Bye, Bye, Bodine
I haven’t seen any play of this article from today’s NY Times. I think Rummy’s in trouble. The GOP congress refused to let him have a blank check on how the 75billion will be spent. And, now they’ve taken away the reconstruction project.
It’s a sad day when you have to depend on the Republican congress to hold back the megalomaniacal neocons, but it’s all we’ve got.
Three weeks before the war in Iraq began, Bush administration officials based their plans for reconstructing the country on what they called a “major assumption” — that military operations would end in 30 days, according to briefing documents circulated in the White House.
But now, some senior administraton officials involved in making plans for aiding the Iraqi people, rebuilding the country and creating a new government say that that assumption appears overly optimistic. They say that the American military will likely need to retain tight control over the country for longer than they anticipated.
[…]
Even as the plans are debated and rewritten, however, bureaucratic battles are breaking out over who will control the new government and the aid effort.
State Department officials, speaking on condition that they not be named, complain that the Pentagon is seeking greater control over the roster of American officials who will be appointed as liaisons to oversee the operation of major Iraqi ministries.
Several former ambassadors with long experience in the Mideast, including Barbara Bodine, the former ambassador to Yemen; Robin Raphel, the vice president of National Defense University; and Kenton Keith, a former ambassador to Qatar, were in line for key appointments under Jay Garner, a former general who will be directing the reconstruction effort. But their names have been pulled back.
State Department officials say they suspect that some of the more ideological Pentagon officials, including Douglas J. Feith, the undersecretary for policy, are seeking to fill the slots with like-minded former officials who have strong views about what a new Iraq should look like. Some at the Pentagon have pressed for those who have led the charge for the overthrow of Mr. Hussein, including R. James Woolsey, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
A senior defense official said tonight that the issue was one of timing, not ideology. “The fact of the matter is that the State Department put up their list of qualified candidates before we got together a list of our own,” said the official. “We simply asked that we have some time to broaden the pool of candidates. It is in flux. Everyone’s talents will be used.”
On Capitol Hill, however, even the Republican-controlled appropriations committees of both the House and Senate voted today to take control of reconstruction out of the hands of the Pentagon, and give it to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.
The committees voted to give the State Department and other agencies authority over the $2.5 billion in post-conflict aid that the Bush administration sought for the Pentagon under an emergency appropriation.
“The secretary of state is the appropriate manager of foreign assistance,” said Representative James Kolbe, an Arizona Republican. “Bottom line: reconstruction is a civilian role.”