David Corn

Layeth the smacketh down.

But if I could tie the president up and force him to read one article—and please, do not alert the Secret Service—I would place in front of him a Washington Post front-page story written by Rajiv Chandrasekaran that chronicles the failures of the Coalition Provisional Authority. To anyone who has paid attention to media coverage of the occupation, there is little in the piece that would come as a surprise. But the gathering of these facts in a single account was eye-popping. Here is a sampling:

*The United States promised to use $18.6 billion in aid to employ at least a quarter of a million Iraqis by now in reconstruction projects. About 15,000 Iraqis have been hired for these projects.

*According to a recent poll conducted by the United States, 85 percent of Iraqis had no confidence in the CPA. Chandrasekaran writes, “The criticism is echoed by some Americans working in the occupation. They fault CPA staffers who were fervent backers of the invasion and of the Bush administration, but who lacked reconstruction skills and Middle East experience. Only a handful spoke Arabic.”

*In an interview, L. Paul Bremer, the CPA chief, said that among his biggest accomplishments in Iraq was lowering tax rates. Critics within the CPA, Chandrasekaran writes, “faulted Bremer for working to advance a conservative economic agenda of tax cuts and free trade instead focusing on the delivery of basic services.” In other words, ideology trumped common sense.

*The Bush administration hired hacks instead of experts for CPA posts. “A few development specialists,” according to the Post, “were recruited from the State Department and nongovernmental organizations. But most CPA hiring was done by the White House and Pentagon personnel offices, with jobs going to people with connections to the Bush administration or the Republican Party. The job of reorganizing Baghdad's stock exchange, which has not reopened, was given in September to a 24-year-old who had sought a job at the White House.” Dick Grasso wasn’t available?

*Occupation officials have isolated themselves from Iraqis. "We don't know the outside," a senior adviser to Bremer told the newspaper. “How many of us have gone out to buy a bottle of milk or a pair of socks?" CPA officials shop in a special bazaar in the Green Zone; they do not visit local markets. Chandrasekaran writes, “Limited contact with Iraqis outside the Green Zone has made CPA officials reliant on the views of those chosen by Bremer to serve on the Governing Council. When [Lakhdar] Brahimi, the UN envoy, asked the CPA for details about several Iraqis he was considering for positions in the interim government, he told associates he was ‘shocked to find how little information they really had,’ according to an official who was present.”

If you know anyone who plans to vote for Bush in November, ask them why, and then fill them in on a few of the facts presented by Chandrasekaran via David Corn.