Bremer, Paul Coalit. PA

===

fail but also bush sinecure plum?

assclowns put on resume ilya shapiro

feith ledeen pal

===

AN 9 24

alternet-no lnx

Inside the billionaire's trick to keep people from voting

Thom Hartmann

September 23, 2024

Outside of Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan (and a hedge fund guy), just about all American billionaires are white. And while their white privilege helped most of them to become billionaires in the first place, for the politically active billionaires on the right, it’s their money that they care about the most.

Fred Koch, the founding patriarch of the Koch family, was an early supporter of the John Birch Society (JBS), which vigorously opposed any efforts to reduce the powers of the very wealthy white people or elevate the wealth or political power of poor or working-class people. Their most public positions in the 1950s and 1960s were against racial integration and communism— the ultimate method for leveling the fortunes of the rich. The JBS opposed virtually all “welfare” legislation, from Social Security to Medicare to unemployment insurance, calling it socialism and equating it with a softer version of communism. Around that same time, a Russian immigrant who’d fled the Soviet Union (her father had lost his pharmacy shop to the Bolshevik Revolution) came to America with dreams of becoming a great author or actress. Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum chose the stage and pen name of Ayn Rand, and in the 1950s she wrote a rather simplistic novel celebrating inherited wealth.

In Atlas Shrugged, a young woman and her hapless brother inherit a railroad from their father and try to grow it strong over opposition from the unions, which want a safe workplace and reasonable pay. As George Monbiot wrote:

In a notorious passage, she argues that all the passengers in a train filled with poisoned fumes deserved their fate. One, for instance, was a teacher who taught children to be team players; one was a mother married to a civil servant, who cared for her children; one was a housewife “who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing.”35

It means nothing, in other words, if average people are ground into the dirt. But when people who inherited wealth face challenges, particularly those from average working families, they should be able to utterly destroy them.

ALSO READ: Trump has a brand new front in the Haitian conspiracy push

In a subsequent novel, The Fountainhead, one of the “producers” of her mythology rapes a woman, but it’s all good because the woman decides that she enjoys it mid-rape. Monbiot boils it down simply: “Rand’s is the philosophy of the psychopath, a misanthropic fantasy of cruelty, revenge, and greed.”

While Fred Koch was helping the JBS in its fight against taxes and regulation, his sons were apparently reading Ayn Rand and taking her philosophy of radical selfishness to heart. They were also, by the 1970s, running the Koch oil operation and having constant struggles with regulators, particularly during the Carter administration.

Looking for political juice, David Koch joined and then largely took over the Libertarian Party in the late 1970s.

That political party had been created by the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), a lobbying group formed in 1946 that represented the Big Three carmakers, the top three US oil companies, Monsanto, DuPont, GE, Merrill Lynch, Eli Lilly, and both US Steel and Republic Steel. Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society, was on its board of directors, as were United Fruit president Herb Cornuelle; National Association of Manufacturers director and DuPont and GM board member Donaldson Brown; and Leonard Read, a longtime US Chamber of Commerce executive.

The mission of the new libertarian movement was straightforward: to lobby for the interests of big business and the uber-wealthy people that such business had created.

The same year that the FEE was created and they began the rollout of libertarianism, Congress busted an obscure University of Chicago economist named Milton Friedman for illegally shilling for the real estate industry.

As Mark Ames wrote:

The purpose of the FEE—and libertarianism, as it was originally created—was to supplement big business lobbying with a pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-economics rationale to back up its policy and legislative attacks on labor and government regulations.

This background is important in the Milton Friedman story because Friedman is a founder of libertarianism and neoliberalism, and because the corrupt lobbying deal he was busted playing a part in was arranged through the Foundation for Economic Education.36

Friedman was later implicated in the aftermath of the brutal and violent takedown of democracy in Chile, and his acolytes helped privatize the state-owned properties of the Soviet Union, creating the kleptocratic and oligarchic government that now runs Russia and many of the former Soviet states. Libertarianism, it turns out, has had real-world impacts, which include the deaths of hundreds of thousands.

No country has ever successfully established a libertarian form of economy or governance; it was, after all, a scam set up to front for the very rich, and the corporations that made them that way. But that hasn’t stopped libertarian and corporatist ideologues from trying.

While Chile and Russia are well-known examples, few Americans seem to remember how George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld simply stood on the sidelines watching as the treasures of Iraq were looted after the United States took down their government.

It was to be a Grand Experiment: they’d finally prove that without government interference in a nation’s economy or social systems, an utopia would emerge. L. Paul Bremer was their front man, arriving in Iraq on May 2, 2003, to begin the process of “freeing” the country’s economy so that the world’s corporations would flood in and create a paradise.

DISASTER CAPITALISM?!

As Naomi Klein wrote for Harper’s Magazine in an article titled “Baghdad Year Zero”:

The tone of Bremer’s tenure was set with his first major act on the job: he fired 500,000 state workers, most of them soldiers, but also doctors, nurses, teachers, publishers, and printers. Next, he flung open the country’s borders to absolutely unrestricted imports: no tariffs, no duties, no inspections, no taxes. Iraq, Bremer declared two weeks after he arrived, was “open for business.”

One month later, Bremer unveiled the centerpiece of his reforms. Before the invasion, Iraq’s non-oil-related economy had been dominated by 200 state-owned companies, which produced everything from cement to paper to washing machines. In June, Bremer flew to an economic summit in Jordan and announced that these firms would be privatized immediately. “Getting inefficient state enterprises into private hands,” he said, “is essential for Iraq’s economic recovery.” It would be the largest state liquidation sale since the collapse of the Soviet Union.37

Once again, Milton Friedman, the FEE’s heirs, and libertarianism made a few more billionaires and destroyed the lives of literally millions of people.

The source of the funds being channeled to Friedman back in 1949 was a man named Herbert Nelson, who was the chief lobbyist and executive vice president of the National Association of Real Estate Boards, which not only was opposed to rent control laws but also had one of the largest lobbying budgets in Washington, DC.

Congressional investigators found a letter he wrote in 1949 saying:

“I do not believe in democracy. I think it stinks. I don’t think anybody except direct taxpayers should be allowed to vote.

“I don’t believe women should be allowed to vote at all. Ever since they started, our public affairs have been in a worse mess than ever.”38

Although the details are still a bit fuzzy, it appears that libertarianism (and the creation of a political party using that name) was Nelson’s idea, or at least one he promoted vigorously. With a budget of over $60 million (in today’s dollars), Nelson hired the FEE to come up with a third party that would argue for the interests of the wealthy developers and landlords he represented. The FEE, in turn, hired Milton Friedman.

Reason Magazine, heavily funded by the Kochs, was the main voice of the libertarian movement in the 1970s, and in 1977 it published a fascinating article by Moshe Kroy that described how libertarians should market their free-market fundamentalism to skeptical Americans.

Noting that it was important not to lie to people outright, Kroy wrote:

“The point is that you can use tricks—and you’d better, if you really want libertarianism to have a fighting chance.”39

The tricks involved repackaging and reframing libertarian dogma and using “salesmanship.”

For example, Kroy asserted that the average person wouldn’t understand an abstraction like individual rights. So don’t even bother explaining how libertarianism would shrink government and empower corporations and the rich. “Instead,” Kroy wrote”

“[W]hat you can do is to explain to him that libertarianism is just against one thing: CRIME. By crime you mean just what he means: theft, robbery, kidnapping, enslavement. He will of course agree, because he thinks this is obvious. Then you just explain (at great length, and with many examples) that taxation is armed robbery, that inflation through deficit spending and money printing is theft—as well as forgery of money—that draft is basically kidnapping, etc.”40

This was something the average person could understand. The government that people thought would protect them from polluting corporations, would provide an efficient court and fiscal system to protect their jobs and bank accounts from corporate grifters, and would defend their lives in war if necessary—that government was, in fact, an evil thing.

If the billionaires could get the average American to look at government the way that oil, chemical, real estate, and banking industry billionaires did, and just elect politicians who were bought and paid for by those industries, then things would get very, very easy.

===

dad born 1941, phd VN chickenhawk

CPA massive fail (literally threw out the plan]

2004

...Now if you will permit me one last personal note. Krugman engages in egregious character assassination in the article of Simone Ledeen, Michael’s daughter. This is the kind of personal attack I believe to be endemic to Krugman’s form of partisanship and should not have been allowed by The New York Times. Krugman implied that Ms. Ledeen benefited from nepotism and was not qualified to serve in Iraq. This could not be further from the truth. Simone Ledeen, who did accounting for the CPA, was a fully qualified MBA and exactly the kind of young person you would want to see serving in Iraq (not a simple thing to find, obviously, for a dangerous war zone). I met her for the first time last week, having dinner with her twice. I listened to her detailed analyses of what was going on over there that were in many ways as critical as Krugman’s, but far more subtle and educated because she had spent over half a year in Iraq, visiting many parts of the country, working with and training Iraqis with whom she became friends. I know nothing of the quotes that Krugman cherry-picked for his article or of their context, but can assure you and him that this young woman is no warmonger. The kind of reactionary (word chosen very specifically) character assassination he has engaged in is despicable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/29/opinion/29KRUG.html

Opinion

Who Lost Iraq?

By Paul Krugman

June 29, 2004

The formal occupation of Iraq came to an ignominious end yesterday with a furtive ceremony, held two days early to foil insurgent attacks, and a swift airborne exit for the chief administrator. In reality, the occupation will continue under another name, most likely until a hostile Iraqi populace demands that we leave. But it's already worth asking why things went so wrong.

The Iraq venture may have been doomed from the start — but we’ll never know for sure because the Bush administration made such a mess of the occupation. Future historians will view it as a case study of how not to run a country.

Up to a point, the numbers in the Brookings Institution’s invaluable Iraq Index tell the tale. Figures on the electricity supply and oil production show a pattern of fitful recovery and frequent reversals; figures on insurgent attacks and civilian casualties show a security situation that got progressively worse, not better; public opinion polls show an occupation that squandered the initial good will.

What the figures don’t describe is the toxic mix of ideological obsession and cronyism that lie behind that dismal performance.

The insurgency took root during the occupation’s first few months, when the Coalition Provisional Authority seemed oddly disengaged from the problems of postwar anarchy. But what was Paul Bremer III, the head of the C.P.A., focused on? According to a Washington Post reporter who shared a flight with him last June, “Bremer discussed the need to privatize government-run factories with such fervor that his voice cut through the din of the cargo hold.”

Plans for privatization were eventually put on hold. But as he prepared to leave Iraq, Mr. Bremer listed reduced tax rates, reduced tariffs and the liberalization of foreign-investment laws as among his major accomplishments. Insurgents are blowing up pipelines and police stations, geysers of sewage are erupting from the streets, and the electricity is off most of the time — but we’ve given Iraq the gift of supply-side economics.

If the occupiers often seemed oblivious to reality, one reason was that many jobs at the C.P.A. went to people whose qualifications seemed to lie mainly in their personal and political connections — people like Simone Ledeen, whose father, Michael Ledeen, a prominent neoconservative, told a forum that “the level of casualties is secondary” because “we are a warlike people” and “we love war.”

Still, given Mr. Bremer’s economic focus, you might at least have expected his top aide for private-sector development to be an expert on privatization and liberalization in such countries as Russia or Argentina. But the job initially went to Thomas Foley, a Connecticut businessman and Republican fund-raiser with no obviously relevant expertise. In March, Michael Fleischer, a New Jersey businessman, took over. Yes, he’s Ari Fleischer’s brother. Mr. Fleischer told The Chicago Tribune that part of his job was educating Iraqi businessmen: “The only paradigm they know is cronyism. We are teaching them that there is an alternative system with built-in checks and built-in review.”

Checks and review? Yesterday a leading British charity, Christian Aid, released a scathing report, “Fueling Suspicion,” on the use of Iraqi oil revenue. It points out that the May 2003 U.N. resolution giving the C.P.A. the right to spend that revenue required the creation of an international oversight board, which would appoint an auditor to ensure that the funds were spent to benefit the Iraqi people.

Instead, the U.S. stalled, and the auditor didn’t begin work until April 2004. Even then, according to an interim report, it faced “resistance from C.P.A. staff.” And now, with the audit still unpublished, the C.P.A. has been dissolved.

Defenders of the administration will no doubt say that Christian Aid and other critics have no proof that the unaccounted-for billions were ill spent. But think of it this way: given the Arab world’s suspicion that we came to steal Iraq’s oil, the occupation authorities had every incentive to expedite an independent audit that would clear Halliburton and other U.S. corporations of charges that they were profiteering at Iraq’s expense. Unless, that is, the charges are true.

Let’s say the obvious. By making Iraq a playground for right-wing economic theorists, an employment agency for friends and family, and a source of lucrative contracts for corporate donors, the administration did terrorist recruiters a very big favor.

===

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_Provisional_Authority

Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA; Arabic: سلطة الائتلاف المؤقتة, Kurdish: هاوپەيمانى دەسەڵاتى كاتى) was a transitional government of Iraq established following the invasion of the country on 19 March 2003 by the U.S.-led Multinational Force (or 'the coalition') and the fall of Ba'athist Iraq.

Citing United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483 (2003) and the laws of war, the CPA was established in May 2003 and vested itself with executive, legislative, and judicial authority over the Iraqi government from the period of the CPA's inception on 21 April 2003 until its dissolution on 28 June 2004 (14 months, 1 week).

The CPA was strongly criticised for its mismanagement of funds allocated to the reconstruction of Iraq, with over $8 billion of these unaccounted for,^[4][5][6] including over $1.6 billion in cash that emerged in a basement in Lebanon.^[7]

History of the CPA

The Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) was established on 20 January 2003 by the United States government two months before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.^[8] It was intended to act as a caretaker administration in Iraq until the creation of a democratically elected civilian government.

Retired United States Army Lieutenant General Jay Garner was appointed as the Director of ORHA, along with three deputies, including British Major-General Tim Cross, in 2003. Upon the dissolution of ORHA and the creation of the CPA, he then became the first chief executive of the CPA. Due to his past military experiences in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and his reconstruction efforts in northern Iraq during Operation Provide Comfort, Garner's credentials and close ties to the U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made him an obvious choice for the task. His term, however, lasted only from 21 April 2003 until he was replaced abruptly less than a month later by L. Paul Bremer on 11 May 2003.

Garner's swift dismissal from his post by U.S. authorities came as a surprise to many within the CPA. In an interview with the BBC program Newsnight Garner publicly stated that his preference was to put the Iraqi people in charge as soon as possible and to do it with some form of elections.

Upon assuming the post of chief executive of the CPA in May 2003, L. Paul Bremer also assumed the title of U.S. Presidential Envoy and Administrator in Iraq. He was frequently called Ambassador by numerous media organizations and the White House because it was the highest government rank he had achieved (Ambassador to Netherlands). But Bremer was not ambassador to Iraq, and there was no U.S. diplomatic mission in Iraq until June 2004, after the CPA transferred sovereignty to the Iraqi Interim Government.^[9] At the CPA, Bremer moved quickly to install opaque and corruption-prone methods for the withdrawal and transportation of extremely large amounts of cash often transported from the US to Iraq by C-17 transport plane.^[10]

The CPA was created and funded as a division of the United States Department of Defense, and as Administrator, Bremer reported directly to the Secretary of Defense. Although troops from several of the coalition countries were present in Iraq at this time, the U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) was the primary military apparatus charged with providing direct combat support to the CPA to enforce its authority during the occupation of Iraq.

While many of Saddam Hussein's ornate palaces were looted in the days immediately following the invasion, most of the physical structures themselves survived relatively intact. It is in these numerous palaces situated throughout the country that the CPA chose to set up office in order to govern. Several of these palaces were retained by the U.S. government even after the transition of power back to the Iraqi people. The administration was centered in a district of Baghdad known as the Green Zone, which eventually became a highly secure walled-off enclave.

The CPA was also responsible for administering the Development Fund for Iraq during the year following the invasion. This fund superseded the earlier UN oil-for-food program, and provided funding for Iraq's wheat purchase program, the currency exchange program, the electricity and oil infrastructure programs, equipment for Iraq's security forces, Iraqi civil service salaries, and the operations of the various government ministries.

L. Paul Bremer (second from left) and four members of the Iraqi Governing Council; Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Ahmed Chalabi, Adnan Pachachi, and Adil Abdul-Mahdi. (Left to Right)

The first act of the CPA under Bremer, Coalition Provisional Authority Order 1, was to order the de-Ba'athification of Iraqi society. On 23 May, CPA Order Number 2 formally disbanded the Iraqi army,^[11] as well as other public servants including nurses and doctors and eventually led to the direct unemployment of more than 500,000 Iraqi citizens.^[12] On 22 July 2003, the CPA formed the Iraqi Governing Council and appointed its members. The Council membership consisted largely of Iraqi expatriates who had previously fled the country during the rule of Saddam Hussein and also with many outspoken dissidents who had been persecuted by the former regime. The CPA under Bremer then went on to privatise and sell off publicly owned assets and companies to multinational companies, whilst setting about issuing unilaterally developed decrees such as Order 37 and Order 39, which reduced Iraq's corporation tax from 40% to 15% ^[13] and allowed foreign entities to enjoy 100% ownership of Iraqi assets.^[13]

Though still subordinate to the CPA, the Iraqi Governing Council had several key responsibilities of its own: appointing representatives to the United Nations, appointing interim ministers to Iraq's vacant cabinet positions, and drafting a temporary constitution known as the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), which would be used to govern Iraq until a permanent constitution could be written and approved by the general electorate.

In the late afternoon of 14 December 2003, the CPA held a press conference at the Iraqi Forum convention center within Baghdad's Green Zone to announce that former President of Iraq Saddam Hussein had been taken into custody the previous night from a foxhole in a town near Saddam's home town of Tikrit, Iraq. Present at the announcement was Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez of the U.S. Army, Administrator Bremer, members of the British and American intelligence agencies, several members of the Iraqi Governing Council, and a large room full of journalists representing news organizations from around the world.

In order to defeat possible insurgent planning and under pressure from the Bush White House which wanted the occupation to end by the 2004 presidential election, the CPA transferred power to the newly appointed Iraqi Interim Government at 10:26 AM local time on 28 June 2004. The transfer of power was originally scheduled for 30 June 2004, but because of a concern that the transfer would lead to insurgent attacks the ceremony was held, unannounced, two days ahead of schedule. The transfer took place behind closed doors with little fanfare. With the CPA disbanded, Bremer left Iraq that same day.

The United States hoped that Iraq could be reconstructed and democratized in much the same way as Japan and Germany were after the Second World War, using them as "examples or even models of successful military occupations."^[14]

===

When President Bush announced “Mission Accomplished,” and the end of the war in May 2003, he also said we would help the citizens of Iraq rebuild their country. “Now that the dictator’s gone,” he stated, “we and our coalition partners are helping Iraqis to lay the foundations of a free economy.”

Apparently he was referring to the Coalition Provisional Authority that took up residence in Saddam’s luxurious palace in May 2003, with the newly appointed King, Paul Bremer. The CPA was granted the authority to award reconstruction contracts in Iraq and it used that authority to implement what will go down in the history books as the most blatant war profiteering scheme of all time.

In large part, the masterminds of the reconstruction disaster that would occur after the CPA took over Iraq were Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and Undersecretary of Defense, Douglas Feith.

But to ensure control of the contracting process on the ground in Iraq, Bush filled the top slots of the CPA with the administration cronies. For instance,a friend of Cheney’s, Peter McPherson, took a leave of absence as president of Michigan State University to serve as Bremer’s economic deputy.

The leader of the CPA’s private development sector was Thomas Foley, an old college classmate of Bush, who served as finance chairman for his Presidential campaign in Connecticut and also raised more than $100,000 for Bush.

Relatives of the administration were also given jobs, such as Ari Fleischer’s brother Michael, and Simone Ledeen, the daughter of Michael Ledeen. Cheney’s daughter Liz, also did a short stint. However, it should be noted that none of them lounged around for too long in what soon became a hellhole in Iraq.

On May 16, 2003, the CPA issued its first regulation and described its authority in no uncertain terms stating:

“The CPA is vested with all executive, legislative, and judicial authority necessary to achieve its objectives, to be exercised under relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions, including resolution 1483 (2003), and the laws and usages of war. This authority shall be exercised by the CPA Administrator.”

With one swipe of the pen, Bremer granted himself the authority to run the government ministries, appoint Iraqi officials and award contracts for reconstruction. Next he fired 500,000 Iraqis, most of them soldiers, but pink slips also went out to many doctors, nurses, teachers and other public employees as well.

For the most part, the CPA financed its activities with billions of dollars that belonged to the Iraqis. On May 22, 2003, a UN Security Council passed a resolution that directed the proceeds from Iraqi oil to be placed in a Development Fund for Iraq, and the CPA was granted authority to control the fund and decide which profiteers would get contracts.

During the year that Bremer controlled the purse strings, the Iraqi Development Fund received $20.2 billion, including $8.1 billion from the UN’s oil-for-food program, $10.8 billion from Iraqi oil, and the rest from repatriated funds, vested assets and donations.

The CPA accounting system was cash and carry and a steady stream of cash was flown into Bagdad from theUS. Inspector General, Stuart Bowen later said that he knew of one $2 billion flight.

A report released by the House Government Reform Committee in February 2007, shows that in the 13 months that Bremer ruled, from May 2003 to June 2004, the Federal Reserve Bank in New York shipped nearly $12 billion in a cash to Iraq.

One can only imagine the Bank service charges associated with these shipments because to accomplish this feat, according to the Democratic chairman of the Reform Committee, Henry Waxman, thecash weighed 363 tonsand the Bank had to count and pack 281 million individual bills, including more than 107 million $100 bills, and then load them onto wooden pallets to be shipped to Bagdad on C-130 cargo planes.

Inspector Bowen later said that he determined that some of this cash went to pay salaries for thousands of “ghost employees” and Iraqi civil servants who did not exist.

Within a few months of the CPA’s arrival in Iraq reports of corruption in the contracting process began appearing in the media. A British adviser to the Iraqi Governing Council told the BBC that officials in the CPA were demanding bribes of up to $300,000 in return for contracts.

Reports of flat out-fraud remained steady throughout Bremer’s reign in Iraq. One audit showed that the CPA Ministry of Finance could not provide documentation for about $17 million spent on employee salaries in February 2004, and a CPA Advisor to the Ministry of the Interior said the Ministry was paid for 8,602 guards but only 602 could be verified.

A CPA advisor to the Ministry of Finance was so concerned about payroll corruption that he submitted a formal complaint that stated in part: “Of the 1.6 million government employees currently on payroll, credible estimates put the number of ghost workers at somewhere between 250,000-300,000 employees.”

An October 2004, audit performed for the International Advisory and Monitoring Board, created by the UN to monitor the spending of Iraqi money, found one case where a payment of $2.6 million was authorized by a CPA senior adviser to the Ministry of Oil, and auditors were unable to obtain an underlying contract or any evidence that the services had been rendered.

The auditors in this group found 37 cases where files could not be located for contracts worth $185 million all total. In another 52 cases, there was no record that goods had been received for a total of $87.9 million.

People on the ground in Iraq said that doing business with the CPA was reminiscent of the Wild West. Former CPA employees told a congressional committee that sackfuls of cash were tossed around like footballs. Franklin Willis, showed pictures of himself and others holding up bundles of $100 notes totaling $2 million, which he said was used to pay the contractor Custer Battles. “We told them to come in and bring a bag,” Willis said.

He also testified that millions of dollars in $100 bills were stored in the basement of the CPA offices and distributed to favored contractors with little accounting discipline. For instance, in the year that the CPA ruled, Custer was awarded contracts worth more than $100 million.

Two former Custer employees ended up filing a lawsuit under the Federal False Claims Act, saying Custer had swindled $50 million from the CPA with scams like double-billing for salaries and repainting the forklifts found at the Baghdad airport and then leasing them back to the US government.

The employees said the CPA paid the Custer $15 million to provide security for Iraq’s civilian airline, when no services were needed because the airline was grounded during the time covered by the contract.

These employees said they kept informing the CPA about Custer’s fraudulent conduct for more than a year and when they asked why the firm continued to get contracts, they were told: “Battles is very active in the Republican party, and speaks to individuals he knows in the Whitehouse almost daily.”

In June 2004, the Government Accounting Office estimated that more than $1 billion in had been wasted due to illegal overcharges by contractors since the war began. A later audit by the Iraqi government found that as much as $1.27 billion was lost to accounting irregularities between June 2004 and February 2005.

Inspector Bowen cited two examples of poor oversight in a November 3, 2005 interview on National Public Radio where $28 million was paid to build 5 power plants and $1.8 million was paid to rebuild a library, but the work was never performed and the money

“simply disappeared,” he said.

A recent report by Bowen says DynCorp was paid $43.8 million for a residential camp for police training personnel and has been empty for months and that the company may also have billed $18 million in other unjustified costs.

About $4.2 million, he says, was improperly spent on 20 VIP trailers and an Olympic-size pool and an additional $36.4 million in spending for weapons such as armored vehicles, body armor and communications equipment that cannot be accounted for.

Not surprisingly, Cheney’s Halliburton remained the top profiteer under Bremer’s rule. A July 23, 2004, audit conducted by Bowen, showed the company had received 60% of all contracts paid for with Iraq money, including 5 no-bid contracts worth $222 million, $325 million, $180 million, and the last 2 together totaled $194 million for the last two. In comparison, the audit showed that the CPA awarded only 2% of the reconstruction contracts to Iraqi companies.

In one example of blatant fraud, an audit found that Halliburton was charging for more than 41,000 meals a day for soldiers when only about 14,000 were served.

By the fall of 2003, the country was realizing that the rational for war was based on lies and that the only ones drawing any benefits were the profiteers. So when Bush asked Congress for another $20 billion for the CPA, Bremer was summoned to Washington to explain where all the money was going and of course he testified in full stonewall mode.

Before the Appropriations Committee on September 22, 2003, Bremer said the CPA had detailed records of all its receipts and outlays that could be audited by Congress. But when he testified before the Armed Services Committee 3 days later he said the Office of Management and Budget was responsible for maintaining the CPA records and that Congress would have to go to the White House to access the records.

That arrogant assertion went over like a lead balloon with many members of Congress. Senator Robert Byrd said he was outraged over the inability to monitor CPA spending. “There is no reason why any arm of the executive branch charged with making such significant spending decisions,” he said, “should not be working directly with Congress.”

“When we’re talking about handing over another $20 billion to the CPA,” he said, “there is a real need for Congress to confirm that the CPA has its finances in order and that it is managing the taxpayer’s money responsibly.”

“We don’t even know how much of the $20 billion,” Byrd said, “will flow to government contractors in Iraq.”

“Whatever the amount is,” he noted, “we know that the size and scope of the profits being made will be enormous.”

“Former Bush Administration officials,” he warned fellow Senators, “are even setting up consulting firms to act as middlemen for contractors hoping to take part in the bonanza.”

“Are we turning the U.S. Treasury into a grab bag for favorite campaign contributors to be financed at taxpayer expense?” he asked.

The answer was yes, and what a grab bag it was. Media reports revealed that Bush’s ex-campaign manager and Feith’s former law partner had set up consulting firms to profit off the war by lining up contracts for clients through their partners in crime within the CPA.

Other reports revealed that contracts worth $407 were awarded to a firm called Nour that was formed less than 2 months after the war began. The names linked to the profits from Nour, among many others, included former Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, Ahmad Chalabi via a $2 million kickback, his nephew Salam Chalabi as the attorney handling the deal, and the money trail even led to the First Brothers, Marvin and Jeb Bush.

But come to find out, Doug Feith the ringleader on the ground in Washington, had awarded a batch of no-bid contracts to a favored company the month before the war began for the purpose of controlling the media in post-war Iraq.

In October 2003, the Center for Public Integrity obtained copies of 7 contracts awarded to the San Diego-based Science Applications.The total value of the contracts was redacted but the Center was able to determine that they were all awarded in February 2003, and called for the work to be directed by Feith.

However, the Center’s most stunning discovery was that when the contracts were awarded, Feith’s top deputy at the time, Christopher “Ryan” Henry, had been a senior vice president at SAIC until October 2002.

In addition, one of SAIC’s board members was Army General, Wayne Downing, who ran counterterrorism in the Bush administration for almost a year after 9/11, and had even went to the CIA with Cheney to discuss intelligence on Iraq. Downing had also served as an advisor to Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, and was well-known advocate for a war against Saddam.

Some of the SAIC contracts required that specific persons referred to as “executive management consultants” be hired and the pay range listed went as high as $209 and $273 per hour. The Center said congressional sources estimated the value of the media contract as $38 million for the first year and as high $90 million in 2004.

The SAIC had no special expertise to justify the award of these contracts. One company executive, quoted in the media, said the firm’s only credential for setting up an independent media, supposedly modeled after the BBC, was military work in “informational warfare”-signal jamming, “perception management,” and the like.

Under these contracts, the Iraq Media Network (IMN) was established and journalist, Mark North, who covered the Iraq invasion for National Public Radio, was hired to train Iraqi journalists to report for the IMN.

In one of the many Congressional hearings, North testified about the control of the IMN by the CPA and said CPA officials regularly directed and censored the activities of the news station and provided “a laundry list of CPA activities” to cover in the news reports instead of stories about security or the lack of electricity and jobs

While testifying, he also described the CPA’s shabby treatment of Iraqi employees and its refusal to pay their wages. “For the first two months,” North said, “the local staff of about 200 journalists and technicians were not paid their salaries.”

When the staffers went on strike in attempt to get paid, he said, the CPA told the Iraqis to get back to work or the US Army would remove them from the studios.

All total, the CPA had control of Iraqi money for one year between June 2003 and June 2004, but unfortunately no auditors arrived to take a look at the agency’s spending until April 2004, two months before the CPA’s rule was scheduled to end.

And as so often happens when it comes to giving solid advice or warnings, the senior Senator from Virginia was absolutely right. It was far too late for audits, because the CPA and its gang of profiteers had already robbed the Iraqis blind.

The favored companies enjoyed a fraud-free-all. For instance, Halliburton said it had lost over $60 million worth of government property including trucks, office furniture and computers. Inspector Bowen reported that 6,975 items valued at $61.1 million were lost, and in June 2005, the Defense Contract Audit Agency reported that the Halliburton had overcharged or presented questionable bills for close to $1.5 billion.

In the end, Bowen’s audit concluded that “the CPA’s internal controls for approximately $8.8 billion in DFI funds disbursed to Iraqi ministries through the national budget process failed to provide sufficient accountability for the use of those funds.”

As of February 2007, according to Bowen, audits of the CPA have resulted in 300 criminal and civil investigations, 5 arrests and convictions, and another 23 cases are currently under prosecution at the DOJ, and he is working on 76 on-going investigations.

One of the convictions involved Robert Stein, a former CPA comptroller and funding officer, who recently pleaded guilty to 5 felony counts including conspiracy, money laundering, and bribery in stealing more than $2 million of reconstruction funds and taking more than $1 million in kickbacks to rig the bids on contracts that exceeded $8 million.

The whistleblower case against Custer Battle went to trial and a jury found that Custer had committed 37 acts of fraud and filed $3 million in false claims, and rendered a verdict with a $10 million penalty. However, the verdict was overturned by Republican appointed US District Court Judge TS Ellis III, who ruled that the CPA was not a US entity and therefore the false claims act does not apply to it.

In the ruling, the judge said Custer’s accusers “failed to prove that the U.S. government was ever defrauded. Any fraud that occurred was perpetrated instead against the Coalition Provisional Authority, formed to run Iraq until a government was established.”

Legal experts say this ruling is great news for the CPA and contractors because from now on anyone charged with any act of fraud related to the Iraqi money doled out by the CPA in Bagdad will use it in attempt to avoid civil or criminal prosecution.

EVELYN PRINGLE can be reached at: evelyn-pringle@sbcglobal.net

http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/04/21/how-iraq-was-looted/

http://fpif.org/just-much-paul-bremer-blamed-rise-islamic-state/

no link guard uk

After George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Bremer, the second Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq (governor of the occupation, in other words), is often considered the man most responsible for the dissolution of civil society in Iraq and the rise of sectarian strife. In the Boston Globe, Neil Swidey (not behind a paywall, as with most of its articles) explores just how much responsibility Bremer, who he calls “at once well intentioned, infuriating, and tragic,” bears.

Swidey quotes from an article he wrote in 2003, in which Middle East specialist As’ad AbuKhalil said: “The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan gave us the Taliban. The American occupation of Saudi Arabia gave us bin Laden and Al Qaeda. The Israeli occupation of Lebanon gave us Hezbollah. Let us see what the American occupation of Iraq is going to give us.”

We all know the answer to that: the Islamic State — perhaps the most authoritarian, cruelest, and powerful terrorist organization of all time. The Islamic State, of course, is comprised at its command levels by former members of Saddam Hussein’s military. You know, the one that Paul Bremer disbanded shortly after he banned much of the Baath Party from civil service jobs under the new regime. For his part, writes Swidey:

Although Bremer has come to be regarded as the sole author of this decree to root out Saddam loyalists from the Iraqi government, that is simply not true. Drafts of the order had been circulating around the Pentagon long before Bremer’s appointment.

Swidey continues:

No one disputes that some level of deBaathification was necessary. Critics say Bremer’s big mistake was in rushing through a policy that went far too deep. It ensnared many Iraqis who had joined the Baath Party not because they were true believers but simply to see their pay goosed or avoid running afoul of Saddam’s goons.

… In the end, the deBaathification order is believed to have hoovered up 85,000 to 100,000 Iraqis,including thousands of teachers and mid-level technocrats who were summarily shut out of Iraq’s public sector future.

As for disbanding the Iraq military, also dictated by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al, Swidey spoke to Bremer’s predecessor Jay Garner, who said “that with the one-two punch of deBaathification and disbanding the military, ‘we created half a million angry, armed, unemployed Iraqis in 48 hours. That’s dumb.’”

Swidey explains that it could have been different.

Garner’s deputy for national security, US Army Colonel Paul Hughes, says. … he had been working with a group of former Iraqi officers who were signing up members of their units to be put to work by the Americans so they could provide for their families.Some 137,000 members of the military registered. Hughes says he passed this all along, but [it was ignored].

All things considered, the arrogance reflected in the planning is reminiscent of German arrogance in thinking it could sweep through Russia in World War II. I have only scratched the surface of this important, eye-opening article which I urge everyone to read.

THE EMERALD CITY

Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq

U.S. troops relax in Baghdad's Green Zone, where many Coalition Provisional Authority staffers spent their days.

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, September 17,2006

Adapted from "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, copyright Knopf 2006

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.simone ledeen?

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.

Finance Background Not Required

Twenty-four-year-old Jay Hallen was restless. He had graduated from Yale two years earlier, and he didn't much like his job at a commercial real-estate firm. His passion was the Middle East, and although he had never been there, he was intrigued enough to take Arabic classes and read histories of the region in his spare time.

He had mixed feelings about the war in Iraq, but he viewed the American occupation as a ripe opportunity. In the summer of 2003, he sent an e-mail to Reuben Jeffrey III, whom he had met when applying for a White House job a year earlier. Hallen had a simple query for Jeffrey, who was working as an adviser to Bremer: Might there be any job openings in Baghdad?

"Be careful what you wish for," Jeffrey wrote in response. Then he forwarded Hallen's resume to O'Beirne's office.

Three weeks later, Hallen got a call from the Pentagon. The CPA wanted him in Baghdad. Pronto. Could he be ready in three to four weeks?

The day he arrived in Baghdad, he met with Thomas C. Foley, the CPA official in charge of privatizing state-owned enterprises. (Foley, a major Republican Party donor, went to Harvard Business School with President Bush.) Hallen was shocked to learn that Foley wanted him to take charge of reopening the stock exchange.

"Are you sure?" Hallen said to Foley. "I don't have a finance background."

It's fine, Foley replied. He told Hallen that he was to be the project manager. He would rely on other people to get things done. He would be "the main point of contact."

Before the war, Baghdad's stock exchange looked nothing like its counterparts elsewhere in the world. There were no computers, electronic displays or men in colorful coats scurrying around on the trading floor. Trades were scrawled on pieces of paper and noted on large blackboards. If you wanted to buy or sell, you came to the exchange yourself and shouted your order to one of the traders. There was no air-conditioning. It was loud and boisterous. But it worked. Private firms raised hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling stock, and ordinary people learned about free enterprise.

The exchange was gutted by looters after the war. The first wave of American economic reconstruction specialists from the Treasury Department ignored it. They had bigger issues to worry about: paying salaries, reopening the banks, stabilizing the currency. But the brokers wanted to get back to work and investors wanted their money, so the CPA made the reopening a priority.

Quickly absorbing the CPA's ambition during the optimistic days before the insurgency flared, Hallen decided that he didn't just want to reopen the exchange, he wanted to make it the best, most modern stock market in the Arab world. He wanted to promulgate a new securities law that would make the exchange independent of the Finance Ministry, with its own bylaws and board of directors. He wanted to set up a securities and exchange commission to oversee the market. He wanted brokers to be licensed and listed companies to provide financial disclosures. He wanted to install a computerized trading and settlement system.

Iraqis cringed at Hallen's plan. Their top priority was reopening the exchange, not setting up computers or enacting a new securities law. "People are broke and bewildered," broker Talib Tabatabai told Hallen. "Why do you want to create enemies? Let us open the way we were."

Tabatabai, who held a doctorate in political science from Florida State University, believed Hallen's plan was unrealistic. "It was something so fancy, so great, that it couldn't be accomplished," he said.

But Hallen was convinced that major changes had to be enacted. "Their laws and regulations were completely out of step with the modern world," he said. "There was just no transparency in anything. It was more of a place for Saddam and his friends to buy up private companies that they otherwise didn't have a stake in."

Opening the stock exchange without legal and structural changes, Hallen maintained, "would have been irresponsible and short-sighted."

To help rewrite the securities law, train brokers and purchase the necessary computers, Hallen recruited a team of American volunteers. In the spring of 2004, Bremer approved the new law and simultaneously appointed the nine Iraqis selected by Hallen to become the exchange's board of governors.

e exchange's board selected Tabatabai as its chairman. The new securities law that Hallen had nursed into life gave the board control over the exchange's operations, but it didn't say a thing about the role of the CPA adviser. Hallen assumed that he'd have a part in decision-making until the handover of sovereignty. Tabatabai and the board, however, saw themselves in charge.

Tabatabai and the other governors decided to open the market as soon as possible. They didn't want to wait several more months for the computerized trading system to be up and running. They ordered dozens of dry-erase boards to be installed on the trading floor. They used such boards to keep track of buying and selling prices before the war, and that's how they'd do it again.

The exchange opened two days after Hallen's tour in Iraq ended. Brokers barked orders to floor traders, who used their trusty white boards. Transactions were recorded not with computers but with small chits written in ink. CPA staffers stayed away, afraid that their presence would make the stock market a target for insurgents.

When Tabatabai was asked what would have happened if Hallen hadn't been assigned to reopen the exchange, he smiled. "We would have opened months earlier. He had grand ideas, but those ideas did not materialize," Tabatabai said of Hallen. "Those CPA people reminded me of Lawrence of Arabia."

'Loyalist' Replaces Public Health Expert

The hiring of Bremer's most senior advisers was settled upon at the highest levels of the White House and the Pentagon. Some, like Foley, were personally recruited by Bush. Others got their jobs because an influential Republican made a call on behalf of a friend or trusted colleague.

That's what happened with James K. Haveman Jr., who was selected to oversee the rehabilitation of Iraq's health care system.

Haveman, a 60-year-old social worker, was largely unknown among international health experts, but he had connections. He had been the community health director for the former Republican governor of Michigan, John Engler, who recommended him to Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense.

Haveman was well-traveled, but most of his overseas trips were in his capacity as a director of International Aid, a faith-based relief organization that provided health care while promoting Christianity in the developing world. Before his stint in government, Haveman ran a large Christian adoption agency in Michigan that urged pregnant women not to have abortions.

Haveman replaced Frederick M. Burkle Jr., a physician with a master's degree in public health and postgraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and the University of California at Berkeley. Burkle taught at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where he specialized in disaster-response issues, and he was a deputy assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which sent him to Baghdad immediately after the war.

He had worked in Kosovo and Somalia and in northern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. A USAID colleague called him the "single most talented and experienced post-conflict health specialist working for the United States government."

But a week after Baghdad's liberation, Burkle was informed he was being replaced. A senior official at USAID sent Burkle an e-mail saying the White House wanted a "loyalist" in the job. Burkle had a wall of degrees, but he didn't have a picture with the president.

Haveman arrived in Iraq with his own priorities. He liked to talk about the number of hospitals that had reopened since the war and the pay raises that had been given to doctors instead of the still-decrepit conditions inside the hospitals or the fact that many physicians were leaving for safer, better paying jobs outside Iraq. He approached problems the way a health care administrator in America would: He focused on preventive measures to reduce the need for hospital treatment.

He urged the Health Ministry to mount an anti-smoking campaign, and he assigned an American from the CPA team -- who turned out to be a closet smoker himself -- to lead the public education effort. Several members of Haveman's staff noted wryly that Iraqis faced far greater dangers in their daily lives than tobacco. The CPA's limited resources, they argued, would be better used raising awareness about how to prevent childhood diarrhea and other fatal maladies.

Haveman didn't like the idea that medical care in Iraq was free. He figured Iraqis should pay a small fee every time they saw a doctor. He also decided to allocate almost all of the Health Ministry's $793 million share of U.S. reconstruction funds to renovating maternity hospitals and building new community medical clinics. His intention, he said, was "to shift the mind-set of the Iraqis that you don't get health care unless you go to a hospital."

But his decision meant there were no reconstruction funds set aside to rehabilitate the emergency rooms and operating theaters at Iraqi hospitals, even though injuries from insurgent attacks were the country's single largest public health challenge.

Haveman also wanted to apply American medicine to other parts of the Health Ministry. Instead of trying to restructure the dysfunctional state-owned firm that imported and distributed drugs and medical supplies to hospitals, he decided to try to sell it to a private company.

To prepare it for a sale, he wanted to attempt something he had done in Michigan. When he was the state's director of community health, he sought to slash the huge amount of money Michigan spent on prescription drugs for the poor by limiting the medications doctors could prescribe for Medicaid patients. Unless they received an exemption, physicians could only prescribe drugs that were on an approved list, known as a formulary.

Haveman figured the same strategy could bring down the cost of medicine in Iraq. The country had 4,500 items on its drug formulary. Haveman deemed it too large. If private firms were going to bid for the job of supplying drugs to government hospitals, they needed a smaller, more manageable list. A new formulary would also outline new requirements about where approved drugs could be manufactured, forcing Iraq to stop buying medicines from Syria, Iran and Russia, and start buying from the United States.

He asked the people who had drawn up the formulary in Michigan whether they wanted to come to Baghdad. They declined. So he beseeched the Pentagon for help. His request made its way to the Defense Department's Pharmacoeconomic Center in San Antonio.

A few weeks later, three formulary experts were on their way to Iraq.

The group was led by Theodore Briski, a balding, middle-aged pharmacist who held the rank of lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy. Haveman's order, as Briski remembered it, was: "Build us a formulary in two weeks and then go home." By his second day in Iraq, Briski came to three conclusions. First, the existing formulary "really wasn't that bad." Second, his mission was really about "redesigning the entire Iraqi pharmaceutical procurement and delivery system, and that was a complete change of scope -- on a grand scale." Third, Haveman and his advisers "really didn't know what they were doing."

Haveman "viewed Iraq as Michigan after a huge attack," said George Guszcza, an Army captain who worked on the CPA's health team. "Somehow if you went into the ghettos and projects of Michigan and just extended it out for the entire state -- that's what he was coming to save."

Haveman's critics, including more than a dozen people who worked for him in Baghdad, contend that rewriting the formulary was a distraction. Instead, they said, the CPA should have focused on restructuring, but not privatizing, the drug-delivery system and on ordering more emergency shipments of medicine to address shortages of essential medicines. The first emergency procurement did not occur until early 2004, after the Americans had been in Iraq for more than eight months.

Haveman insisted that revising the formulary was a crucial first step in improving the distribution of medicines. "It was unwieldy to order 4,500 different drugs, and to test and distribute them," he said.

When Haveman left Iraq, Baghdad's hospitals were as decrepit as the day the Americans arrived. At Yarmouk Hospital, the city's largest, rooms lacked the most basic equipment to monitor a patient's blood pressure and heart rate, operating theaters were without modern surgical tools and sterile implements, and the pharmacy's shelves were bare.

Nationwide, the Health Ministry reported that 40 percent of the 900 drugs it deemed essential were out of stock in hospitals. Of the 32 medicines used in public clinics for the management of chronic diseases, 26 were unavailable.

The new health minister, Aladin Alwan, beseeched the United Nations for help, and he asked neighboring nations to share what they could. He sought to increase production at a state-run manufacturing plant in the city of Samarra. And he put the creation of a new formulary on hold. To him, it was a fool's errand.

"We didn't need a new formulary. We needed drugs," he said. "But the Americans did not understand that."

A 9/11 Hero's Public Relations Blitz

In May 2003, a team of law enforcement experts from the Justice Department concluded that more than 6,600 foreign advisers were needed to help rehabilitate Iraq's police forces.

The White House dispatched just one: Bernie Kerik.

Bernard Kerik had more star power than Bremer and everyone else in the CPA combined. Soldiers stopped him in the halls of the Republican Palace to ask for his autograph or, if they had a camera, a picture. Reporters were more interested in interviewing him than they were the viceroy.

Kerik had been New York City's police commissioner when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. His courage (he shouted evacuation orders from a block away as the south tower collapsed), his stamina (he worked around the clock and catnapped in his office for weeks), and his charisma (he was a master of the television interview) turned him into a national hero. When White House officials were casting about for a prominent individual to take charge of Iraq's Interior Ministry and assume the challenge of rebuilding the Iraqi police, Kerik's name came up. Bush pronounced it an excellent idea.

Kerik had worked in the Middle East before, as the security director for a government hospital in Saudi Arabia, but he was expelled from the country amid a government investigation into his surveillance of the medical staff. He lacked postwar policing experience, but the White House viewed that as an asset.

Veteran Middle East hands were regarded as insufficiently committed to the goal of democratizing the region. Post-conflict experts, many of whom worked for the State Department, the United Nations or nongovernmental organizations, were deemed too liberal. Men such as Kerik -- committed Republicans with an accomplished career in business or government -- were ideal. They were loyal, and they shared the Bush administration's goal of rebuilding Iraq in an American image. With Kerik, there were bonuses: The media loved him, and the American public trusted him.

Robert Gifford, a State Department expert in international law enforcement, was one of the first CPA staff members to meet Kerik when he arrived in Baghdad. Gifford was the senior adviser to the Interior Ministry, which oversaw the police. Kerik was to take over Gifford's job.

"I understand you are going to be the man, and we are here to support you," Gifford told Kerik.

"I'm here to bring more media attention to the good work on police because the situation is probably not as bad as people think it is," Kerik replied.

As they entered the Interior Ministry office in the palace, Gifford offered to brief Kerik. "It was during that period I realized he wasn't with me," Gifford recalled. "He didn't listen to anything. He hadn't read anything except his e-mails. I don't think he read a single one of our proposals."

Kerik wasn't a details guy. He was content to let Gifford figure out how to train Iraqi officers to work in a democratic society. Kerik would take care of briefing the viceroy and the media. And he'd be going out for a few missions himself.

Kerik's first order of business, less than a week after he arrived, was to give a slew of interviews saying the situation was improving. He told the Associated Press that security in Baghdad "is not as bad as I thought. Are bad things going on? Yes. But is it out of control? No. Is it getting better? Yes." He went on NBC's "Today" show to pronounce the situation "better than I expected." To Time magazine, he said that "people are starting to feel more confident. They're coming back out. Markets and shops that I saw closed one week ago have opened."

When it came to his own safety, Kerik took no chances. He hired a team of South African bodyguards, and he packed a 9mm handgun under his safari vest.

The first months after liberation were a critical period for Iraq's police. Officers needed to be called back to work and screened for Baath Party connections. They'd have to learn about due process, how to interrogate without torture, how to walk the beat. They required new weapons. New chiefs had to be selected. Tens of thousands more officers would have to be hired to put the genie of anarchy back in the bottle.

Kerik held only two staff meetings while in Iraq, one when he arrived and the other when he was being shadowed by a New York Times reporter, according to Gerald Burke, a former Massachusetts State Police commander who participated in the initial Justice Department assessment mission. Despite his White House connections, Kerik did not secure funding for the desperately needed police advisers. With no help on the way, the task of organizing and training Iraqi officers fell to U.S. military police soldiers, many of whom had no experience in civilian law enforcement.

"He was the wrong guy at the wrong time," Burke said later. "Bernie didn't have the skills. What we needed was a chief executive-level person. . . . Bernie came in with a street-cop mentality."

Kerik authorized the formation of a hundred-man Iraqi police paramilitary unit to pursue criminal syndicates that had formed since the war, and he often joined the group on nighttime raids, departing the Green Zone at midnight and returning at dawn, in time to attend Bremer's senior staff meeting, where he would crack a few jokes, describe the night's adventures and read off the latest crime statistics prepared by an aide. The unit did bust a few kidnapping gangs and car-theft rings, generating a stream of positive news stories that Kerik basked in and Bremer applauded. But the all-nighters meant Kerik wasn't around to supervise the Interior Ministry during the day. He was sleeping.

Several members of the CPA's Interior Ministry team wanted to blow the whistle on Kerik, but they concluded any complaints would be brushed off. "Bremer's staff thought he was the silver bullet," a member of the Justice Department assessment mission said. "Nobody wanted to question the [man who was] police chief during 9/11."

Kerik contended that he did his best in what was, ultimately, an untenable situation. He said he wasn't given sufficient funding to hire foreign police advisers or establish large-scale training programs.

Three months after he arrived, Kerik attended a meeting of local police chiefs in Baghdad's Convention Center. When it was his turn to address the group, he stood and bid everyone farewell. Although he had informed Bremer of his decision a few days earlier, Kerik hadn't told most of the people who worked for him. He flew out of Iraq a few hours later.

"I was in my own world," he said later. "I did my own thing."

blackwater convicted massacre 10/14

Bush Gives Medal of Freedom to 'Pivotal' Iraq Figures

By Ann Gerhart

Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, December 15, 2004; Page C01

Trumpeting America as liberator, the White House conferred the highest civilian honor yesterday on three men intimately involved with the decision to invade Iraq or the troubled aftermath of the invasion.

President Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Tommy Franks, the now-retired Army general who led the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq; former CIA director George Tenet, who told Bush it was a "slam dunk" that Iraq still had weapons of mass destruction; and L. Paul Bremer, who presided over the first 14 months of Iraq reconstruction.

Receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom yesterday at the White House were, from left, former CIA director George Tenet, retired Army Gen. Tommy Franks and former Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer.

Past recipients have included Mother Teresa, Mr. Rogers, Rosa Parks and Pope John Paul II.

In the East Room of the White House, Bush said he had chosen the trio because they "played pivotal roles in great events" and made efforts that "made our country more secure and advanced the cause of human liberty." Before an invited audience of 120, which included Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and his nominated replacement, Condoleezza Rice, Bush hung the heavy gold medals, on royal-blue velvet ribbons, around the men's necks. Franks and Tenet grinned broadly. Bremer later wiped his eyes.

Some Democrats questioned the choice

In 2004, Stuart Bowen of Texas was asked by a friend

to take on a difficult and important job, which he did.

Bowen's friend was George W. Bush, and the job was to investigate corruption and waste in Iraq, where his buddy George had launched a misguided and very costly war, as well as an effort to reconstruct that country's fractured economy. The watchdog soon learned that Air Force transport planes had been airlifting whole pallets of shrink-wrapped $100 bills from the US to Baghdad – totaling some $14 billion!

The bales of cash were delivered to the care of L. Paul Bremer III, a laissez-faire ideologue who'd been installed by the Bush-Cheney regime to rebuild Iraq as a regulation-free corporate utopia. It was quickly obvious to Bowen that the utopia included no accounting of where the $14 billion went, though during the next decade he determined that "billions of dollars [were] taken out of Iraq illegally." But he couldn't get the Bushites to mount a full-fledge investigation and prosecution.

Finally, in 2010, he and his team got a break, learning that about $1.5 billion had been stolen and stashed in a bunker in rural Lebanon. However, the Obama administration wouldn't pursue this lead. Neither did the CIA, FBI, or the Iraqi government.

Then, Bowen was stunned that the US embassy in Lebanon was resisting his own attempts to visit the bunker, actually preventing him from entering that country. When two of his investigators did get into Lebanon, our embassy denied them permission to see the bunker, claiming it was too dangerous.

Last year, Bowen's office was formally shut down, with none of the missing cash recovered or accounted for. Remember Bowen's 10 years of frustration as Washington starts shoving new billions of dollars into the morass of its ill-defined war against ISIS.

"Investigation Into Missing Iraq Cash Ended in Lebanon Bunker," The New York Times," October 12, 2014.

bw bk:

Bremer kissinger asst, also haig, RR cent am war ambassador at large on terrorism; late 80's kiss and assoc; hastert appt council on ctr terr 1999.

Marsh and Mclennen (300 died in wtc)

sold terrorism risk insurance; layoffs lead to social unrest.

scooter and wolfie asked him to run iraq' what he knew wd not fill thimble (henry kissendores gig)

replaced garner, advice from chalabi 64 feith and rumy said debath so fired army 400K unemplyed guys w/ guns andexplosives

spoke of god guide; bro ran congr in dobson distr.(wife prayer warrior )

pvt oil industry, no taxes, could take all profits out of cty 68

BW 27.7m$ contract; bremer pix good pr; all merc 2b$/1 yr 30% of reconstr $

...

ASG PR (delay staffers) big in K Str; Paul Behrends usmc lt col, rohrabacher(fought w/ muj 1988); john doolittle got bw tour NC

erik and behr on Chr Freedom intl (RR Iran C guys)Bauer

2 days after kill, marines went in w/ Jim Steele (bremer dep) enron exec tapped by wolf; col in ctr-insurgent el salv death squad; testify iran-c

el salv model? US force back local guys to do dirty work? 115 only like 400 bad guys" in city of 10k (civilains killed by smart bomb)

===

L. Paul Bremer III ("Jerry") author of My Year In Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope was Chairman and CEO of the Crisis Consulting Practice of Marsh, Inc., a subsidiary of the Marsh & McLennan Companies (MMC). Marsh Crisis Consulting assists corporations in planning for, managing, and recovering from a "full range of crises such as financial misconduct, natural disasters, product recalls, class action lawsuits and terrorism."^[1]

In 2000, Bremer served on the National Commission on Terrorism. He also served on the National Academy of Science Commission to examine the role of science and technology in countering terrorism. He chaired the March 2002 :{Heritage :(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{Foundation:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}: study -- Defending the Homeland. He continues on the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for mass destruction terrorism. On June 11, 2002, Bremer was appointed to President George Walker Bush's Homeland Security Advisory Council. Bremer replaced Jay Garner as the top civilian administrator of post-war Iraq in May of 2003, carrying the title of Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

In 1981, Bremer was appointed Executive Secretary of the State Department by Secretary Alexander Haig. Bremer directed the State Department's 24-hour a day crisis management and emergency response center. He was named Ambassador to the Netherlands in 1983 and, in 1986, President Ronald Reagan appointed Bremer as Ambassador-at-Large for Counter Terrorism.

Bremer served at the Embassies in Afghanistan and Malawi, as well as service as Deputy Ambassador at the American Embassy in Norway. President Reagan named him as Ambassador to the Netherlands in 1983 where he served for three years.

Bremer was a Managing Director of Kissinger Associates, Inc. (1989-2001). Bremer joined Kissinger after serving twenty-three years of service in the Diplomatic Corps under six Secretaries of State.

Bremer is also the Founder and President of the Lincoln/Douglass Scholarship Foundation, which is a Washington-based non-profit organization that provides high school scholarships to inner city youths.

Bremer received his BA from Yale University, a CIEP (Certificat international d'Ã©tudes politiques) from the Institut d'Ã©tudes politiques in Paris, and an MBA from Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. His languages are French, Dutch and Norwegian.

A neo-conservative ideologue, Bremer was responsible for two of the Bush Administration's most disastrous mistakes in Iraq: --Eric Margolis

disbanding Iraq's Army,
and firing tens of thousands of government bureaucrats because they were Ba'ath party members.

Any junior imperialist knows the first thing you do when you conquer someone's country is to buy the loyalty of its existing armed forces, government and police. Otherwise you will have armies of angry, unemployed potential rebels roaming the streets - Iraq being Exhibit A.

Bremer's third horrible blunder came this week [early April 2004]. The US Proconsul, who is supposedly bringing the light of democracy to Iraq, shut down a tiny, 10,000 circulation Shia newspaper and arrested its editor for `spreading anti-American views' and calling Bremer rude names.The paper's publisher was firebrand Shia mullah Moqtada al-Sadr, who has been calling on Iraqis to resist US occupation.

Bremer turned Sadr, a little-respected junior cleric with a limited following, into an overnight hero to restive Shias, and a new American villain. Bremer's latest imbecility caused Iraq's Shia majority, which was simmering with anti-American passions, to explode into violence. Washington and US forces were caught totally by surprise, though warnings were aplenty.

See related articles on the Iraqi unified resistance and the Shiite Muslim uprising in Iraq.

Contents [hide]

TruthAboutIraq website

A consultant to Bremer, Steven E. Moore, has a website truthaboutiraq that offers this insight

"After working in Iraq for nine months doing focus groups and polling and advising Ambassador Bremer on Iraqi public opinion, Steven Moore returned to the United States in May 2004. Upon returning, he was astounded to find how sharply his experience in Iraq differed from that being communicated on television."

Affiliations

Trustee, Economic Club of New York
Director, Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.
Director, Akzo Nobel NV
Director, Harvard Business School Club of New York
Director, The Netherland-America Foundation
Senior Advisor, Americans for Victory Over Terrorism (AVOT)
Member, International Institute for Strategic Studies
Member, Council on Foreign Relations

Resources

Also see

Operation Iraqi Freedom

References

↑ Also see re Marsh.

External links

Lucy May, "Homeland security adviser speaks to local business leaders," Cincinnati Business Courier, February 25, 2003.
Bill Berkowitz, Background and Analysis, Working for Change, May 9, 2003.
Media Mouse, L. Paul Bremer Comes to Grand Rapids: A Critical Look at his Record" Mediamouse.org, October 8, 2004.
L. Paul Bremer III, Opinion: "How I Didn’t Dismantle Iraq’s Army," New York Times, September 6, 2007.

Presidential Envoy to Iraq

"Special report: Iraq. Key coalition figures in Iraq"; Guardian Unlimited/UK.
Michael Hirsh, "The State Dept. Wins One. Bush plans to give a career diplomat authority over Gen. Garner in Iraq," Newsweek (MSNBC), April 30, 2003.
Robin Wright, "U.S. Will Add Iraq Overseer," Los Angeles Times, May 2, 2003.
Cheryl Seal, "Bloody Hands Full of Gold: Template for Corporate Conquest of Iraq," Baltimore Independent, May 2, 2003.
Erik P. Sorenson, "Proposed US 'Civilian' Iraq Administrator Another Neocon Hawk," Republicons.org, May 2, 2003: "...It remains to be seen if Bremer will offer to reveal the names of the organizations and nations that have been contracted by Kissinger Associates through the years."
Knut Royce, "Sources: Garner Out in Iraq Shuffle," News Day, May 2, 2003.
Mike Allen, "Expert on Terrorism To Direct Rebuilding," Washington Post, May 2, 2003 (Page A01). Early announcement (expects to be replaced by subsequent formal announcement): "L. Paul Bremer III, an expert on terrorism and former consultant with Kissinger Associates, will be named special envoy and civil administrator of Iraq in the next few days, the officials said. He will report to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and will be the new boss of Jay M. Garner, the retired Army lieutenant general who has been in charge of rebuilding Iraq."
Bill Vann, "Bush taps antiterrorism advisor as Iraq pro-consul. The shaping of a repressive colonial regime," World Socialist Web Site, May 3, 2003.
Andrew F. Tully, "U.S.: Reported Shift On Iraq Administrator May Indicate Powell Influence," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, May 5, 2003.
Barbara Starr, "Anti-terror expert tapped for key Iraq role," CNN, May 5, 2003: "A high-level diplomat [L. Paul Bremer III] with anti-terrorism experience is being earmarked to lead the U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq, a senior U.S. defense official (General Tommy R. Franks) said Friday." Also see U.S. Central Command.
William Bowles, "The Real Terror Network. Paul Bremer, the new 'Gauleiter' of Iraq," Information Clearing House, May 5, 2003.
Kathleen T. Rhem, "Bush Appoints State Department Official to Administer Iraq," American Forces Press Service, May 6, 2003.
News Release: "Ambassador Paul Bremer Named as Presidential Envoy to Iraq (White House says Bremer to be senior coalition official in Iraq)," U.S. Department of State, May 6, 2003.
Tom Raum, "Bush names civilian administrator for Iraq," Associated Press, May 6, 2003.
"Bush names diplomat to be Iraq administrator. Former Ambassador L. Paul Bremer to oversee Iraq's shift to democracy," MSNBCNews.com, May 6, 2003.
Barbara Slavin, "U.S.' new transition chief 'brings a lot to the table'," USA TODAY, May 6, 2003.
"Ambassador Paul Bremer Named as Presidential Envoy to Iraq. White House says Bremer to be senior coalition official in Iraq," U.S. Department of State, International Information Programs, May 6, 2003.
Robin Wright, "Bremer appointed top civilian administrator," Los Angeles Times (Christian Science Monitor), May 7, 2003.
Eric Umansky, "Bremer Garners Post," Slate, May 7, 2003.
James Dao and Eric Schmitt, "Bush names new civilian chief for Iraq recovery," New York Times, May 7, 2003.
Sharon Behn, "Bremer named to lead transition in Iraq," Washington Times, May 7, 2003.
Nuh Gonultas, "Paul Bremer, Iraq's New Interim Governor," Turkish Press, May 8, 2003.
"Paul Bremer: US' 'tough' man in Iraq," Khilafah.com, May 8, 2003.
"Paul Bremer: Bush's new top man in Iraq," Shenzhen Daily, May 9, 2003.
"Bremer of Iraq," WorkingForChange, May 9, 2003.
Robert Burns, "Gen. Myers says dismantling Republican Guard is first step," Associated Press, May 20, 2003.
"Top U.S. Officials in Iraq Being Replaced (Garner leaving, replaced by Bremer)," Reuters (Free Republic), May 11, 2003.
"Kissinger Gofer Paul Bremer Runs US Occupied Iraq," ConspiracyPlanet, May 12, 2003.
"War, Truth and Consequences," PBS Frontline, October 9, 2003; includes a lengthy interview with Bremer.

Categories:

srcwtch

Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) web site

Following the establishment of limited Iraqi sovereignty: June 30, 2004, the CPA is scheduled to cease existence. In its stead will be the US Mission to Iraq.

None the less, "A comprehensive examination of the U.S.-led agency that oversaw the rebuilding of Iraq has triggered at least 27 criminal investigations and produced evidence of millions of dollars' worth of fraud, waste and abuse, according to a report by the Coalition Provisional Authority's inspector general," Stuart W. Bowen Jr. [1]

"...the Web site for the Coalition Provisional Authority, cpa-iraq.org, lists 36 recent solicitations, including those for contractors who might sell new AK-47 assault rifles, nine-millimeter ammunition and other goods for new army and security forces." *New York Times*, September 30, 2003

Incredulously, contractors accused of fraud in the fulfillment of CPA contacts have been claiming that the United States Federal Court system does not have juristiction in deciding these cases. (see David Phinney, "Iraq Contractor Claims Immunity From Fraud Laws Seized Oil Assets Paid For Offshore Overbilling", CorpWatch, December 23rd, 2004)

A study publishd by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), authored by L. Elaine Halchin, Analyst in American National Government Government and Finance Division: "The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA): Origin, Characteristics, and Institutional Authorities", April 29, 2004 - {FAS Hosted PDF file} discovered that there was a great deal of murkiness surrounding the conception of the CPA, and that documents offered by the Bush Administration have served to increase the cloudiness:

"It is unclear whether CPA is a federal agency. Competing, though not necessarily mutually exclusive, explanations for how it was established contribute to the uncertainty about its status. The lack of an authoritative and unambiguous statement about how this organization was established, by whom, and under what authority leaves open many questions, particularly in the areas of oversight and accountability. Some executive branch documents support the notion that it was created by the President, possibly as the result of a National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD). (This document, if it exists, has not been made available to the public.) The other possibility is that the authority was created by, or pursuant to, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483 (2003)." - {page 2}"Detailed information that explicitly and clearly identifies how the authority was established, and by whom, is not readily available. Instead, there are two alternative explanations for how it was established: one version suggests that the President established CPA; the other suggests that it was established pursuant to a United Nations (U.N.) Security Council resolution. While these possibilities are not mutually exclusive, the lack of a clear, authoritative, and unambiguous statement about how this organization was established and its status (that is, is it a federal agency or not) leaves open many questions, particularly regarding the area of oversight and accountability." - {page 7}

The Department of Justice was not quickly forthcoming on a request by Reagan appointed U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, who is deciding a case brought under The False Claims Act against Custer Battles LLC by two of its former employees which allege fraud. The Justice Department had declined in the Fall of 2004 to enter into the case on the side of the plaintiffs, and had failed to respond to the judge's request for several months until Sen. Charles E. Grassley(R-Iowa) wrote Attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales. - (see Griff Witte, "Justice Dept. Says U.S. Law Applicable in Iraq Contracts", Washington Post, April 2, 2005)

Other Related SourceWatch Resources

Gordon C. James
Agreement on Political Process
Dan Senor - CPA spokesman
Defense contractors
Development Fund for Iraq
Federal contractors
Funding the war in Iraq
Future of Iraq Project
Jay Garner
Iraq Infrastructure Reconstruction Office (IIRO)
Iraqi Interim Government
L. Paul Bremer III
Mark Kimmitt - US Army spokesman in Iraq
New Iraqi army
New Iraqi currency
Office of Strategic Communications
**Post-war Iraq**
**Private Military Corporations**
**Privatization of Iraq**
Reconstruction of Iraq contractors
State of Iraq
Terrorist attacks in Iraq
Transitional Iraqi Government
United Nations International Advisory and Monitoring Board
US Mission to Iraq
war profiteering
Noah Feldman – CPA appointed lawyer to rewrite the Iraqi Constitution

External links

CPA Orders, Regulations and Memoranda
14 November 2003: "Won't Run, Will Bug Out" by Molly Ivins, AlterNet: "Now we're going to bug out before next year's election, Paul Bremer has been called in for an emergency confab, troops must be down to 105,000 by spring. The CIA, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, has sent a report from Baghdad saying the whole thing's going south. We're back to bombing Baghdad. Forget a constitution, we have to hand it all over to the Iraqis right away. ... I'm glad all this bug-out stuff is coming from the administration - if some liberal said it, we'd all be accused of treason." (See Treating dissent as treason for reference.)
23 November 2003: "Corruption Charge Deals Fresh Blow to Iraq Handover" by Colin Freeman and Julian Coman, Sunday Telegraph/UK.
24 November 2003: "War After the War. What Washington doesn't see in Iraq" by George Packer, The New Yorker.

Categories: