The Lost Year in Iraq

From a wonderful program by PBS Frontline entitled ‘The Lost Year in Iraq’ (and you can watch the whole thing online).

The most intriguing but nauseating segment comes in Part 3 entitled Within hours, Bremer gets some pointed lessons on what he’s facing. But he decides on quick, decisive action and orders de-Baathification. The segment deals with the policies of the CPA under Bremer, including hiring practices with interviews asking opinions on Roe vs. Wade, who you voted for, and what religion you were. People were hired for who they were (conservative and Republican) instead of their abilities or experience. Nothing highlights this better than the first hand observation from Col. Hammes of whom he had to deal with in his efforts to reconstruct Iraq:

At the ministry of interior, there was a new staff person handling planning for the prisons and police.

Col. Thomas Hammes, Counterinsurgency Advisor for the CPA:

“But the plans counterpart who I had to work with in the Minister of Interior was a 25 year old; it’s his first job after college. So I ask him ‘That’s pretty interesting, how big a plan cell do you have?’ He says ‘I have four guys’, I say ‘That’s pretty small’. He says ‘Yah but we’re really tight because we’re frat brothers’. I never in my life thought I would encounter frat brothers and strategic planners in the same sentence.”

The person who was handling THE POLICE AND PRISONS immediately following the invasion of Iraq was a 25 year old frat boy who was handling it with his four frat brothers. I REPEAT, POLICE AND PRISONS IN IRAQ AFTER THE INVASION WAS HANDLED BY 5 FRAT GUYS. Sycophantic, inexperienced, and worst of all, inept: the hallmarks of the Bush administration and what America has endured for 6 years.