{"id":919,"date":"2004-05-15T19:05:33","date_gmt":"2004-05-16T02:05:33","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2004-05-15T19:05:33","modified_gmt":"2004-05-16T02:05:33","slug":"republican-zone-mortared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2004\/05\/15\/republican-zone-mortared\/","title":{"rendered":"Republican Zone Mortared"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day the NRO ran this piece <\/a>about the Junior RNC Neocons that they have staffing the CPA headquarters in the Green Zone. As Washington Monthly describes them:<\/a><\/p>\n

When we last checked in with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, “Who’s Who” noted that many key jobs there had been filled with folks with little to no experience in such areas as post-conflict reconstruction, transitional economies, and the like–a consequence of the Bush administration’s disdain for anyone with roots in the NGO community, the State Department, or the various Clinton-era nation-building projects, and its preference for loyal Republican operatives who could be trusted to toe the White House party line. Thus, Simone Ledeen, the 29-year-old daughter of Michael Ledeen of Iran-Contra eminence, now helps set economic policy for northern Iraq, while Dan Senor, a recently-minted MBA who spent a few months working for White House Press Secretary Scott McLellan, is in charge of rebuilding Iraq’s media. Joining them recently was Jay Hallen, a fresh-faced, 24-year-old Yale graduate who, reports The Wall Street Journal’s Yochi J. Dreazen, “majored in political science, rarely watched financial news stations and didn’t follow the stock market.” His job at the CPA? Relaunching the now-shuttered Iraqi stock market.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Josh Marshall also writes<\/a> about the neocon playpen in the Green Zone,concluding:<\/p>\n

MCPA officials say that the older GOP functionaries do a reasonable job keeping their partisanship publicly under wraps. But the younger Republicans in Iraq spend much of their time plotting against the Democrats. “Everything is seen in the context of the election, and how they will screw the Democrats,” said one CPA official. “It was really pretty shocking to hear them talk.”<\/p>\n

“They are all on the campaign trail,” said another official. “They see this as a stepping stone to a better job in the next Bush administration.” “I don’t always know if they are Republicans,” said yet another senior CPAer. “But what is clear is that they know nothing about development, and nothing about transitional economies.” They’re trying to do the right thing, this official adds, “but they do what they do without any knowledge of how the post-war world works in reality. They come up with hare-brained schemes that cause so many problems they take more time to fix than to create.”<\/p>\n

It’s also driven journalists on the ground, watching these operatives move in and out of Saddam’s marble Republican Palace, which CPA commandeered as its headquarters, to joke: “They don’t call it the Republican Palace for nothing.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anyway Neocon Review Online had this puff-piece<\/a> about “Gen-X” in Baghdad and they ran this picture of a Green Zone Neocon Public Housing Project.
\n

\"neoconhousing_project\"<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

So, that’s the visual for this bit of news:<\/p>\n

A rocket landed in the compound housing coalition headquarters<\/a> — wounding one soldier and one civilian. But officials say both people returned to duty later in the day.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I hope the laundry is working overtime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day the NRO ran this piece about the Junior RNC Neocons that they have staffing the CPA headquarters in the Green Zone. As Washington Monthly describes them: When we last checked in with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, “Who’s Who” noted that many key jobs there had been filled with folks with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=919"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}