LAURIE MYLROIE:Present at the Destruction

...State Department and the British...

...If Professor Diggins had followed this line of approach to Reagan, rather than trying to convert him into an American liberal, his astute observation that Reagan was one of our greatest presidents would have had greater substance and been more persuasive...

...forces chose to guard...

...The original U.S...

...Ministries were not only methodically picked over, but were then ransacked and burnt down.… In a few government departments, enterprising individuals were able to spirit away key records.… The Coalition laboriously had to reassemble organizational charts and decision-making structures in an environment of great fear and uncertainty...

...Iraq thus “parted with more than a billion dollars, moved into the accounts of unknown people in a foreign country...

...Thus, Iraq’s interim government was very much a U.S...

...Rhetorically, President Bush embraced democracy for Iraq, but in practice, policy flip-flopped...

...Rather than use the Trade Bank of Iraq, established to finance government letters of credit, the defense ministry sent the money to private accounts in a Jordanian bank (a facility Saddam had used to siphon money from the UN’s Oil for Food program...

...Neither Rumsfeld nor Cheney, strong advocates of the war, fit easily into the latter category...

...economy...

...The water supply is erratic, because it depends on electricity, and fuel is expensive and in short supply...

...Possessed of a “smug indifference,” the CPA viewed the violence as “the desperate acts of the remnants of a defunct regime...

...should 2004, as the United States prepared to hand over power to the interim government, his home was raided and searched for alleged misdeeds at the ministry of finance...

...Its subtitle seems to reflect the view of most Iraqis, to J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 7 5 Present at the Destruction The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace By Ali A. Allawi judge from this reviewer’s expe- (YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 518 PAGES, $28) riences in Baghdad in recent weeks...

...In a series of “brazen decisions that broke every contracting and procurement rule,” the defense ministry began awarding “huge contracts without any bidding and with 7 6 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 B O O K S I N R E V I E W minimal documentation...

...As Allawi reports, an Iraqi prosecutor (favored by the State Department) “laid a series of patently false charges against [Chalabi], including counterfeiting of currency—about three dollars’ worth...

...T t-favorite exile politician...

...Thus, despite Allawi’s claims, the professor of political philosophy, Leo Strauss, had nothing to do with the Iraq war...

...Now he serves on various defense boards, most notably the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board...

...The U.S...

...The bulk of those contracts were signed with a small, recently established company, with only $2,000 in paid-up capital...

...When Reagan made these points in Moscow, and tied them to the open society and individual freedom that was the central point in his classical liberal philosophy, he was once again putting on display his belief in the power of ideas...

...WISH I HAD MORE TIME to interest myself in the drama of Paris Hilton...

...surge” has improved security somewhat, but Baghdad remains dangerous...

...The attacks on Iraq’s infrastructure started in earnest in the summer of 2003, with assaults on oil and electrical facilities...

...embassy, and the MNF [Multi-National Force...

...Only if communication were freer would this technological innovation be of any value...

...Not until March, did it start to recognize that the violence was truly serious...

...Yet significant elements within the Iraqi bureaucracies remained unreliable, indifferent to the new order, if not loyal to the old, even as many of the Americans sent to run Iraq knew little about the country...

...military buildup— not a very American liberal thing to do—which really seems to have shaken Gorbachev’s confidence in the ability of the Soviet Union to keep pace with the United States in the military sphere...

...handling of Iraq that have contributed significantly to present difficulties, yet which have failed to receive the attention they merit...

...Iklé writes from the perspective of five decades of service in the domain of strategic thought, beginning at the Rand Corporation where his apprehensions over the possibility of accidental nuclear war inspired him to develop trigger locks on our arsenal that even gained the support of Gen...

...Allawi dubs this “The Old Bureaucracy Inside the ‘New Iraq’” and believes that de-Ba’athification did not go far enough...

...Full payments of the contracts were often made in advance with none of the usual requirements for performance bonds or guarantees...

...Unquestionably, Gorbachev read this speech, and was smart enough to realize that the totalitarian game was up...

...In late April 2003, U.S...

...He straddled “two antagonistic camps” and “the process that led to his appointment was short and hasty.… The recruitment process for the leadership of a country of over twentyfive million people would not have passed muster with even the most indifferent of corporate headhunters...

...Meanwhile, most of the culprits fled the country as the transitional government assumed office...

...The Pentagon and Vice President’s office had another—a democratic form of government that would end the dictatorship of Iraq’s minority Sunni Arabs and accommodate the Shia majority, as well as the Kurds...

...Curtis LeMay, builder of the United States Strategic Air Command...

...Individual liberty expands and is suppressed again...

...She fills so much space in our media that there must be something fascinating behind her stupid blondness and insipid utterances...

...The sudden burst of growth starting in 1983, with the elimination of inflation and the decline in unemployment, impressed governments and economic advisers around the world, and could not have failed to impress Gorbachev...

...That decision was soon reversed, however, and Iraq was to fall under American-British occupation...

...He does not understand that the reasons for the U.S...

...Peace is followed by war...

...B O O K S I N R E V I E W able to identify more clearly Reagan’s role in bringing about the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet system...

...An arrest warrant was issued against him and another entirely spurious warrant” issued against his nephew, Salem Chalabi...

...Sha’alan, it would emerge from Iraqi intelligence files, was an agent for Saddam until at least January 2003...

...idea after the fall of Baghdad was to turn authority over to the largely exile Iraqi politicians, with whom Washington had dealt throughout the 1990s...

...It has acquired an inner dynamic of progress that is self-sustaining...

...war with Iraq were firmly grounded in national security concerns, above all, weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, and he is too quick to embrace the now-conventional wisdom that Saddam had no such weapons nor significant ties to terrorists...

...The ignorance, inexperience and simple anxiety about the unknown that was the mark of many newly arrived administrators from the Coalition played into the hands of crafty and skilled manipulators from the totalitarian bureaucracy...

...Iraqis are grateful Saddam is gone, but there is electricity only one or two hours a day, because insurgents are toppling the transmission towers...

...is the founder and editor-in-chief of The American Spectator and the author most recently of The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President’s Life After the White House (Thomas Nelson...

...This spring my attention has been absorbed by lesser figures, the British historian Bernard Lewis and the legendary strategist, Fred Ikl...

...He writes with great knowledge and surprising Will We Always Have Paris...

...Yet America is at war...

...Corruption had been a problem under the CPA, but the interim government produced an “explosion in corrupt practices, bordering on the open plunder of the state’s resources...

...Rather, he seemed to have been chosen “precisely because of his lack of prior involvement” with Iraq...

...Allawi attributes the shift to pressure from the U.S...

...Britney Spears also must have serious qualities that I have missed...

...Allawi is excellent in recounting those events in J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 7 7 B O O K S I N R E V I E W which he was directly involved, particularly economic matters, but he can be surprisingly off-base on issues remote from his own experience...

...Lewis’s is a lecture he delivered at the American Enterprise Institute in March...

...He sees all three as real threats to modern society...

...The two Allawis are cousins...

...From 1973 to 1976, Iklé was the director of our Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and in the Reagan administration he was undersecretary of defense for policy, where his skepticism about Mutual Assured Destruction must have complemented the President’s own skepticism over MAD...

...Allawi has written an important book, The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace, the first major work by an Iraqi on this conflict...

...But the sphere of government and international affairs is marked by alternating periods of advance and decline...

...The interim government consisted of the CIA’s favorites among the Iraqi exiles, producing “a version of the Arab authoritarian state with its semi-democratic embellishments...

...The saga of the grand theft of the Ministry of Defense,” Allawi concludes, “perfectly illustrated the Panglossian spin that permeated official pronouncements of the government, the U.S...

...With these caveats in mind, Americans will learn much from this book, not only about Iraqi perspectives on the war, but about very major problems in the U.S...

...In his speech to the students and faculty of Moscow State University in 1988, Reagan cleverly emphasized the development of computers and the microprocessors, and made clear that this innovation would either break open closed societies or leave them in the dust...

...The CIA provided a list of two or three candidates for each ministry, among whom Ayad Allawi could chose...

...The United States long had great difficulty finding and working with Iraqis to replace Saddam’s regime—and this did not change with President George Bush’s decision to oust that regime or even with its fall...

...In the hands of leaders who lead unfettered by Western ethics, such a super brain might outthink our best statesmen and generals—he seems to be contemplating such developments in China...

...These charges were so contrived that the Interim Government’s Minister of Justice threatened to resign,” if the indictments were not withdrawn...

...So the AmericanBritish plan for governing Iraq in the postSaddam era was to rely on the existing bureaucracies, removing only the top officials...

...The Soviet government could not hope to maintain control of the information its population would receive and still keep up with technological developments in the West, and particularly the United States...

...Perhaps more important was the enormous impact that Reagan’s policies of deregulation, open trade, and tax cuts had on the U.S...

...One component of its strategy—now keenly felt in Baghdad—was to render ineffectual the administration of the new order...

...The one exception was the Oil Ministry, which U.S...

...The Defense Department and Vice President’s office had wanted to develop Iraqi institutions before the war, such as a military police, but the CIA and State Department opposed anything that might give the Iraqi exiles a leg up in the new Iraq...

...Sha’alan has been indicted in Iraq, but Jordan refuses to extradite him or even answer questions about the stolen AVAILABLE WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD MARCH 20, 2007 funds...

...In May ’ be compared to that of Ahmad Chalabi, the CIA HE TREA s leas TMENT ACCORDED Sha’alan et al...

...An individual with no significant background in the Middle East and no experience managing a large organization, L. Paul Bremer, was named top civilian administrator...

...The crowning blow appears to have been Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, which Gorbachev apparently feared...

...Ayad Allawi, a one-time Ba’athist who had broken with Saddam, was made prime minister...

...In turn, Iraq received equipment it could not use, such as Soviet-era helicopters, 30 years old...

...Most spectacular was the theft of over one billion dollars by the minister of defense, Hazem Sha’alan, with the connivance of other top Iraqi officials...

...A knowledgeable Iraqi source here says that Saddam’s weapons were moved to Syria between November 2002 and February 2003—essentially what Lt...

...Nor is the policy debate over going to war in Iraq properly described as one between “realists” and “neo-conservatives,” whom Allawi casts in a villainous light...

...B O O K S I N R E V I E W B O O K S I N R E V I E W told them that Donald Rumsfeld had agreed to the formation of a Provisional Government, based on a leadership council they had recently elected...

...Iklé writes about the globalization of devastating new weapons that could fall into the hands of terrorists, anarchists, and doomsday cults...

...As Allawi scathingly writes, Bremer “was not in the first division of American career diplomats or Republican foreign policy experts...

...The full details of the scandal were uncovered by Iraq’s Bureau of Supreme Audit, a number of whose members were assassinated...

...Around that time, the White House decided on bringing Bremer home and installing an interim Iraqi government...

...A . ter of trade and briefly minis the U LI ALLAWI S.-led Coalition Pro , AN ECONOMIST BY TRAINING ter of defense under visional A ,was minisuthority (CPA) and then minister of finance following the 2005 elections that established Iraq’s transitional government...

...officials were slow to recognize the extent and significance of resistance from the old regime...

...The Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans did not generate intelligence—it was the policy office that dealt with Iraq and Iran, given, perhaps, an ominously inappropriate name as war with Iraq loomed...

...Nothing at all came of this, and Chalabi would go on to become deputy prime minister in the transitional government, following the January 2005 elections...

...A major theme with him is that “Science makes cumulative discoveries and hence can advance at an accelerating pace...

...James Clapper, head of the National GeospatialIntelligence Agency during Operation Iraqi Freedom and now undersecretary of defense for intelligence, told reporters in the fall of 2003...

...officials in Baghdad Laurie Mylroie is an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein’s War Against America (AEI Press...

...7 8 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 Annihilation From Within: The Ultimate Threat to Nations By Fred Charles Iklé (COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, 130 PAGES, $24.50) Reviewed by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...

...While Rumsfeld dismissed the looting that followed Baghdad’s fall as “stuff happens,” former regime loyalists “operating under the cover of looters and arsonists” set about destroying Iraqi government data bases...

...Some of sci...

...They are our Garbos...

...elegance about the dangerous divergence science took 250 years ago from its inhibitors, religion and government...

...After 9/11, those still unexplained anthrax attacks, terrorist attacks elsewhere R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...

...After a brief stint in London, Sha’alan now resides in Jordan, and, according to Allawi, part of his stolen money is used to finance the insurgency (sources here in Baghdad concur...

...Because of the growing violence, the ministry of defense was given $1.7 billion to create two divisions of rapid deployment forces...

...Iklé’s contribution is a provocative new book, Annihilation From Within: The Ultimate Threat To Nations...

...in the world, and with our troops still engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq, I am going to put Paris and Britney on the back burner...

...Countries began privatizing government-held assets and freeing up markets in order to capture some of the growth and innovation that was so obvious in the United States...

...Reviewed by Laurie Mylroie In short, life is difficult here, and Allawi’s firsthand account of events helps explain why...

...That began early on...

...creation...

...Both have made profound contributions to how we might get out of our imbroglio with savages and back to the enigmas of Paris and Britney...

...He also raises the possibility of computer science wedding with neuroscience to create a super brain...

...The CIA and State Department, reflecting an Arabist perspective oriented to the Sunni Arab regimes allied with the United States, had one vision for Iraq—essentially to reproduce a regime like theirs...

...the entire minuet around the Reykjavik summit seems to have been choreographed by Gorbachev in order to eliminate SDI as a threat to the Soviet nuclear deterrent...

...Major bombings began in August, targeting the Jordanian embassy, then UN headquarters, where 22 people were killed, including Sergio de Mello, the UN’s Special Representative in Iraq, and then a major Shia politician, Ayatollah Baqir al Hakim, murdered in yet one more bloody blast that month...