THE POLITICAL WAR.(The Talk of the Town)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 27-SEP-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Earlier this year, the United States Agency for International Development, or U.S.A.I.D., hired a team of independent experts to go to Iraq and evaluate the agency's programs there. The experts came back with a mixed review that included plenty of reason for worry: the reconstruction of Iraq was taking place in an ad-hoc fashion, without a consistent strategy, without the meaningful participation or advice of Iraqis, within paralyzing security constraints, and amid unrealistic claims of success. But something happened to the report on the way to publication. U.S.A.I.D. kept sending parts of it back for revision, draft after draft, weeding out criticism, until the agency finally approved a version for internal use which one member of the team called "a whitewash" of his findings. Another expert said, "It's so political, everything going on out there. They just didn't want to hear any bad news." Pointing out that some of the numbers posted on the agency's Web site were overly optimistic, he concluded, "They...

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