Larry Diamond was recruited by Condi Rice in January of this year as a senior advisor to Iraq proconsul, Paul Bremer. He left three months later in a thoroughly corroded mood.

By the time I arrived, the signs of insecurity were pervasive. Iraqi translators and drivers at the palace where the CPA has its headquarters told me of the threats to their lives and the murders of their co-workers, while our soldiers confessed frankly that they could do nothing to protect those Iraqis outside the Green Zone. Repeatedly I had to cancel trips to meet Iraqis outside of the compound because we could not obtain the armored cars or helicopters that would enable me to travel with some measure of safety.

Today, in place of security, Iraq has a welter of heavily armed militias serving not the new Iraq but political parties, incipient regional warlords and religious leaders.

To the security deficit was added a yawning legitimacy deficit. The CPA delayed local elections and imposed one unwieldy transition plan after another while leaning too heavily on Iraqi exiles, especially the widely distrusted Ahmad Chalabi. Crippled by a severe shortage of American officials fluent in Arabic (as well as the steady loss of Iraqi translators to intimidation and assassination), and distanced from Iraqi society by formidable walls of security, the CPA never adequately grasped Iraqi preferences, hopes and frustrations.

While I was there, the CPA repeatedly misjudged and underestimated the most important Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and finalized in early March an interim constitution that most Iraqis (including Sistani) felt gave too sweeping a veto to minorities and too little participation to the people. When I traveled the country speaking about this new document, I was stunned by the anger and frustration of Iraqis who felt excluded from the process. But by then, the CPA was interested only in “selling” the document (for which we hired an expensive advertising agency). Too often, our engagement with ordinary Iraqis was a one-way conversation from above.

Today, as the U.S. continues to battle the radical Shiite insurgency led by cleric Muqtada Sadr while trying to sell Iraqis on its post-occupation plans, the challenges are as tough as ever. The new interim government includes a number of politically shrewd Iraqis, some with roots in Iraq’s crucially important tribes, who may yet prove capable of mobilizing support for the political transition. But the new government will not be viable and the elections for a transitional parliament will drown in bloodshed and fraud unless the new Iraqi state can defeat the former regime loyalists, the terrorists, the organized criminals and the militias. To do that, a recommitment from the United States — and a smarter American strategy — will be needed.

Diamond joins the ranks of fellow travelers such as former treasury secretary Paul O’Neill, former Central Command chief Anthony Zinni, former Army secretary Thomas White, former army chief of staff Eric Shinseki, former joint chiefs head John Shalikashvili, former CIA banned weapons hunter David Kay and a host of other military, diplomatic, security and industry officials who have come out in opposition to Bush*.

Of course Bush* still has many members of those same career groups in his corner, but I cannot remember ever seeing or reading about any administration suffering so many defections and so much criticism from former high-ranking members and supporters. It really is a testament to the administration’s allergenic qualities on the one hand, and to the enduring verities of George Orwell and Mark Knopfler on the other.

_{Warning lights are flashing down at quality control
Somebody threw a spanner and they threw him in the hole
There’s rumors in the loading bay and anger in the town
Somebody blew the whistle and the walls came down
There’s a meeting in the boardroom they’re trying to trace the smell
There’s leaking in the washroom there’s a sneak in personnel
Somewhere in the corridors someone was heard to sneeze
’goodness me could this be industrial disease?}

I go down to speaker’s corner I’m thunderstruck
They got free speech, tourists, police in trucks
Two men say they’re jesus one of them must be wrong
There’s a protest singer singing a protest song – he says
’they wanna have a war to keep us on our knees
They wanna have a war to keep their factories
They wanna have a war to stop us buying japanese
They wanna have a war to stop industrial disease
They’re pointing out the enemy to keep you deaf and blind
They wanna sap your energy incarcerate your mind
They give you rule brittania, gassy beer, page three
Two weeks in espana and sunday striptease’
Meanwhile the first jesus says ’I’d cure it soon
Abolish monday mornings and friday afternoons’
The other one’s on a hunger strike he’s dying by degrees
How come jesus gets industrial disease

— Dire Straits, Industrial Disease

==================
*if that’s his real name

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