Members of the press (and the public) may have missed this State Department notice 5 years ago:
Notice to the Press
Office of the Spokesman
Washington, DC
January 8, 2003Future of Iraq, Transitional Justice Working Group Meeting
The third session of the Future of Iraq project working group on Transitional Justice will convene on January 9-10, 2003 in Washington, DC.
The State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs will be hosting approximately 15 free Iraqis who have expressed an interest in discussing the law and the transition to democracy in a post-Saddam Iraq. Specific attention will be paid to the progress already made in the areas of prosecution for war crimes and crimes against humanity, rule of law, restoration of the Iraqi legal system, reform of the judiciary, and possible scenarios for amnesty.
For further information regarding the Future of Iraq project, please contact Gregg Sullivan, Deputy Director for Press Affairs, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, at 202-647-5150.
All Future of Iraq working groups are closed to the press. However, if you are interested in interviewing some of the Iraqi participants at the conclusion of the session, please contact David Staples, Public Affairs Officer, Future of Iraq, 202-312-9839 or 202-374-1216.
Released on January 8, 2003
Not sure what became of the "15 free Iraqis" who showed up at Foggy Bottom five years ago. Hope they made it through the unruly immediate aftermath ("stuff happens") of the toppling of Saddam Hussein. And the phase where car bombs decimated entire neighborhoods enjoying the free(d) markets. Not to speak of the years where a knock on the door at night might be the last time you saw your father or brother or son.
What is certain is that the output of the "Transitional Justice Working Group" wound up in the same circular file that Rumsfeld used for the entire "Future of Iraq Project." According to "Blueprint for a Mess" by David Rieff, (NYT November 2, 2003 - it was already a "mess" 7 months into the occupation? Warning to readers: the NYT link above leads to a ten page article)
rivalry between State and Defense was so intense that the Future of Iraq Project became anathema to the Pentagon simply because it was a State Department project. ''At the Defense Department,'' he [Feisal Istrabadi, an Iraqi-American lawyer] recalls, ''we were seen as part of 'them.''' Istrabadi was so disturbed by the fight between Defense and State that on June 1, 2002, he says, he took the matter up personally with Douglas Feith. ''I sat with Feith,'' he recalls, ''and said, 'You've got to decide what your policy is.'''
The Future of Iraq Project did draw up detailed reports, which were eventually released to Congress last month and made available to reporters for The New York Times. The 13 volumes, according to The Times, warned that ''the period immediately after regime change might offer . . . criminals the opportunity to engage in acts of killing, plunder and looting.''But the Defense Department, which came to oversee postwar planning, would pay little heed to the work of the Future of Iraq Project. Gen. Jay Garner, the retired Army officer who was later given the job of leading the reconstruction of Iraq, says he was instructed by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to ignore the Future of Iraq Project. (emphasis added)
Some day those 13 volumes might be of historical interest, but they certainly weren't used by the Republican National Committee and American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) loyalists who made up the staff of Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority and "taught" Iraqis decades older than them how to run a country.
Consider this from Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post correspondent in Baghdad during the CPA days and author of "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone" (interviewed by Amy Goodman on "Democracy Now," 29 September 2006:
It wasn’t so much you had to have Arabic language skills or experience in the Middle East or expertise in post-conflict reconstruction. What you had to be was a loyal supporter of President Bush. In fact, people who were being selected to go out to Baghdad were asked things in pre-deployment interviews that, you know, would have gotten an employer in the private sector hauled into court. People were asked, “Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Are you a member of the Republican Party?” Two people even told me they were asked whether they supported Roe v. Wade.
I also write in the book that one of O’Beirne’s [note: White House liaison at Pentagon] deputies once sort of pointed to a young man’s resume and pronounced him a, quote/unquote, “ideal candidate to go to Baghdad.” The young man’s chief qualification? He had worked for the Republican Party during the recount in Florida in 2000.
If you already know that Iraq needs a flat tax or new traffic laws, who needs a 13 volume State Department report from a bunch of Iraqi exiles and Middle East experts?
Parallel History, 5 years ago, to be continued in future installments...