It Ain't What You Do It's the Way That You Do It

When they elected him, I think the American people expected that their CEO/MBA president (yes, I'm talking Dubya here) would at least appoint competent people to positions of responsibility within his administration, despite any misgivings they may have held about his right-wing/evangelical beliefs. This, of course, would explain the public's reaction to his inexcusably poor response to Katrina and his extraordinarily low approval ratings ever since.

It does take one's breath away, though, to learn how the Bush administration filled positions within the Coalition Provisional Authority that were responsible for rebuilding Iraq (with $18 billion in taxpayer money). According to Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran in his article "Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq," the Bush administration vetted candidates according to their political beliefs and loyalty to Bush rather than their qualifications and real life experience:

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

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

O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade.

Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.

The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort.

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

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

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

To any sane person, it sounds like a recipe for disaster, doesn't it? You'd think that the Bushies would have wanted their little experiment in Democracy to be a bright, shiny success (and you can only imagine how good their standing in the world would be right now if their reconstruction efforts in Iraq -- or New Orleans, for that matter -- actually had worked). But, that's the problem with looney ideologues like Bush and Cheney -- they believe that what they are doing is going to have a set outcome no matter what transpires in the real world.

In related news, for those of us not living in Bush's bubble, the UN reports that during the last two months, close to 7,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in sectarian and insurgency-related violence. In addition, the UN report indicated that many of the people killed had suffered horrific deaths:

Bodies found at the Medico-legal Institute often bear signs of severe torture, including acid-induced injuries and burns caused by chemical substances, missing skin, broken bones (back, hands and legs), missing eyes, missing teeth and wounds caused by power drills or nails.

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Our title is a song off Fun Boy Three's self-titled album, which also includes the ditty "The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum."