Tulsa lawyer Namibia RPCV Fern Holland, 33, who had left her lucrative legal practice to join the Peace Corps several years ago, and signed on with the CPA to start women's center
Iraqi Coalition Staff Padded with GOP Loyalists
by Elizabeth Sullivan
This nation owes a debt to the hun dreds of thousands of Americans who have risked their lives and volun teered their talents helping Iraqis. No matter how flawed the postwar plan ning or how nearly impossible the goal of bringing democracy to a fractured nation intensely suspicious of outsiders, the enterprise would have floundered long before now were it not for the ingenuity, skills and bravery of our military personnel and those rare civilians willing to venture out of the Green Zone to meet average Iraqis in their homes and vil lages.
Unfortunately, this is not the totality of the U.S. effort.
More often than not, the face of the Coalition Provisional Authority ruling Iraq today is of Republican believers who make up a disproportionate share of its civilian staff.
Associated Press reporter Jim Krane counted them up recently, and found that GOP loyalists make up more than one-third of the non-military personnel in the CPA's press office. Republican operatives could also be found elsewhere at high levels in the CPA bureaucracy.
Conservative writer Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard calls them "a kind of conservative Peace Corps." He says these true believers work 12- to 14-hour days, sacrificing good jobs as lawyers and political wonks to face a life of hardship still punctuated by gunfire.
But another way to look at them is as the advance guard of the "Re-elect George W. Bush" effort, spinning their version of coalition successes to make the boss look good.
The CPA press office issues such upbeat news for readers back home as "Hated Heads of Former Dictator Removed From CPA HQ," about how Sad dam Hussein's bronzed likenesses were taken off his former palace, now CPA headquarters, or the self-explanatory, "Kids Warmed By New Coats Procured by the CPA."
Some even put their political sentiments on their clothing. Krane learned that Dan Senor, chief CPA spokesman, ran in a race last fall wearing a "Bush- Cheney 2004" T-shirt, while media liaison Dorrance Smith sports a "W 2004" ball cap as he works with U.S.-backed Iraqi news outlets.
The vast majority of the CPA's 2,500 employees are nonpartisan - mostly military personnel tasked to the operation, or ex-diplomats and civil service employees from a variety of countries.
CPA chief Paul "Jerry" Bremer himself is a former career diplomat with a long history of work on terrorism issues, including as ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism under President Ronald Reagan.
But Krane found that 21 of the press office's 58 U.S. civilian staff were Republicans, including 11 who had worked previously for the George W. Bush administration. Krane could not determine the political affiliations of the other 37, meaning the percentage of Republicans could be well over one-third.
Senor, for example, was a White House deputy press secretary before he transferred to the region and eventually got the senior coalition press job. Rich Galen, who runs the daily operation sending press releases to select U.S. media, is a former aide to GOP stalwarts Newt Gingrich and Dan Quayle. Galen's 27-year-old son is part of the Bush re- election effort, Krane reports.
Arguably, "spin" is the game in the press office. But it's not just the coalition communications operation that is bursting with partisan ardor. GOP loyalists are peppered throughout the coalition authority.
Michael Fleischer, brother of former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, an entrepreneur with limited foreign service experience decades ago in Africa, was just named head of CPA private sector development, after having served since November as deputy to the former director, Tom Foley, a Bush fund-raiser from Connecticut.
Simone Ledeen, daughter of neo-conservative guru Michael Ledeen, notable for having advised the Reagan National Security Council during the Iran-contra affair, is a special adviser to the Iraqi Finance Ministry. The Washington Monthly says she is 29 and has little finance experience apart from a recent MBA.
Republican loyalists also have served as advisers to the Iraqi Education Ministry and the Agriculture Ministry.
Many of the senior Republicans who have passed through Iraq have admirable records of public service and corporate success that should have been a boon. But remaking the overall occupation authority into a club for partisans was a dangerous and short-sighted maneuver.
The evidence suggests that a CPA in the grip of ideologues and spinmeisters has not done the job it needed to do to get Iraq working again after the April 2003 fall of Saddam.
Anecdotally, military personnel say they rarely see CPA officials out in their areas, mingling with local powers or otherwise doing what Iraqi culture requires to reassure elders and earn the trust of average Iraqis.
Two apparent exceptions to this rule were gunned down last month. Tulsa lawyer Fern Holland, 33, who had left her lucrative legal practice to join the Peace Corps several years ago, and signed on with the CPA to start women's centers, and Marine Corps reservist Bob Frangas, 44, of the Pittsburgh area, who had volunteered as a CPA press officer, were the first Americans on the CPA staff to be killed. They and Holland's Iraqi deputy were ambushed and murdered on a highway in early March after visiting a women's center in Karbala.
Could the CPA have succeeded if it had a less partisan aura? It is not clear. America is not accustomed to occupation and doesn't have the kind of bureaucracy that kicks in in such instances. Britain's foreign service still includes such diplomat-bureaucrats, knowledgeable about foreign mores and schooled in handling dicey situations. But America has plenty of experts on the Arab world who were not consulted. Dealing with local Iraqi authorities day in and day out, the U.S. military did it better just on instinct and special-ops training.
The failures are apparent in the CPA's inability to spend the more than $18 billion Congress approved months ago. The money is just now trickling into Iraq at a time when much of it will have to be spent on providing security instead of for economic reconstruction.
The failures also are reflected in a damning General Accounting Office report on disruption to the multibillion- dollar U.N. oil-for-food program after pending contracts were transferred into CPA hands last fall. The GAO found that the CPA had inadequate staff to manage the contracts, and that its mishandling was one of the factors behind localized food shortages at the end of last year.
There's not much that can be done about this now. The CPA is due to dissolve after June 30, when political power transfers to Iraqis. Yet even that date has obvious political overtones, providing as it does some distance between any chaotic hand-over of power and Election Day, Nov. 2. By then the cadre of GOP loyalists should be safely back home, working fulltime on getting the president re-elected.
Sullivan is The Plain Dealer's foreign-affairs columnist and an associate editor of the editorial pages.
Copyright 2004 cleveland.com.
