iraqi government improve budgeting and management functions. And, most important, there would be a significant new emphasis on putting unemployed Iraqis to work. The strategy also included an implicit reversal of Bremer's policy on state-owned factories.
Scores of Americans ensconced in Baghdad's Green Zone would be involved: The U.S. Embassy has an economic section. There's a U.S. Agency for International Development mission. And there's the Project and Contracting Office, which manages reconstruction funded by an $18.4 billion U.S. aid package.
"Who's going to coordinate this?" Bush asked as he read through the economic initiatives, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting.
When Satterfield got back to his State Department office, he told his staff to "give me names."
The next day -- less than 36 hours before Bush addressed the nation -- Satterfield called Carney.
January 14, 2007
Pg. 1
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post Staff Writer
First of an occasional series
Timothy M. Carney went to Baghdad in April 2003 to run Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Minerals. Unlike many of his compatriots in the Green Zone, the rangy, retired American ambassador wasn't fazed by chaos. He'd been in Saigon during the Tet Offensive, Phnom Penh as it was falling to the Khmer Rouge and Mogadishu in the throes of Somalia's civil war. Once he received his Halliburton-issued Chevrolet Suburban, he disregarded security edicts and drove around Baghdad without a military escort. His mission, as he put it, "was to listen to the Iraqis and work with them."
He left after two months, disgusted and disillusioned. The U.S. occupation administration in Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), placed ideology over pragmatism, he believed. His boss, viceroy L. Paul Bremer, refused to pay for repairs needed to reopen many looted state-owned factories, even though they had employed tens of thousands of Iraqis. Carney spent his days screening workers for ties to the Baath Party.
"Planning was bad," he wrote in his diary on May 8, "but implementation is worse."
When he returned to Washington, he made little secret of his views. They were so scathing that his wife lost a government contract. He figured his days of working on Iraq were over.
Until a phone call on Tuesday.
David Satterfield, the State Department's Iraq coordinator, was on the line with a question: Would Carney be willing to go back to Baghdad as the overall coordinator of the American reconstruction effort?
The decision to send Carney back to Iraq -- and to abandon the policies that so rankled him in 2003 -- represents a fundamental shift in the Bush administration's approach to stabilizing the country. Desperate for new approaches to stifle the persistent Sunni insurgency and Shiite death squads that are jointly pushing the country toward an all-out civil war, the White House made a striking about-face last week, embracing strategies and people it once opposed or cast aside.
Indeed, Carney's rushed selection came just days after the administration announced two other key Baghdad appointments from among the ranks of dissenters in 2003: Ambassador designate Ryan Crocker and Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who will take over command of all coalition forces in Iraq.
Crocker, who spent the summer of 2003 helping to form Iraq's Governing Council, left the country frustrated with the CPA's reluctance to reach out to minority Sunnis. Even before the invasion, he wrote a blunt memo for then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell warning of the uncontrolled sectarian and ethnic tensions that would be released by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Petraeus, who spent 2003 commanding the 101st Airborne Division in Mosul, grew dismayed by the heavy-handed tactics fellow military commanders were using to combat insurgents. He also opposed the methods by which Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army and fired Baathists from government jobs. And he chafed at the way reconstruction funds, personnel and decision-making were centralized in Baghdad. The CPA's policies, he said in 2004, should have been "tempered by reality."
It's a view the White House now seems to accept.
The plan unveiled by Bush last week calls for many people who lost their jobs under Bremer's de-Baathification decree to be rehired. It calls for more Sunnis, who were marginalized under the CPA, to be brought into the government. It calls for state-owned factories to be reopened. It calls for more reconstruction personnel to be stationed outside the Green Zone. It calls for a counterinsurgency strategy that emphasizes providing security to the civilian population over transferring responsibility to local military forces.
Carney believes such measures could have been effective three years ago. Today, he worries they will be too little, too late.
During the phone call, Satterfield told him that the new reconstruction effort might not succeed. The two men agreed that if it was to have a chance, Americans would have to work more closely and collaboratively with Iraqis.
To Carney, it suggested "a sense of reality."
"It's certainly different than anything I saw out of the CPA or the aftermath of that," he said. "It seemed a little refreshing, actually."
He paused.
"It's been a long time coming."
A Plan in Need of a Leader
Bush and his national security team began working on their new Iraq strategy in earnest shortly after the Nov. 7 midterm elections, which amounted to a rebuke of the president's war policy. They met among themselves. They talked to diplomats and military commanders in Iraq. They conducted a videoconference with Iraq's prime minister. They consulted with retired generals, experts at think tanks and academics.
By late December, the president and his closest security advisers -- Vice President Cheney, new Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley -- had coalesced around the need for more troops in Iraq. They had settled on Crocker to handle political strategy on the ground, replacing Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. And they had picked Petraeus to take over from Gen. George W. Casey Jr., whom they deemed to be too focused on the handover of responsibility to the Iraqis instead of on restoring peace to Baghdad's strife-torn neighborhoods.
But it wasn't until Monday, when Bush was going over a draft of the address he planned to deliver on television Wednesday, that they confronted the issue of who would coordinate the administration's new economic initiatives for Iraq.
Bush was planning to propose increasing the number of province-level reconstruction teams operating outside the Green Zone from 10 to 18. There would be new efforts to help the Iraqi government improve budgeting and management functions. And, most important, there would be a significant new emphasis on putting unemployed Iraqis to work. The strategy also included an implicit reversal of Bremer's policy on state-owned factories.
Scores of Americans ensconced in Baghdad's Green Zone would be involved: The U.S. Embassy has an economic section. There's a U.S. Agency for International Development mission. And there's the Project and Contracting Office, which manages reconstruction funded by an $18.4 billion U.S. aid package.
"Who's going to coordinate this?" Bush asked as he read through the economic initiatives, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting.
When Satterfield got back to his State Department office, he told his staff to "give me names."
The next day -- less than 36 hours before Bush addressed the nation -- Satterfield called Carney.