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Archive for February 7th, 2012
US Planning to Slash Iraq Embassy Staff by Up to Half
The New York Times reports today that “less than two months after American troops left, the State Department is preparing to slash by as much as half the enormous diplomatic presence it had planned for Iraq, a sharp sign of declining American influence in the country.”
The World’s Largest and Most Expensive Embassy will remain, in Baghdad, but mostly as a shell. The cutting in half of the Embassy staff only mere weeks after the military pulled out of Iraq can only be described as the reluctant admission by the Department of State of complete failure. Iraq spirals out of control around the Embassy, which is helpless even to send its diplomats outside the walls to see what is going on. State’s summer-long bragging about being able to assume the security and logistics duties of the departed military crumbled quickly.
Cited by the Iraqis as deal-breakers were the January arrest of Embassy mercenaries foot loose in Baghdad, and the emergency landing of an Embassy helicopter in urban Baghdad, both reported on this blog but not too many other places.
FYI, the photo above shows a piece of sculpture paid for by your tax dollars as part of a $25,000 art project the US ran in Iraq for the reconstruction effort. The failure of that reconstruction, largely because the money was wasted on idiotic crap like that eagle, explains why the State Department failed in Iraq.
War’s finally over for the US. While my book about the failure of reconstruction in Iraq was called “We Meant Well,” I think my next volume is going to be called “I Told You So.”
To the 4479 Americans who gave their lives in Iraq, and to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died during our invasion and occupation, I cannot disgrace you by saying you died in vain, so I shall only say, now, rest in peace.
Copyright © 2012. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the Department of State, the Department of Defense or any other entity of the US Government. The Department of State does not approve, endorse or authorize this blog or book. Follow us on Twitter!
Interview: Washington Update Radio
Check out the Justice-Integrity Project’s Washington Update for my recent interview if you missed it on air nationally. The interview grew out of a fine discussion I had with a group of journalists over dinner in the McClendon Room at the National Press Center.
Chairman John J. Hurley, a director of the Justice Integrity Project, introduced me as writing a “sarcastic, funny, sad, angry book about his work for the Department of State as the leader of two Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT) in rural Iraq, 2009-2010.” Hurley continued, “His blog continues the story, with daily humor and commentary about Iraq, the Middle East, national security and his ongoing struggles to preserve his First Amendment rights while remaining a Federal government employee.”
The Justice Integrity Project is a research and education initiative established in 2010 by concerned citizens to improve oversight of abusive prosecutorial and judicial decisions in the federal justice system. Its primary focus is political and other arbitrary prosecutions, and official corruption cases. Good people.
Copyright © 2012. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the Department of State, the Department of Defense or any other entity of the US Government. The Department of State does not approve, endorse or authorize this blog or book. Follow us on Twitter!
Review: We Meant Well in The Nation
Founded in 1865, The Nation is one of America’s oldest magazines. It recently ran a review of We Meant Well, that while behind a paywall, I can share here with you.
The Nation said about We Meant Well:
Despite the risks of such frankness for Van Buren—he is currently the subject of a State Department investigation—he writes with the sardonic candor of a man too intent on recounting the absurdities he has witnessed to worry about what he has to lose.
The virtue of the telling is, of all things, its hilarity, the politically incorrect, pop-inflicted gallows humor exposing the litany of bungles through the damning lens of farce. “It is like I am standing naked in a room with a big hat on my head,” Van Buren quotes an Iraqi as saying. “Everyone comes in and puts flowers and ribbons on my hat, but no one seems to notice that I am naked.”
If the image suggests a tea party held at Abu Ghraib, it may prove as representative of the flippancy and ineptness of a State Department-run Iraq as the photos of torture were of an earlier phase of a shapeless, unnecessary war.
Read the entire review to learn more, or grab the current issue of The Nation at your fave bookstore.
Copyright © 2012. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the Department of State, the Department of Defense or any other entity of the US Government. The Department of State does not approve, endorse or authorize this blog or book. Follow us on Twitter!
Buy the Book:
- RT @reidarvisser: @kingston314 @LubnaNaji I recommend @iraqoilreport for keeping track of GKP and Iraq/Kurdistan
- American dissenters in Chicago arrested; blind Chinese dissenter welcomed. Another import.
- RT @TomDispatch: Judge rules unconstitutional a section of the #NDAA that would allow the indefinite detention of US citizens. http://t.co/SAs4j3Bz
- RT @SamwiseOccupies: I used to hate people who threw around the term #Orwellian, then I read about the #Nato3. #ochi #nonato #nato #FTP
- The hardline stand against reporter's privilege is a hallmark of Obama's unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowers. http://t.co/PiSJPBtE
