Political Appointee Whines About Politicization

I was happy enough to discover that the Obama transitionwill dismiss 90 political appointees at the Pentagon after Inauguration Day. But as Billmon notes (ahh, it's so could to write that), the icing on this cake is that it brings back to the spotlight the pathetic Pentagon career of Jim O'Beirne.

Those calls and emails were followed up by an email from Jim O'Beirne, the special assistant to the secretary of defense for White House liaisons, who expressed exasperation that Gration informed the employees directly instead of letting O'Beirne's office know first.

"With regard to the process, I am unable to provide an explanation," O'Beirne wrote on Tuesday in the email, which was obtained by The Hill. "I played no part in it, and I will not speculate why matters were handled as they were."
A spokesman for the Pentagon said Gates was "absolutely satisfied" with the way the transition was handled.

O'Beirne is uniquely responsible for one of the biggest clusterfucks of the entire Bush era - the irresponsible and nakedly ideological hirings at the Coalition Provisional Authority shortly after the invasion. He was the guy that asked applicants their views on Roe v. Wade to make sure they were able to build the traffic system in Baghdad. As Billmon says,

In other words, Jim O’Beirne did as much as anyone in the US government -- and more than most -- to turn the first few years of the Iraq occupation into a complete clusterfuck, thereby contributing to the deaths of thousands of US troops and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Iraqi civilians. All for the greater political glory of George W. Bush and the Republican Party. And now he’s throwing a hissy fit because "the opposition" is getting an early start on shoveling the cow crap out of the stable?

"O'Beirne made it clear in the email that in some cases of dismissal, he thinks the employee's politics played a role in their being let go."

What can you say? Your modern conservative movement: Clueless, humorless, self-absorbed assholes, right to the bitter end.

The only regret here is that all 250 political appointees aren't being led to the door right away, though obviously with two wars we can't leave the entire cupboard bare immediately. Hopefully there will be an expedited hiring process, with the first casualty, one would hope, to be Jim O'Beirne.