NEWS FLASH - Michelle wears flat shoes a lot!!

• Michelle Obama's Official White House Portrait - Pic Inside
  • I would be somwhat ok in summer, but in WINTER? - mar
  • Very beautiful, very classy lady. (nm) - Marmann
  • I really hope that Michelle will put on at her - mar
  • I'm sorry but I just do not think - sm
  • Very beautiful and eloquent - I just gotta be me
  • I had heard people talking about her sleeveless outfits - You gotta be kidding
  • WOW! Lovely. - LK
  • I am not an O fan or a Mrs O fan by any stretch..but WOW..... - MT and worn out
    • You and me both! LOL. (nm) - Marmann
    • Where would we end up if everyone of us shows off - what?
      • Oh brother!...now you're really stretching.. - MTPockets
        • It is not 'stretching', last not least she is - what?
          • Could be she is premenopausal and sm - no name
            • The above should be pre not perimenopausal - Oops
              • I like the idea of premenopausal, - mar
                • My 88--year-old aunt goes sleeveless, duh - Totally useless post
            • Perimenopausal, I am almost 66 and I have no idea - You gotta be kidding
              • Well, you are lucky then sm - no name
  • Does it bother you that Michelle Obama wears sleeveless dresses? - Thanks for the pic.
    • Is it automatically "channeling Jacki O." if someone dresses in understated elegance...sm - Cyndiee
      • She is fugly...airbrushing is what makes her look halfway decent..nm - uhoh
        • And I wonder what YOU look like - what now
          • What I wonder is how people look like who insist that - mar
          • Honey, it's my OPINIION....I am - sm
        • But how in the world did they airbrush here on inaurguration day? She was gorgeous - Needing answer
          • Gorgeous? I question that...nm - mar
          • NEWS FLASH - Michelle wears flat shoes a lot!! - Needing answer
            • that she is a TALL woman, if she wears high - mar
          • You mean in the brocade nightmare that looked like - vogue
            • OMG, you gave me a big laugh. And what about - mar
              • I liked that dress. I especially liked... - Marmann
    • Not really, but not exclusively, there are - Mar
      • She's beautiful and looks fantastic... - sm
        • On as scale from 1 to 10.........sm - mar
          • No doubt, Barack is hot - but they complement each other..........NM - sm
            • Thanks for your diplomatic answer...sm - mar
        • Michelle is a nice, educated person, BUT - what?
          • What is not beautiful? - sm
            • no comment.....nm - mar
    • she's showing off the guns... - wow
  • Channeling Jackie O.... - wow
    • In the eyes of the beholder - SG
      • Really classy reply; I would rather be ugly on the outside than the inside...sm - Cyndiee
        • Now you just made a beauty queen out of Michelle, - mar
          • Yes, and bitterness and synicism like yours goes to the bone......sm - Cyndiee
            • I just want to say thta it ticks me off when Michelle is called - mar
              • Well, how YOU think she looks, you're right, I'm wrong, now u r happy........nm - Cyndiee
                • And BTW, I'm crushed that you hate me, but you don't have to click on my posts ....sm - Cyndiee
                • This is not my opinion, this is a fact., you said it yourself.... - mar
      • This are all excuses, why cannot people just say the TRUTH?,,nm - mar
        • What........your twisted or hateful idea of truth, grow a heart, okay?...nm - Cyndiee
          • Wow! What has this to do with 'grow a heart?'..sm - mar
            • cyndiee obviously is the ultimate judge of any post here...all bow to cyndiee... - nm
              • Wow, guess you told me, huh.........no message - Cyndiee
            • If you did not understand it, that proves my point......nm - Cyndiee
              • I understood perfectly well how you meant your post..nm - mar
        • SG DID say the truth... (sm) - Marmann
          • Blah, blah, one can certainly decide if a person is beautiful or not..nm - mar
            • Of course, one can. It's in the eye of the beholder. - Marmann

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Using the term living in ignorance is not calling a name.  If you are that sensitive, political boards are not for you.

I have had an abortion.  Was it for my own convenience?  No.  Did I have to have escorts into the building because people like you were outside throwing bottles and yelling murderer?  Yes.  By the way, they set a bomb the next day that killed quite a few people.  I guess that wasn't murder though because it was name of the lord.  Did I enjoy ripping my child apart limb by limb and decapitating him/her as you so eloquantly put it?  Not so much.  Was it really like that even?  No.  How did I know?  Well, let's just say the tape they used to hold the material over the *collection jar* didn't stick very well.  What you don't understand is that having an abortion is not an easy decision, but sometimes it is a necessary decision. 

So why did I have an abortion?  I had 2 choices.  I could have the child who was fathered by the man who was my husband at the time, who would have beaten the child just like he beat and raped me, or I could have had the child so it could end up in that list of children you just turned your nose up at.  You see, not everybody fits into that nice little box you like to call *girls who just want to get pregnant,* but if that makes it prettier for you, then go right ahead.

Religion:

I don't have a problem with faith, I have a problem with religion, especially when it impacts social issues that would take away rights of others who are not represented by that religion, or when it presents a double standard (you really don't have to look too hard to find those).  A person on this board wrote that politics don't belong in the pulput.  I agree.  But I also believe that the pulput doesn't belong in politics.  Keep your religion, let it teach you whatever it will, abide by it's rules.  Just don't expect others to have the same set of rules.

Helping my community:  You have no idea what I do and don't do, so I wouldn't be so quick to judge someone you don't know.  Maybe you should spend less time running all over the world trying to find that perfect baby that will look just like mommy and daddy and spend more time using that money spent on the kids here that need help.  I guess that would be too much to ask for because those children here are just too much of a pain in the a$$ for you.

You just keep on rambling on about how wonderful you are and how $hitty everyone else is.  Oh, and might I point out that most christians I know don't help others for recognition (your boasting is disgusting), they help others because they want to and because that is what their faith teaches them to do.

The current debt of the US BEFORE this plan is $10,765,494,601,610.69 as of Feb 14, 2009.  It has continued to increase by about $3.58 billion PER DAY since Sept 28, 2007.  Hmmmm.....

I wonder what could be costing us so much?  How about this?

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home

And you want to complain about spending money that will actually BENEFIT people. 

We get the fact that this deficit was there before Obama took office.  However, there were many dems who voted in favor of the war in Iraq...including Hillary Clinton.  Bush didn't do all of this on his own.  He did all of this with the help of the rest of the government and within the last few years or so....I do believe dems controlled congress. 

All this being said, it still does not make spending 1 trillion dollars okay because....hey Bush already racked up a huge deficit first.  Government spending is part of what got us in this mess in the first place and now what is government doing.......SPENDING MORE.  I can't help but cringe. 

As far as blaming all this money being spent on Iraq......how about all the money that goes to illegal aliens daily.  We are talking billions of dollars going to illegal aliens in this country....and I do believe Obama's own aunt is one of those. 

One madam reported her girls were getting $260 for 60 minutes but now they're hurting because of the economy.   Boy, it's pretty bad when our news media thinks it's noteworthy to note the whores are hurting. 

AW  -"I think 10% represents different things to different people and that 10% to someone earning $10,000 a year might be more of an encumbrance than it would to someone earning $10,000,000 a year."

I personally think the flat tax is a good idea because if a person makes 10,000 dollars a year they pay 1000 dollars, but if a person makes 10,000,000 dollars they pay 1 million. That's fair game to me.  If you were able to benefit 10,000,000 dollars from American entrepreneurship then I think you should pay your 10% in taxes, give back.  9,000,000 after taxes is not too shabby and a lot more than what they would have under the current system.  The more you make the more you should pay anyway.

I couldn't really grip the fair tax concept.  Maybe you can explain it to me more???? (to American Woman).

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#31094044

Care to try again?

Saying it is so or isn't so doesn't make it the truth.

Yes, Saddam was a face of terror, one of many in the world...and not just in the middle east.  Try Africa. 

The posting you don't believe has facts as stated by multiple investigations sponsored by the U.S. as well as countless Middle East and terror experts.  They appear to be the truth.  That Saddam was able to keep the lid on violence in his country is backed up by the history of Iraq under his reign.  Very easy to check on.

http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/17789356/detail.html

...a mile in the shoes of the average Iraqi citizen.  Bush totally destroyed their country.  Last I heard, there STILL wasn't water or electricity in parts of the country that we demolished.  As bad as Saddam Hussein was, at least he kept Iran out of Iraq because they were mortal enemies. 

They didn't do anything to us.  Bush invented fiction about WMD and AL Qaeda and started a war based on lies.  He said way back in 1999 that if he ever had the chance to invade Iraq, he would. 

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050620/why_george_went_to_war.php

Where I come from, that's called "premeditation."  We went in and demolished their country.  Bush knew IEDs would be a threat to our troops, yet he REFUSED to supply them with vehicles that would protect our soldiers from them. 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2008-12-08-mrap_N.htm

If we remained concentrated on Afghanistan, we'd have caught Osama bin Laden by now.  This just begs the question of WHY bin Laden suddenly lost his "importance" to Bush and Iraq suddenly became the focus after 9/11.  Perhaps bin Laden is worth more to Bush politically if he is alive. 

Bush gave a presidential coin to the grieving mother of a dead soldier and told her, "Don't go sell it on eBay."  http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2007/05/bush_to_mother_dont_sell_on_eb.html

Bush used Pat Tillman as a recruiting poster boy while he was alive, and after he was killed under suspicious circumstances (http://www.house.gov/list/press/ca15_honda/SEPT06CORPTILLMAN.html), Tillman's family was told that Tillman was nothing but "worm dirt" because they weren't Christian.  http://crooksandliars.com/2007/04/24/pats-worm-dirt/

KBR (Cheney's Halliburton subsidiary) provided WASTEWATER for bathing and drinking, etc. to our troops for almost TWO YEARS.  Does that fall under Rumsfeld's assertion that, "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want?" or does it simply display complete contempt and disrespect for our soldiers? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/10/AR2008031002487.html

There are just so many bad things and questions surrounding the war itself.  When you add Bush's contempt for our troops, his cockiness and that smirk, it's a wonder that ALL he got thrown in his face was a shoe.

In fact, he was interviewed after the "shoe" attack.  A portion of it is copied and pasted below.  He used the same old "al Qaeda in Iraq" excuse, and when it was pointed out that al Qaeda wasn't IN Iraq until WE got there, his answer was, "So what?"

You can see the interview at http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Bush_Im_not_insulted_by_thrown_1215.html

The question and answer where he says, "So what?" starts at approximately 2:00.

During the interview, Bush says his legacy will "take time," but includes No Child Left Behind and "52 months of uninterrupted job growth," then speaks about his role in "protecting" America after 9/11. He mentions that al Qaeda has turned out to be a problem in Iraq.

Raddatz points out that al Qaeda didn't choose to make Iraq a base to fight from until after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.  Bush's response? "Yeah, that's right. So what?"

I still fear the extent of the damage this man can do before Obama is sworn in -- assuming Obama IS sworn in -- (http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Parowan_Prophet_Obama_wont_make_it_1214.html) (and if he isn't, it won't have anything to do with God; rather someone who is GodLESS; don't need to be a "prophet" to predict THAT).

That shoe was thrown at Bush because he has created such destruction, disdain distrust and disrespect in Iraq, as he has done in America, as well.

Marmann: 

I agree with your statement; I have a son who just came back from there (he's been in the military for 19 years), and he states it is far worse than we know.  He told me 'mom, I have seen a lot of things in my service to this country, but to see what I have seen there"..and he can't talk about it further because he breaks down in tears, especially when he talks about the children and friends he has lost because of this so-called war..it's heartbreaking.. He is home now, he has one more year left and after that he says he will retire.  War through a soldier's eyes and heart go beyond devastation; that is why so many of our husbands, sisters, fathers and even mothers who serve our country who come back from war broken because through their eyes and hearts - they know things that they can never and will never discuss with anyone.

Marmann: 

I agree with your statement; I have a son who just came back from there (he's been in the military for 19 years), and he states it is far worse than we know.  He told me 'mom, I have seen a lot of things in my service to this country, but to see what I have seen there"..and he can't talk about it further because he breaks down in tears, especially when he talks about the children and friends he has lost because of this so-called war..it's heartbreaking.. He is home now, he has one more year left and after that he says he will retire.  War through a soldier's eyes and heart go beyond devastation; that is why so many of our husbands, sisters, fathers and even mothers who serve our country who come back from war broken because through their eyes and hearts - they know things that they can never and will never discuss with anyone.

You don't have one iota of a clue what I've been through in my life.  So, your trying to portray me as some mean spirited soul who doesn't have a clue what tough times are is very presumptious of you.  I have walked some very difficult roads.  I could write a book about what has happened to me that was not my fault, but I dealt with it.  I received help and was grateful, and once I had a leg up I took it from there.  I never once complained about what the government wasn't doing for me.

I'm not saying that the situation in Lebanon is easy or fair.  However, at some point people have to take the consequences of their choices and live with them and not criticize the help they are given.  If these people weren't whining while being evacuated from their country on a luxury cruisde ship with all the amenties I would have kept my mouth shut, but the audacity of people to complain about THEIR RESCUERS goes beyond being ungrateful.  Now, if I was standing on a corner telling a mentally challenged homeless person to suck it up and get a job then your sermons would have been called for, but these are people who went to Lebanon with the money out of their pocket knowing full well the dangers there.  I really can't believe you are comparing the dangers of Beirut, Lebanon to any American city, but then again I don't choose to walk through the worst neighbohoods in my city at night either.  Anyway, there is no comparison.

I just saw a story on Headline News Network about the shoe-throwing incident, and they said the people of Iraq are divided on how they feel about it, but nobody feels it was wrong, half of them think it was the right thing to do and half think it was an embarrassment but not necessarily the wrong thing to do.

so if they feel that way, let's bring our precious sons and daughters home, and never go back.  Our finances are in crisis, we can't afford to be spending billions where we're not wanted.  What's the point of being there and spending all this money we could be using in much better ways. Why keep risking the lives of our troops for people who don't appreciate it at all?  I'm no political genius, far from it, but plain old common sense says this is just wrong!

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 17, 2006; A01

Adapted from "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, copyright Knopf 2006

After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.

To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.

O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .

Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.

The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort.

The CPA had the power to enact laws, print currency, collect taxes, deploy police and spend Iraq's oil revenue. It had more than 1,500 employees in Baghdad at its height, working under America's viceroy in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, but never released a public roster of its entire staff.

Interviews with scores of former CPA personnel over the past two years depict an organization that was dominated -- and ultimately hobbled -- by administration ideologues.

"We didn't tap -- and it should have started from the White House on down -- just didn't tap the right people to do this job," said Frederick Smith, who served as the deputy director of the CPA's Washington office. "It was a tough, tough job. Instead we got people who went out there because of their political leanings."

Endowed with $18 billion in U.S. reconstruction funds and a comparatively quiescent environment in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion, the CPA was the U.S. government's first and best hope to resuscitate Iraq -- to establish order, promote rebuilding and assemble a viable government, all of which, experts believe, would have constricted the insurgency and mitigated the chances of civil war. Many of the basic tasks Americans struggle to accomplish today in Iraq -- training the army, vetting the police, increasing electricity generation -- could have been performed far more effectively in 2003 by the CPA.

But many CPA staff members were more interested in other things: in instituting a flat tax, in selling off government assets, in ending food rations and otherwise fashioning a new nation that looked a lot like the United States. Many of them spent their days cloistered in the Green Zone, a walled-off enclave in central Baghdad with towering palms, posh villas, well-stocked bars and resort-size swimming pools.

By the time Bremer departed in June 2004, Iraq was in a precarious state. The Iraqi army, which had been dissolved and refashioned by the CPA, was one-third the size he had pledged it would be. Seventy percent of police officers had not been screened or trained. Electricity generation was far below what Bremer had promised to achieve. And Iraq's interim government had been selected not by elections but by Americans. Divisive issues were to be resolved later on, increasing the chances that tension over those matters would fuel civil strife.

To recruit the people he wanted, O'Beirne sought résumés from the offices of Republican congressmen, conservative think tanks and GOP activists. He discarded applications from those his staff deemed ideologically suspect, even if the applicants possessed Arabic language skills or postwar rebuilding experience.

Smith said O'Beirne once pointed to a young man's résumé and pronounced him "an ideal candidate." His chief qualification was that he had worked for the Republican Party in Florida during the presidential election recount in 2000.

O'Beirne, a former Army officer who is married to prominent conservative commentator Kate O'Beirne, did not respond to requests for comment.

He and his staff used an obscure provision in federal law to hire many CPA staffers as temporary political appointees, which exempted the interviewers from employment regulations that prohibit questions about personal political beliefs.

There were a few Democrats who wound up getting jobs with the CPA, but almost all of them were active-duty soldiers or State Department Foreign Service officers. Because they were career government employees, not temporary hires, O'Beirne's office could not query them directly about their political leanings.

One former CPA employee who had an office near O'Beirne's wrote an e-mail to a friend describing the recruitment process: "I watched résumés of immensely talented individuals who had sought out CPA to help the country thrown in the trash because their adherence to 'the President's vision for Iraq' (a frequently heard phrase at CPA) was 'uncertain.' I saw senior civil servants from agencies like Treasury, Energy . . . and Commerce denied advisory positions in Baghdad that were instead handed to prominent RNC (Republican National Committee) contributors."

As more and more of O'Beirne's hires arrived in the Green Zone, the CPA's headquarters in Hussein's marble-walled former Republican Palace felt like a campaign war room. Bumper stickers and mouse pads praising President Bush were standard desk decorations. In addition to military uniforms and "Operation Iraqi Freedom" garb, "Bush-Cheney 2004" T-shirts were among the most common pieces of clothing.

"I'm not here for the Iraqis," one staffer noted to a reporter over lunch. "I'm here for George Bush."

When Gordon Robison, who worked in the Strategic Communications office, opened a care package from his mother to find a book by Paul Krugman, a liberal New York Times columnist, people around him stared. "It was like I had just unwrapped a radioactive brick," he recalled.

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."

It's fine, Foley replied. He told Hallen that he was to be the project manager. He would rely on other people to get things done. He would be "the main point of contact."

Before the war, Baghdad's stock exchange looked nothing like its counterparts elsewhere in the world. There were no computers, electronic displays or men in colorful coats scurrying around on the trading floor. Trades were scrawled on pieces of paper and noted on large blackboards. If you wanted to buy or sell, you came to the exchange yourself and shouted your order to one of the traders. There was no air-conditioning. It was loud and boisterous. But it worked. Private firms raised hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling stock, and ordinary people learned about free enterprise.

The exchange was gutted by looters after the war. The first wave of American economic reconstruction specialists from the Treasury Department ignored it. They had bigger issues to worry about: paying salaries, reopening the banks, stabilizing the currency. But the brokers wanted to get back to work and investors wanted their money, so the CPA made the reopening a priority.

Quickly absorbing the CPA's ambition during the optimistic days before the insurgency flared, Hallen decided that he didn't just want to reopen the exchange, he wanted to make it the best, most modern stock market in the Arab world. He wanted to promulgate a new securities law that would make the exchange independent of the Finance Ministry, with its own bylaws and board of directors. He wanted to set up a securities and exchange commission to oversee the market. He wanted brokers to be licensed and listed companies to provide financial disclosures. He wanted to install a computerized trading and settlement system.

Iraqis cringed at Hallen's plan. Their top priority was reopening the exchange, not setting up computers or enacting a new securities law. "People are broke and bewildered," broker Talib Tabatabai told Hallen. "Why do you want to create enemies? Let us open the way we were."

Tabatabai, who held a doctorate in political science from Florida State University, believed Hallen's plan was unrealistic. "It was something so fancy, so great, that it couldn't be accomplished," he said.

But Hallen was convinced that major changes had to be enacted. "Their laws and regulations were completely out of step with the modern world," he said. "There was just no transparency in anything. It was more of a place for Saddam and his friends to buy up private companies that they otherwise didn't have a stake in."

Opening the stock exchange without legal and structural changes, Hallen maintained, "would have been irresponsible and short-sighted."

To help rewrite the securities law, train brokers and purchase the necessary computers, Hallen recruited a team of American volunteers. In the spring of 2004, Bremer approved the new law and simultaneously appointed the nine Iraqis selected by Hallen to become the exchange's board of governors.

The exchange's board selected Tabatabai as its chairman. The new securities law that Hallen had nursed into life gave the board control over the exchange's operations, but it didn't say a thing about the role of the CPA adviser. Hallen assumed that he'd have a part in decision-making until the handover of sovereignty. Tabatabai and the board, however, saw themselves in charge.

Tabatabai and the other governors decided to open the market as soon as possible. They didn't want to wait several more months for the computerized trading system to be up and running. They ordered dozens of dry-erase boards to be installed on the trading floor. They used such boards to keep track of buying and selling prices before the war, and that's how they'd do it again.

The exchange opened two days after Hallen's tour in Iraq ended. Brokers barked orders to floor traders, who used their trusty white boards. Transactions were recorded not with computers but with small chits written in ink. CPA staffers stayed away, afraid that their presence would make the stock market a target for insurgents.

When Tabatabai was asked what would have happened if Hallen hadn't been assigned to reopen the exchange, he smiled. "We would have opened months earlier. He had grand ideas, but those ideas did not materialize," Tabatabai said of Hallen. "Those CPA people reminded me of Lawrence of Arabia."

The hiring of Bremer's most senior advisers was settled upon at the highest levels of the White House and the Pentagon. Some, like Foley, were personally recruited by Bush. Others got their jobs because an influential Republican made a call on behalf of a friend or trusted colleague.

That's what happened with James K. Haveman Jr., who was selected to oversee the rehabilitation of Iraq's health care system.

Haveman, a 60-year-old social worker, was largely unknown among international health experts, but he had connections. He had been the community health director for the former Republican governor of Michigan, John Engler, who recommended him to Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense.

Haveman was well-traveled, but most of his overseas trips were in his capacity as a director of International Aid, a faith-based relief organization that provided health care while promoting Christianity in the developing world. Before his stint in government, Haveman ran a large Christian adoption agency in Michigan that urged pregnant women not to have abortions.

Haveman replaced Frederick M. Burkle Jr., a physician with a master's degree in public health and postgraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and the University of California at Berkeley. Burkle taught at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where he specialized in disaster-response issues, and he was a deputy assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which sent him to Baghdad immediately after the war.

He had worked in Kosovo and Somalia and in northern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. A USAID colleague called him the "single most talented and experienced post-conflict health specialist working for the United States government."

But a week after Baghdad's liberation, Burkle was informed he was being replaced. A senior official at USAID sent Burkle an e-mail saying the White House wanted a "loyalist" in the job. Burkle had a wall of degrees, but he didn't have a picture with the president.

Haveman arrived in Iraq with his own priorities. He liked to talk about the number of hospitals that had reopened since the war and the pay raises that had been given to doctors instead of the still-decrepit conditions inside the hospitals or the fact that many physicians were leaving for safer, better paying jobs outside Iraq. He approached problems the way a health care administrator in America would: He focused on preventive measures to reduce the need for hospital treatment.

He urged the Health Ministry to mount an anti-smoking campaign, and he assigned an American from the CPA team -- who turned out to be a closet smoker himself -- to lead the public education effort. Several members of Haveman's staff noted wryly that Iraqis faced far greater dangers in their daily lives than tobacco. The CPA's limited resources, they argued, would be better used raising awareness about how to prevent childhood diarrhea and other fatal maladies.

Haveman didn't like the idea that medical care in Iraq was free. He figured Iraqis should pay a small fee every time they saw a doctor. He also decided to allocate almost all of the Health Ministry's $793 million share of U.S. reconstruction funds to renovating maternity hospitals and building new community medical clinics. His intention, he said, was "to shift the mind-set of the Iraqis that you don't get health care unless you go to a hospital."

But his decision meant there were no reconstruction funds set aside to rehabilitate the emergency rooms and operating theaters at Iraqi hospitals, even though injuries from insurgent attacks were the country's single largest public health challenge.

Haveman also wanted to apply American medicine to other parts of the Health Ministry. Instead of trying to restructure the dysfunctional state-owned firm that imported and distributed drugs and medical supplies to hospitals, he decided to try to sell it to a private company.

To prepare it for a sale, he wanted to attempt something he had done in Michigan. When he was the state's director of community health, he sought to slash the huge amount of money Michigan spent on prescription drugs for the poor by limiting the medications doctors could prescribe for Medicaid patients. Unless they received an exemption, physicians could only prescribe drugs that were on an approved list, known as a formulary.

Haveman figured the same strategy could bring down the cost of medicine in Iraq. The country had 4,500 items on its drug formulary. Haveman deemed it too large. If private firms were going to bid for the job of supplying drugs to government hospitals, they needed a smaller, more manageable list. A new formulary would also outline new requirements about where approved drugs could be manufactured, forcing Iraq to stop buying medicines from Syria, Iran and Russia, and start buying from the United States.

He asked the people who had drawn up the formulary in Michigan whether they wanted to come to Baghdad. They declined. So he beseeched the Pentagon for help. His request made its way to the Defense Department's Pharmacoeconomic Center in San Antonio.

A few weeks later, three formulary experts were on their way to Iraq.

The group was led by Theodore Briski, a balding, middle-aged pharmacist who held the rank of lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy. Haveman's order, as Briski remembered it, was: "Build us a formulary in two weeks and then go home." By his second day in Iraq, Briski came to three conclusions. First, the existing formulary "really wasn't that bad." Second, his mission was really about "redesigning the entire Iraqi pharmaceutical procurement and delivery system, and that was a complete change of scope -- on a grand scale." Third, Haveman and his advisers "really didn't know what they were doing."

Haveman "viewed Iraq as Michigan after a huge attack," said George Guszcza, an Army captain who worked on the CPA's health team. "Somehow if you went into the ghettos and projects of Michigan and just extended it out for the entire state -- that's what he was coming to save."

Haveman's critics, including more than a dozen people who worked for him in Baghdad, contend that rewriting the formulary was a distraction. Instead, they said, the CPA should have focused on restructuring, but not privatizing, the drug-delivery system and on ordering more emergency shipments of medicine to address shortages of essential medicines. The first emergency procurement did not occur until early 2004, after the Americans had been in Iraq for more than eight months.

Haveman insisted that revising the formulary was a crucial first step in improving the distribution of medicines. "It was unwieldy to order 4,500 different drugs, and to test and distribute them," he said.

When Haveman left Iraq, Baghdad's hospitals were as decrepit as the day the Americans arrived. At Yarmouk Hospital, the city's largest, rooms lacked the most basic equipment to monitor a patient's blood pressure and heart rate, operating theaters were without modern surgical tools and sterile implements, and the pharmacy's shelves were bare.

Nationwide, the Health Ministry reported that 40 percent of the 900 drugs it deemed essential were out of stock in hospitals. Of the 32 medicines used in public clinics for the management of chronic diseases, 26 were unavailable.

The new health minister, Aladin Alwan, beseeched the United Nations for help, and he asked neighboring nations to share what they could. He sought to increase production at a state-run manufacturing plant in the city of Samarra. And he put the creation of a new formulary on hold. To him, it was a fool's errand.

"We didn't need a new formulary. We needed drugs," he said. "But the Americans did not understand that."

In May 2003, a team of law enforcement experts from the Justice Department concluded that more than 6,600 foreign advisers were needed to help rehabilitate Iraq's police forces.

The White House dispatched just one: Bernie Kerik.

Bernard Kerik had more star power than Bremer and everyone else in the CPA combined. Soldiers stopped him in the halls of the Republican Palace to ask for his autograph or, if they had a camera, a picture. Reporters were more interested in interviewing him than they were the viceroy.

Kerik had been New York City's police commissioner when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. His courage (he shouted evacuation orders from a block away as the south tower collapsed), his stamina (he worked around the clock and catnapped in his office for weeks), and his charisma (he was a master of the television interview) turned him into a national hero. When White House officials were casting about for a prominent individual to take charge of Iraq's Interior Ministry and assume the challenge of rebuilding the Iraqi police, Kerik's name came up. Bush pronounced it an excellent idea.

Kerik had worked in the Middle East before, as the security director for a government hospital in Saudi Arabia, but he was expelled from the country amid a government investigation into his surveillance of the medical staff. He lacked postwar policing experience, but the White House viewed that as an asset.

Veteran Middle East hands were regarded as insufficiently committed to the goal of democratizing the region. Post-conflict experts, many of whom worked for the State Department, the United Nations or nongovernmental organizations, were deemed too liberal. Men such as Kerik -- committed Republicans with an accomplished career in business or government -- were ideal. They were loyal, and they shared the Bush administration's goal of rebuilding Iraq in an American image. With Kerik, there were bonuses: The media loved him, and the American public trusted him.

Robert Gifford, a State Department expert in international law enforcement, was one of the first CPA staff members to meet Kerik when he arrived in Baghdad. Gifford was the senior adviser to the Interior Ministry, which oversaw the police. Kerik was to take over Gifford's job.

"I understand you are going to be the man, and we are here to support you," Gifford told Kerik.

"I'm here to bring more media attention to the good work on police because the situation is probably not as bad as people think it is," Kerik replied.

As they entered the Interior Ministry office in the palace, Gifford offered to brief Kerik. "It was during that period I realized he wasn't with me," Gifford recalled. "He didn't listen to anything. He hadn't read anything except his e-mails. I don't think he read a single one of our proposals."

Kerik wasn't a details guy. He was content to let Gifford figure out how to train Iraqi officers to work in a democratic society. Kerik would take care of briefing the viceroy and the media. And he'd be going out for a few missions himself.

Kerik's first order of business, less than a week after he arrived, was to give a slew of interviews saying the situation was improving. He told the Associated Press that security in Baghdad "is not as bad as I thought. Are bad things going on? Yes. But is it out of control? No. Is it getting better? Yes." He went on NBC's "Today" show to pronounce the situation "better than I expected." To Time magazine, he said that "people are starting to feel more confident. They're coming back out. Markets and shops that I saw closed one week ago have opened."

When it came to his own safety, Kerik took no chances. He hired a team of South African bodyguards, and he packed a 9mm handgun under his safari vest.

The first months after liberation were a critical period for Iraq's police. Officers needed to be called back to work and screened for Baath Party connections. They'd have to learn about due process, how to interrogate without torture, how to walk the beat. They required new weapons. New chiefs had to be selected. Tens of thousands more officers would have to be hired to put the genie of anarchy back in the bottle.

Kerik held only two staff meetings while in Iraq, one when he arrived and the other when he was being shadowed by a New York Times reporter, according to Gerald Burke, a former Massachusetts State Police commander who participated in the initial Justice Department assessment mission. Despite his White House connections, Kerik did not secure funding for the desperately needed police advisers. With no help on the way, the task of organizing and training Iraqi officers fell to U.S. military police soldiers, many of whom had no experience in civilian law enforcement.

"He was the wrong guy at the wrong time," Burke said later. "Bernie didn't have the skills. What we needed was a chief executive-level person. . . . Bernie came in with a street-cop mentality."

Kerik authorized the formation of a hundred-man Iraqi police paramilitary unit to pursue criminal syndicates that had formed since the war, and he often joined the group on nighttime raids, departing the Green Zone at midnight and returning at dawn, in time to attend Bremer's senior staff meeting, where he would crack a few jokes, describe the night's adventures and read off the latest crime statistics prepared by an aide. The unit did bust a few kidnapping gangs and car-theft rings, generating a stream of positive news stories that Kerik basked in and Bremer applauded. But the all-nighters meant Kerik wasn't around to supervise the Interior Ministry during the day. He was sleeping.

Several members of the CPA's Interior Ministry team wanted to blow the whistle on Kerik, but they concluded any complaints would be brushed off. "Bremer's staff thought he was the silver bullet," a member of the Justice Department assessment mission said. "Nobody wanted to question the [man who was] police chief during 9/11."

Kerik contended that he did his best in what was, ultimately, an untenable situation. He said he wasn't given sufficient funding to hire foreign police advisers or establish large-scale training programs.

Three months after he arrived, Kerik attended a meeting of local police chiefs in Baghdad's Convention Center. When it was his turn to address the group, he stood and bid everyone farewell. Although he had informed Bremer of his decision a few days earlier, Kerik hadn't told most of the people who worked for him. He flew out of Iraq a few hours later.

"I was in my own world," he said later. "I did my own thing."

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