Ideological dunderheads

Not nearly enough coverage is given to the real kooks that Bush has put in charge of the Iraqi occupation and reconstruction.

Deputy undersecretary of defense Paul Brinkley is the DoD point man for Iraq reconstruction. Brinkley wants to reopen dozens of government-owned factories in Iraq to try and gets lots of people back to work so that militia work will seen much less appealing.

Seems reasonable, right?

Brinkley's counterparts at State have responded by calling him a "Stalinist" and one accused him of helping insurgents build better bombs. The ideologues from State want everything to be free enterprise (and likely foreign owned) and if slander were not enough, these kooks from State want the CIA to weigh in and dispute Brinkley's work.

Brinkley and his colleagues at the Pentagon believe that rehabilitating shuttered, state-run enterprises could reduce violence by employing tens of thousands of Iraqis. Officials at State counter that the initiative is antithetical to free-market reforms the United States should promote in Iraq.

The bureaucratic knife fight over the best way to revive Iraq’s moribund economy illustrates how the two principal players in the reconstruction of Iraq — the departments of Defense and State — remain at odds over basic economic and political measures. The bickering has hamstrung initiatives to promote stability four years after Saddam Hussein’s fall.

Is it any wonder our efforts in Iraq are an abysmal failure?