WP: Agencies Tangle on Efforts to Help Iraq,Staffers Say Spats Displace Priorities

[maddezmom]

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 11, 2007; Page A01

As violence in Iraq crescendoed last year, President Bush summoned his secretaries of agriculture, commerce and energy to Camp David in June to meet with his national security team. During a two-hour afternoon discussion in the main lodge, the president urged the three secretaries to become more involved in the Iraq reconstruction effort.

When Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez got back to his office, he asked his staff members to develop a list of Iraq-related projects for the agency. They did, and two months later, they shared it with the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, expecting that diplomats on the ground would welcome a little help from Washington.

Instead, the document, "Secretary Gutierrez's Five Priority Areas for Economic Reform in Iraq," set off a bureaucratic grenade in Baghdad's Green Zone. The second item on the list called for the United States to pressure Iraq's government to cease providing people with monthly food rations, which more than half of Iraq's population relies on for sustenance.

Embassy officials were incensed. Although the embassy's economists favored changes to the ration system, they believed that dismantling it as Commerce was proposing could spark riots that might topple the Iraqi government.

more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/10/AR2007031001442.html?sub=AR

[Amonester]

1. Guess the Embassy officials "remembered" Marie-Antoinette...

or even closer: Ceausescu... (well, looking at "where" they work... maybe it's more like it).

Evidently, Bu$che's overpaid secret-(digni-)taries (sic) never bothered about learning anything from history.

[tanyev]

2. WTF?

The commerce dept was urged to become more involved in Iraq reconstruction and one of their best ideas was to stop providing food rations? I don't even know where to start listing all the stupidity in this article.

This will have to do: :wtf:

[bemildred]

3. Bremerism continues to be the policy in Iraq.

It is very amusing to see this referred to as "help Iraq".