First Year in Iraq Interview
To celebrate/commemorate/note/something appropriate along those lines the US exit from Iraq, I thought I'd share an interview transcript I found about the first year there. It rather seems to explain why it took this long to get back out.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/yeariniraq/interviews/rajiv.html
A couple of interesting tidbits:
" 'When you talk about the life in the Green Zone, one of the things that interested me was your phrase, the "brat pack." What did you mean?'
'It was a bunch of young kids -- had no experience managing finances -- who were given the task of running Iraq's budget. It turned out that this group of kids who had come over together couldn't quite figure out why they'd been chosen. They finally discovered that what had tied them together was that they had all applied for jobs at the Heritage Foundation, this conservative think tank in Washington.
What happened was that the hiring was done by the White House liaison to the Pentagon, an office of the Pentagon political appointee. This office served as the gatekeeper. Instead of casting out widely for people with knowledge of Arabic, knowledge of the Middle East, knowledge of post-conflict reconstruction, they went after the political loyalists and canvassed the offices of Republic congressmen, conservative think tanks and other places where they knew they would find people who would be unfailingly loyal to the president and to the president's mission in Iraq. ...
The hiring process involved questions that would have landed a private-sector employer in jail. They asked people what their views on Roe v. Wade were, whether they believed in capital punishment. A man of Middle Eastern descent was asked whether he was Muslim or Christian. People were asked who they voted for for president. ...' "
" 'And they already know they are lame ducks. They've got to go. Their grand plan isn't working. Six months and they are gone. This must have been --'
'It was very demoralizing. You've got a lot of people who showed up there who took great risks. They put their lives on hold for six or nine months. They left their jobs. They came out to Iraq because some of them believed naively in this broader mission to remake Iraq.
Then we get there, and it all comes crashing down around them. Incredibly depressing. We had a lot people that just wound up starting to drink heavily or stopped working the same long hours they had been accustomed to, loitering by the pool and the al-Rashid disco, because it was just too depressing to be at work, and they felt like they weren't really accomplishing anything. ' "
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/yeariniraq/interviews/rajiv.html
A couple of interesting tidbits:
" 'When you talk about the life in the Green Zone, one of the things that interested me was your phrase, the "brat pack." What did you mean?'
'It was a bunch of young kids -- had no experience managing finances -- who were given the task of running Iraq's budget. It turned out that this group of kids who had come over together couldn't quite figure out why they'd been chosen. They finally discovered that what had tied them together was that they had all applied for jobs at the Heritage Foundation, this conservative think tank in Washington.
What happened was that the hiring was done by the White House liaison to the Pentagon, an office of the Pentagon political appointee. This office served as the gatekeeper. Instead of casting out widely for people with knowledge of Arabic, knowledge of the Middle East, knowledge of post-conflict reconstruction, they went after the political loyalists and canvassed the offices of Republic congressmen, conservative think tanks and other places where they knew they would find people who would be unfailingly loyal to the president and to the president's mission in Iraq. ...
The hiring process involved questions that would have landed a private-sector employer in jail. They asked people what their views on Roe v. Wade were, whether they believed in capital punishment. A man of Middle Eastern descent was asked whether he was Muslim or Christian. People were asked who they voted for for president. ...' "
" 'And they already know they are lame ducks. They've got to go. Their grand plan isn't working. Six months and they are gone. This must have been --'
'It was very demoralizing. You've got a lot of people who showed up there who took great risks. They put their lives on hold for six or nine months. They left their jobs. They came out to Iraq because some of them believed naively in this broader mission to remake Iraq.
Then we get there, and it all comes crashing down around them. Incredibly depressing. We had a lot people that just wound up starting to drink heavily or stopped working the same long hours they had been accustomed to, loitering by the pool and the al-Rashid disco, because it was just too depressing to be at work, and they felt like they weren't really accomplishing anything. ' "