How Iraq Was Lost

Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq – washingtonpost.com

Twenty-four-year-old Jay Hallen was restless. He had graduated from Yale two years earlier, and he didn’t much like his job at a commercial real-estate firm. His passion was the Middle East, and although he had never been there, he was intrigued enough to take Arabic classes and read histories of the region in his spare time.He had mixed feelings about the war in Iraq, but he viewed the American occupation as a ripe opportunity. In the summer of 2003, he sent an e-mail to Reuben Jeffrey III, whom he had met when applying for a White House job a year earlier. Hallen had a simple query for Jeffrey, who was working as an adviser to Bremer: Might there be any job openings in Baghdad?”Be careful what you wish for,” Jeffrey wrote in response. Then he forwarded Hallen’s resume to O’Beirne’s office.Three weeks later, Hallen got a call from the Pentagon. The CPA wanted him in Baghdad. Pronto. Could he be ready in three to four weeks?The day he arrived in Baghdad, he met with Thomas C. Foley, the CPA official in charge of privatizing state-owned enterprises. (Foley, a major Republican Party donor, went to Harvard Business School with President Bush.) Hallen was shocked to learn that Foley wanted him to take charge of reopening the stock exchange.”Are you sure?” Hallen said to Foley. “I don’t have a finance background.”