WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's road to Baghdad
leads through a modest, nondescript office in the Pentagon. Nearly every
day, Douglas J. Feith, the White House's point man for the reconstruction
of Iraq, talks to L. Paul Bremer III, the US administrator on the ground,
overseeing policies on everything from who gets running water to the
number of arms that Iraqis can own.
Here, nuts-and-bolts decisions get aligned with the Pentagon's larger
strategies. When the State Department provided a list of relief workers to
help with the rebuilding, Feith's office rejected many as insufficiently
committed to building the kind of democracy Pentagon leaders envision.
Then, when some officials advised leaving some of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath
Party bureaucrats in place to run key agencies, Feith erupted.
In one meeting, Feith thundered about how keeping Hussein's officials
in place would be like toppling Adolf Hitler only to keep the Gestapo,
according to one official who was present. Now, many observers assert that
the ''de-Ba'athification'' policy has gone too far, turning thousands of
potential helpers into potential enemies.
The Pentagon's handling of the rebuilding has come under attack in
recent weeks, culminating in the move that put a panel chaired by national
security adviser Condoleezza Rice in charge of Iraq. But Bremer still
reports through Feith, and Bush officials are sending mixed signals about
the true intent of the changes. The White House insists the Pentagon is
still in charge. The Defense Department, however, is pledging to cooperate
with other agencies.
Many of the problems that have plagued the US-led coalition in Iraq,
including the difficulty in rebuilding water systems and electrical grids,
were predicted by a State Department study conducted in the year before
the war, The New York Times reported today. Pentagon officials initially
ignored many of the warnings, administration and congressional officials
told the newspaper, which also cited internal State Department documents.
Pentagon officials said they took the warnings to heart.
''The political situation in Iraq is moving forward, and so are
economic reforms,'' said a Pentagon spokesman, Larry DiRita. ''When those
areas become the prevalent activity there, . . . we all expect that
[Bremer] will begin reporting to the secretary of state in the same
fashion as all our ambassadors do.''
But whether the conciliatory attitude will endure beyond the funding
battles in Congress is an open question, say some involved in the
rebuilding. So, too, is whether Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's
staff will remain in charge.
''There have been serious miscalculations in the postwar planning,''
said Representative John Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania and a key
supporter of the war. ''The price we are paying is indeed a heavy price,
and yet the architects of this deployment have paid no price.''
Rumsfeld's chief adviser on postwar strategy, Feith, 49, personifies
the black-and-white view of the world that critics say has dominated
Pentagon thinking since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Feith's formidable intellect has won him a reputation as the brightest
advocate for the administration's neoconservative viewpoint, which holds
that the United States has a special responsibility to use its power to
promote democracy and capitalism around the world.
But the recent rash of criticisms has left Feith especially vulnerable,
because he was already a lightning rod for those angry at the Defense
Department. Arab sympathizers have complained that Feith, the official
most responsible for aiding Iraqi citizens, was an unpaid adviser to
former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and learned about the
Middle East through his advocacy for Israel.
James Zogby, president of the moderate Arab American Institute, said
Feith's policies are ''born of a good-vs.-evil worldview and a desire to
give [Israeli Prime Minister] Ariel Sharon more breathing space.''
Edward Luttwak, a longtime Pentagon strategist who has worked with
Feith, paints a picture of a man who can be both idealistic and
condescending in his views of Iraqis. At a meeting at which Luttwak was
present, Feith spoke of the United States' responsibility to instill
democratic principles in Iraqis even though they are ''not enormously
talented,'' Luttwak said.
Feith, who declined to be interviewed for this story, said through a
spokesman: ''There is a lot of talent among the Iraqis, so I don't believe
the quoted remark.''
In July, a Pentagon-ordered study by the Center for Strategic and
International Studies recommended that Bremer should get his own staff, as
a way of freeing him from Feith's oversight.
''We thought this was important,'' said a CSIS analyst who participated
in the briefing. ''Bremer shouldn't have to waste time going through Feith
every time he needs money. Feith agreed, but the office he set up is in
the Pentagon and hardly independent.''
Feith is part of the close-knit group of self-described
neoconservatives who have crafted President Bush's activist foreign
policy, among them Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, and National Security Council official
Elliott Abrams.
Born in Philadelphia, the son of a lawyer, Feith studied international
affairs at Harvard College before earning a law degree from Georgetown
University. In 1981, he joined the Reagan administration as a Middle East
specialist on the National Security Council. He soon became special
counsel to Richard Perle, who as assistant secretary of defense was
referred to by friend and foe alike as the ''Prince of Darkness'' for his
anticommunist views. Perle remains an unpaid Pentagon policy adviser.
After leaving government service at the close of the Reagan
administration, Feith practiced law, representing, among other clients,
Israeli defense companies and the government of Turkey.
While out of government, he continued to speak out on international
affairs. He was a staunch critic of the Oslo peace accords, insisting that
Israel could not trust Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat. At the
time, most other US supporters of Israel backed the talks, and shunned
Feith as an angry voice in the wilderness. Now, friends say, Feith feels
vindicated by Arafat's failure to end Palestinian terrorism.
In 1996, he coauthored the policy paper, ''A Clean Break,'' that
advised then-Prime Minister Netanyahu to abandon Oslo and push for regime
change in Arab countries. The paper suggested that if Hussein were
replaced with a democracy in Iraq, it would have a domino effect on other
Mideast nations. That paper is now considered an intellectual blueprint
for today's US policy on Iraq.
In 2001, Rumsfeld nominated Feith for the Pentagon's number-three post,
undersecretary for policy. At his confirmation hearing, then-Senator Max
Cleland, Democrat of Georgia who lost both legs and an arm in the Vietnam
War, said he had ''grave reservations.'' Cleland pointed to Feith's belief
that the United States should break the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty
with Russia and his support for putting tactical nuclear weapons in South
Korea. Cleland, in a recent interview, declared that ''my worst fears have
been confirmed.'' Once confirmed in his post, Feith implemented some of
his hard-line views, including breaking the ABM Treaty. He also helped
write Bush's doctrine of preemptive war.But it has been his stewardship of
Iraqi reconstruction that has put him on the firing line. His insistence
on purging a broad swath of bureaucrats with ties to Hussein's regime
slowed the return of core government functions. Mohammad Al Jaburi,
director general of Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organization, told the
Globe in May, shortly after seeing a half-dozen colleagues expelled for
being in the Ba'ath Party: ''Some of them had been with us for decades.
You get to know them, and you know which are good and which are bad. I
simply cannot afford to lose these people.''
Aid workers say they warned the Feith team about the dangers of postwar
disarray, but were ignored. Sandra Mitchell of International Rescue
Committee said aid groups raised the issue of postwar security and the
need to internationalize the rebuilding, but ''we'd ask questions, and
they'd answer with `Don't worry, we'll be handling that issue.' ''
Feith's friends caution against making judgments, noting that true
visionaries were not always seen as such in their time. ''He is perhaps
the brightest person I know or have known, and he is a tremendous asset
for the United States,'' said L. Marc Zell, his former law partner.
But even Zell has been under attack. Last month, Zell and a nephew of
Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi formed a partnership to help
companies win contracts in Iraq. That move prompted complaints that the
Pentagon was controlling rebuilding in part to funnel contracts to favored
firms.
In Feith's office, it only furthered the sense of siege.
