Pressure

I keep falling down on mentioning a few really amazing developments in the war on terror and the war in Iraq, but it's good in a way, as now it gives me a chance to construct a narrative about how this Administration gets what it wants, not through force of argument, but through direct force and pressure.

Kevin Drum brought us this story, confined to a small daily newspaper, about Donald Rumsfeld determination not to plan one bit for the postwar situation in Iraq.

Months before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists from developing plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.

In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a post-war plan [...]

"The secretary of defense continued to push on us ... that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave," Scheid said. "We won't stay."

Scheid said the planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4," or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations like occupation.

Even if the troops didn't stay, "at least we have to plan for it," Scheid said.

"I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," Scheid said. "We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today.

"He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war."

...."In his own mind he thought we could go in and fight and take out the regime and come out. But a lot of us planners were having a real hard time with it because we were also thinking we can't do this. Once you tear up a country you have to stay and rebuild it. It was very challenging."

We know that Rumsfeld was serious about this threat, since he did fire General Shinseki, basically, when he dared to suggest that the US would need half a million troops to secure the country. It's almost criminal when you think about how little thought was deliberately put into reconstruction and security. I don't even understand what the Administration wanted to do here. Did they expect to take Saddam to Gitmo and wave goodbye to the Iraqis? How would that have worked?

Of course, it's almost not as criminal as the eventual reconstruction plan these guys put into place:

After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.

To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.

O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .

Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.

By the way, Jim O'Beirne is the husband of ubiquitous wingnut commentator Kate O'Beirne.

We know that the Coalition Provisional Authority was a disaster, staffed by inexperienced Bush loyalists. What we didn't know was that the pressure on these individuals to conform to conservative ideology was so direct and out in the open. As Digby writes:

They insisted on invading a well contained country of 25 million people, ripped its society to shreds, and then put a bunch of low level cronies and inexperienced schoolkids in charge of creating a Club for Growth wet dream in the desert. And they spent billions and billions of dollars failing to do anything but lay the groundwork for civil war. I don't know if it's possible to screw up on a grander scale than that.

Here's the question for the American people. Let's, for the sake of argument, say that you don't like Democrats. You have the vague feeling in the pit of your stomach that they just don't have the cojones to do "what needs to be done." You can't get over the feeling that they aren't serious enough.

But if you are a thoughtful person of any political persuasion who is concerned about national security or the economy, you simply cannot read that story above and have even the slightest faith that such people can be trusted to continue to run the government with no oversight.

And this rule by intimidation and pressure doesn't end with Iraq. It's entered into the current debate over detainee interrogation that led to a long meeting with JAG lawyers:

During today’s White House press conference, a reporter cited comments by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — a former JAG and an opponent of the Bush’s detainee policies — claiming that the White House had placed extreme pressure on the military lawyers to sign a statement, and that the lawyers had refused to sign the initial statement crafted for them by the White House:

REPORTER: Sen. Graham is telling reporters on Capitol Hill that the White House had them in a meeting for five hours last night and tried to force them to sign a prepared statement and he said reading this JAG letter they ended up writing leaves total ambiguity on interpretation, this is Sen. Lindsey Graham. What’s your response to that?

Snow acknowledged “they were asked to write a letter” but said, “if you start going into who asked whom to write letters, I don’t know.”

He knows what went on. Military lawyers were trapped in a room for five hours and forced to sign a statement with which they didn't agree to give the President some ammunition in his fight against high-profile Republicans over the issue of the Geneva Conventions. Arlen Specter has promised to hold an investigation on this matter, which I will sit alongside the litany of "things Arlen Specter will hold investigations about but not really do much."

The point is that you have an executive branch that prefers to rule by threatening their colleagues' jobs, prefers to intimidate rather than compromise, prefer to have Washington live in fear than hope. And that's obviously a poisonous work environment, and it yields the results you see before you in this country and in Iraq today.