In the midst of live-blogging the Iraq election the other night, I received an email that got my attention. It was from the State Department situation room and, aside from the ego-flattering surprise that people so highly placed were reading this blog in the midst of such an event, it contained some disappointing (although not horribly surprising) information about CNN correspondent Jane Arraf.
Many of us had just watched Ms. Arraf waiting with what “seemed” like great dismay in front of an empty polling station in Mosul. The Iraqis were not turning out to vote. Then, an hour or so later, she popped up at another polling place in the same city that was crowded with voters, explaining that she had “switched polling places.” But she hadn’t. According to my situation room correspondent, her first venue was not a polling place at all. For whatever reasons (embarrassment? bias? both?), Ms. Arraf omitted this important fact.
My correspondent had sent me this information “off the record” and naturally I emailed him back requesting permission to publish during my live-blogging, but received no return mail. (Subsequently the same story appeared on The Corner. I don’t know where they got it.) In truth, my correspondent had gone home. Today he sent me his permission along with the clarification that he was not from State, but a member of the DoD following the event in State’s situation room that night in the interest of “interdepartmental amity.” Many of the State Department people were against the war and my correspondent concluded: “I didn’t think it would go over well if I was caught leaking good news to the outside world.”
All I can say to that is – Welcome, Condoleeza Rice!
UPDATE: To be clear, I have not checked the veracity of my correspondent, but my memory of Ms. Arraf standing outside the alleged “polling place,” describing completely blasé Iraqis (why wouldn’t they be?) would tend to corroborate the email.
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25 Comments
1. Cybrludite:As the saying goes, “They aren’t anti-war. They’re just on the other side.”
Jan 31, 2005 - 8:11 am 2. thedragonflies:8 million Iraqis gave the finger, purple stained, to the terrorists, Baathist thugs, and anti-war movement on Sunday.
Let freedom reign.
Jan 31, 2005 - 8:33 am 3. RogerA:Wasnt CNN the network that sent Iraqi’s to their deaths in order to have “access?”–yeah–that was it. Particularly revealing was the comment by the DOD guy about the State Dept people. Condi has a major job to do cleaning out the Arabist in the Augean Stables that is the state department. I only hope she approaches with the same zest that Porter Goss has done in CIA. A good place to start would be INR, which is State’s in house intelligence agency. I know http://diplomadic.blogspot.com/ is busy reporting the UN follies and the relief effort in Indonesia, but I would welcome his/her take on the housecleaning efforts awaiting Dr. Rice.
Jan 31, 2005 - 8:41 am 4. LemonDrop:CNN= Communist News Network. Don’t expect much from them.
Jan 31, 2005 - 8:49 am 5. charlotte:Ledes that mislead and misinformation and disinformation broadcast in the name of a good cause are simply “activist” journalism with a conscience. Caring journos know they need to lead us to correct conclusions, even if they have to use incorrect data and analysis to get us there. It’s for our own good, as I understand it.
Jan 31, 2005 - 9:29 am 6. Rick Ballard:RogerA,
My understanding is that State is the most difficult agency in which to effect reform. I believe that the procedures that are required under current employment regulations make it almost impossible to fire deadwood and extremely difficult to even transfer someone. Certainly Powell made no inroads in that respect. Perhaps the best that can be hoped for is that serious attention be paid to those in charge of hiring and that the practice of pulling new hires from “preferred” colleges and universities be limited. Diplomads notwithstanding, State has an insular and inbred culture that is very resistant to change.
Jan 31, 2005 - 9:43 am 7. Charlie Quidnunc:Roger,
Great catch. I read this post and the one in the Corner on my Podcast today. Listen if you get the time.
Charlie
Jan 31, 2005 - 11:11 am 8. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):I wonder if there was any way this source could have established bona fides without losing anonymity.
Some are claiming that voting was linked to food rations. If true, bad. If false, bad that it is floating around.
There is no MSM mention of this (other than a rumour that spread in Tikrit), which makes it suspicious.
Jan 31, 2005 - 2:01 pm 9. Lance:The mainstream media was horrified by the thought of a successful election. “How could 8 million Iraqis be so dumb.” Is that the next line in the times UK. Maybe they do want to be free Who knew.
Jan 31, 2005 - 2:22 pm 10. Knucklehead:John Moore,
It would, indeed, be bad if threats to withhold food rations were use to coerce people to vote.
That said, I read the article and there doesn’t seem to be any claim that people were coerced to vote for any particular candidate, just that they were coerced to vote (or to register to vote).
I suspect that, if it did happen, its a matter of old habits dying hard. How, for example, was 98% turnout managed under Saddam? You wanna live, then vote and vote for Saddam. After a lifetime of coercion like that, and in the face of “if you vote we’ll kill you!”, how hard would it be for someone not completely familiar with the full concepts of democracy who wanted to get people to vote to turn to some form of coercion such as threatening to withhold food rations. I suspect even a well intentioned Iraqi of a certain age might see coercion to vote, without accompanying coercion to vote a certain way, as a pretty mild form of coercion and a small price to pay to try and make it work.
Just sayin’, not excusing. The end of the beginning rather than the beginning of the end sorta stuff. I have heard My Fellow Americans (although, fortunately, none who run anything ;>) suggest coercions like, vote or no driver’s license.
It would be pretty naive, I assert, to imagine that some pretty shady things didn’t go on here and there in Iraq during this election. Heck, we have our share of that here and we’ve been at it for more than two centuries.
Jan 31, 2005 - 3:00 pm 11. Yehudit:“My understanding is that State is the most difficult agency in which to effect reform. I believe that the procedures that are required under current employment regulations make it almost impossible to fire deadwood and extremely difficult to even transfer someone.”
I heard Joel Mowbray speak about this; he had many anecdotes such as: a State Dept official who was convicted of a felony (forging docs), subsequently fired, sued to get reinstated and WON. Also only Foreign Office staff can hire and fire each other. He also told how every time Bush would make a foreign policy speech, FO around the world would fan out to the local officials they were sucking up to and assure them that “Bush didn’t really mean it.”
Jan 31, 2005 - 3:17 pm 12. Yehudit:If only 60% of Iraqis voted, then they can’t have been coerced at all or the percentage would be much higher. I think that’s a scurrilous rumor we should waste no more time taking seriously.
Jan 31, 2005 - 3:18 pm 13. richard mcenroe:Keep in mind that same online idiot, as I recall, went on to say 8,000,000 out of 14,000,000 is less than 50% so the election lacks legitimacy…
Jan 31, 2005 - 5:11 pm 14. David R. Block:The LLL is “math challenged” I suppose. And they predominate academia?
No wonder little Johnny can’t do math.
Jan 31, 2005 - 7:31 pm 15. kathianne:I wish Rice the best, she has her work cut out for her. Another example of what’s wrong at State.
Jan 31, 2005 - 8:03 pm 16. Annoying Old Guy:My understanding is that voting was tied to food rations via the ration ID card because it was the most widespread valid ID. See here for instance.
Jan 31, 2005 - 8:38 pm 17. Bleeding heart conservative:This is the best comment I’ve heard from an anti-war leftie all day, regarding the Iraq election:
“You may think that you have felt dumb before, but let me tell you something: until you have stood in front of a man who knows real pain and told him that you are against your country’s alleviation of his country’s state-sponsored murderous suffering, you have not felt truly, deeply, like a total f#(
Jan 31, 2005 - 8:41 pm 18. afvet:yes, we must clean out those people from State dept who want peace and replace them with types like DoD who like war cause they get better promotions in additon to loving nude pyramids
Jan 31, 2005 - 9:24 pm 19. IceCold:Amazing and encouraging that you all picked up on this one. It was actually a classic. Arraf effectively lied by not correcting her earlier (understandable, innocent) mistake.
I was in the press center of the convention center in Baghdad Sunday morning, with other USG types whose agency affiliation shall remain undisclosed, and we all instantly jumped on this one as she was giving her live report from the “second” polling site. One other delicious tidbit. Arraf’s report was interrupted and shortened by the spontaneous singing and dancing of male voters right next to her. This, in the decidedly problematic community of Baqouba. That alone was very encouraging.
As for State, I’ll wait for a lot more data before making any broad assessment, but there seems to be an emerging tension much like that visible in media circles. Their deep-seated, reflexive opposition to US policy and especially any use of power that upsets blood-stained despots or Euro kibbitzers is being undermined by the obvious moral appeal of Iraq’s fledgling democratic experiment. I just think it’s hard for them to hear old ladies who’ve survived war and genocide say they are voting to “put a bullet in the heart of the terrorists” and retain their flinty, superior, faux sophistication and disdain for American activism.
Time will tell.
Jan 31, 2005 - 10:37 pm 20. lewy14:The story on the polling places may well be true, but I do recall Arraf reporting on the later voting with positive enthusiasm. If she were faking it it was a good job.
Christian Amanpour and Anderson Cooper also displayed substantial enthusiasm. Aaron Brown admonished viewers at the very end of Newsnight to put partisanship aside and embrace the Iraqi elections as good news. (Of course, the fact that he did so confirms that he understood that many people would be inclined to do no such thing).
From what I saw CNN did a decent job yesterday and overall I was pleasantly surprised.
Jan 31, 2005 - 11:52 pm 21. Dick Eagleson:I’ve often wondered if it would be possible to achieve the desired effect, while crossing no technical civil service lines, by simply going through a rebellious bureaucracy like the State Department and reassigning all of the particularly recalcitrant cases to a new Office of Limbo created specifically to hold the irredentist monkey-wrenchers.
One defines their job duties as staying at home and collecting their paychecks, but under no circumstances ever showing up at work again on pain of firing for insubordination and forfeiture of pension benefits.
Just asking.
Feb 1, 2005 - 1:21 am 22. ForNow:Itís nice when reporters let the positives show through instead of negatively spinning the positive. But CNNís Ms. Arraf is engaging in the behavior of Andrew Gilligan and the BBC in Baghdad (ìNotes from the Previous War: Bizarro Broadcasting Companyî by Denis Boyles, 1st pub. April 7, 2003 in Duck Season, now at National Review) when she doesnít own up to her own errors (though apparently, and unlike Gilligan and his colleagues, she at least didnít spend a day attacking the credibility of US announcements in order to cover up her own error). This behavioral ìmemeî in the media, of not owning up to significant errors, needs to be stamped out. You can see to what extremes it reaches in the behavior of the disgraced Dan Rather and his propaganda cult at CBS News.
Feb 1, 2005 - 9:29 am 23. Zev Sero:Let’s suppose for a moment that they had coerced people to vote. How exactly would that make the election less legitimate? Australia coerces people to vote (no, you don’t lose your food rations – what are those? – but you do get hit with a substantial fine), and as a result gets turnouts in the high 90s, and I’ve never heard of anyone doubting the legitimacy of its elections.
In fact, when libertarians like me, or people who just couldn’t care less about politics and would rather stay home and watch the footy, propose making voting voluntary, we get roundly condemned, because turnout would drop, and that would supposedly make the elections less legitimate.
As for the State Dept, what they need to do is have every employee sign a statement that they understand that the foreign policy of the USA is set by the president, and that it’s their job to promote that policy whether they agree with it or not. Any employee who refuses to sign, or who is caught undermining USA policy, can be fired for malfeasance. I think this could all be done by Executive Order, but if necessary Congress can pass a law authorising it, and I doubt any court would be willing or able to stop it.
Feb 1, 2005 - 10:20 am 24. Zev Sero:PS: I forgot to put in a shameless plug for my blog, so here it is: NeoWarmonger. Absolutely brazen, I am…
Feb 1, 2005 - 10:22 am 25. JFB:Zev Sero: There’s already that statement that needs to be signed. The options are 1) support the policy, 2) protest the policy while still supporting it, 3) quit.
Everyone knows that, but not all behave that way.
I left State after 25 mostly very good years. I didn’t always believe in a policy that was being promoted (from Carter to Bush 43, that’s a lot of policy differences), but I never undercut it. I, after all, wasn’t the one elected President.
But there certainly are those who try to influence policy through other-than-appropriate channels. In one job I had, I had to throw fits to get my staff to cover the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Chairman in the materials we were sending abroad. Sure, Jesse Helms was a moron in numerous ways, but he was still the Chariman. You simply can’t blow him off because you don’t like him or his policies. What he said mattered.
I think a lot of commenters here, though, put too much emphasis on malign intent among State officers. First, they are not all recruited from “‘preferred’ colleges”. I’ve worked with great officers in serious jobs, who have ranged from “no degree” to state colleges to Ivy Leagues. I’ve also worked with total jerks with the same academic credentials.
More to the point, I think, is that those who choose to go into State (nobody’s drafted, after all) go in because they want to make a difference in the world. That usually includes a lot of “can’t we all get along together” types, by definition.
State bureaucracy is pretty much the same as it is in the entire Federal government, with a few wrinkles added. FSOs aren’t supposed to be rated by GS employees, and it’s difficult to remove either from jobs. Part of the problem is that for FSOs, Washington assignments are usually of only two years’ duration. The wheels of bureaucracy grind so slowly that it takes longer than that to process negative paperwork. And who needs–or can handle–a grievance filed a year after you’ve left the job and are now up to your neck in some other country? Are you really going to carry all the paperwork from your last job to your next? Some do; most don’t.
On the other hand, people can be removed for good cause. I’ve been able to get people out of jobs–and the Department–in less than two weeks when push came to shove.
But FSOs have an up-or-out regime, like the military. If you haven’t passed a certain point by a certain time in your career, you’re either frozen or shown the door. Also, there’s a mandatory (by law) “low-rating” classification. The bottom 2%/year of all rated officers are identified as non-performers. If they get that classification twice in a row, they’re out the door. No grievances or law suits permitted.
And please don’t blame State for the decisions of judges and juries. The Department is dealing with just as much of a crap shoot there as anyone else.
This said, there’s incredible room for improvement in the most hierarchical agency in the USG. Flattening the structure would be a terrific place to start.
Feb 1, 2005 - 10:48 am