Former SecState Condi Rice's Comedy Hour - Everywhere Including The Daily Show

It's been hard blogging the last couple of days.  There doesn't seem to be any peace and quiet from the Greece debt crisis, the Herman Cain crisis, the defund UN crisis, the population crisis (there are now officially 7 billion of us, did you hear that?), less than 30-days Super Committee crisis, and all the other -isis. So I went and look up Jon Stewart for some laughs. And what do I get, Condi Rice at her finest! 

Yes, too bad, Jon Stewart did not invite Peter Van Buren for a tandem show on Iraq. That would have been spectacular.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

More here:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

I went to Foreign Policy for some serious reading and she's there too! Heeeelp! She's everywhere - saying things like "Leading from behind" is an oxymoron.  And that "We never expected to leave Iraq in 2011."

Can we please fast forward to Bob Gates future book already?  Why? Because at least, he doesn't give me a WMD headache as much as this one.

Related articles

• Condi Rice Talks Freedom, War, Working For Bush (npr.org)
• Condi Rice Just Forgot About Pearl Harbor on Letterman (esquire.com)
• Condoleezza Rice Appears To Almost Convince Jon Stewart The Iraq War Was Justified (businessinsider.com)
• Jon Stewart and Condoleezza Rice Make Fun of Gaddafi, Spar Over Iraq [Video] (gawker.com)
• Condi Rice Throws Bush Under The Bus (oliverwillis.com)
• Condi Rice Reveals Muammar Gaddafi Made Her A Music Video CalledBlack Flower In The White House (perezhilton.com)

Condi Congratulates Her Excellent Self in Her New Book, And Why Not?

                            Image via WikipediaVia WaPo - ‘No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington’ by Condoleezza Rice by Glenn Kessler:

"Rice is much more open detailing the administration’s struggle to deal with Iraq’s descent into violence during Bush’s second term. She congratulates herself on forcing more State Department officials into the field, but she might want to read “We Meant Well”— a hilarious and often depressing account by a foreign service officer of what really happened on the ground."

Read in full here.

Oh, she congratulates herself - now, that's a must read section.  Wonder if that infamous town hall made the cut in her book, complete with invited reporters at a ready to record those "whinny" diplomats who dared asked questions about what do you do after you get to Iraq.

Kessler writes that the former Secretary of State "congratulates" herself on "forcing more State Department officials into the field." Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot! Why is she congratulating her own excellent self?  I bet she did not know that most Foreign Service folks were already serving in the field before she came to Foggy Bottom? Or that the civil servants were hired to man the fort on C. Street not the blackholes of  ....

Pardon me?  Oh, you mean, she "forced" them into the war zones in 2007? Must be it. Except wait a minute .... neither her then Director General of the Foreign Service or Deputy went over there to serve.  I heard they worked REALLY hard at HR to get people to go; remember the prime candidate exercise? So basically, some suckers went to the war zones and others got their ambassadorships to some pretty sweet island countries in the Pacific or elsewhere without ever having some Baghdad dust on their shoes. You say it's unfair?  But who says bureaucratic life should be fair?

I'll have to wait until my public library gets a copy of this book. Sorry, I can't, I just can't bear to part with my donated dollars for Dr. Ferragamo's legacy shoring book.

Related articles

• Music for Condoleezza Rice (slog.thestranger.com)
• Condoleezza Rice on Her 'Eerie' Encounter with Gadhafi (abcnews.go.com)
• Shoe Stopper (snopes.com)
• Condoleezza Rice regrets watching Spamalot while Hurricane Katrina struck (telegraph.co.uk)

Condi vs. Rummy: Just be glad you don't have to spend Thanksgiving with these two

During the former SecDef's history setting lap dance (primed with the release of his memoir last February), Donald Rumsfeld gave an interview with verbal darts aimed at his fellow Bush administration officials, including former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

In this piece, Rumsfeld was critical of Condoleezza Rice, for her lack of experience in government.

"She'd never served in a senior administration position," he said. "She'd been an academic. And, you know, a lot of academics like to have meetings. And they like to bridge differences and get people all to be happy."

Fast forward to April 26, in the Sunday Mag of NYT (h/t to Laura Rozen of The Envoy)
   
Rumsfeld also implied that you were unfit for office. He wrote that you had “modest experience in the federal government and management.”

First of all, I didn’t have modest experience in management. Managing Stanford University is not so easy. But I don’t know what Don was trying to say, and it really doesn’t matter. Don can be a grumpy guy. We all know that.

There are a lot of people with strongly negative opinions of George Bush. Have you ever tried to dissuade anybody from hating him?

Well, no. But I think people caricatured the president, and the only thing that I couldn’t understand is why this man with such a curious mind, who in briefings always asked the question you wish you thought of, why that quality didn’t come across. And I fully admit that it didn’t come across. I think part of it is he has such a self-deprecating way about him that people tend to underestimate him. But he read five books for every one I read. He read something like 12 biographies of Lincoln in office.

I’ve read that people consider you almost incapable of admitting a mistake. What do you consider to be the biggest of your career?

You know, I’ve done pretty well. I don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on the past that way.

In 2005 you went to see “Spamalot,” and the audience booed you. Does that happen a lot?

It happens on occasion and, you know what, I don’t care. I don’t care, because I did what I thought I could do in service of the country. I did some things well and some things not so well. The overwhelming majority of people come up to me and say, “Thank you for your service.” If you’re a public figure, there are always going to be a few people who don’t like what you did. I’m just really glad I don’t have to listen to them.

I read that interview and discovered the secret of a good life.  My first thought -- well, so that's how she sleeps well at night. No second guessing, and she does not have to listen to "them" or anyone she does not want to. Sweet. 

On second thought - thank god we're not related and I don't have to spend Thanksgiving with these two!

Related articles

• To Condi, From Don (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
• Peter Nelson Compiles Donald Rumsfeld's Emails (delong.typepad.com)
• Rumsfeld vs. Rice: The Most Important Passive-Aggressive E-mails in America (esquire.com)
• Rumsfeld lashes out at John McCain, Condoleezza Rice, and others (macleans.ca)
• Rumsfeld Rips Rice, Powell (politicalwire.com)
• Woodward: Rumsfeld memoir a 'travesty' (politico.com)
• CONDI'S CAMEO: Rice versus Baldwin on '30 Rock' (politico.com)

Any future SECDEF who advises POTUS to again send a big American land army to XYZ should “have his head examined”

Image via Wikipedia

Did not make that up. Defense Secretary Robert Gates actually said:  "[In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should “have his head examined,” as General MacArthur so delicately put it."

Well, Bob Gates ... he was always a quotable one and I can't help but like the guy.

During Secretary Rice's tenure at the State Department, the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. launched its Dean Acheson Lecture in 2008.  It's first ever lecture speaker was no other than -- Secretary Gates. I probably was not the only one who thought it weird that a  Secretary of Defense delivered the first lecture named after a Secretary of State. In 2009, Secretary Clinton was invited to deliver the second lecture, I don't remember it as an exceptionally memorable speech, tell you the truth. But a sitting secretary of the State Department did deliver that lecture.

Last week, Secretary Gates delivered a speech at the US Military Academy at West Point.  As we have come to expect, it was down to earth, straight-shooting and always touching and inspiring. He says, "We have never once gotten it right" on predicting the next military engagements from the Mayaguez to Iraq.  I'm struck at how his speeches often looks inward, backward, and to the future and the next generation of soldiers.  He talks of entrepreneurial leaders who are "full-spectrum in their thinking." He says, "The military will not be able to train or educate you to have all the right answers – as you might find in a manual – but you should look for those experiences and pursuits in your career that will help you at least ask the right questions." He asks how to keep experienced soldiers in the Army after troop deployments end in 2014, and how it terrifies him that junior leaders and men and women in the prime of their professional lives may get stuck in cubicles. (I wished he talked about how to bring troops home from Asia and Europe but one can't have everything).  

Anyway, you don't hear that kind of talk in the State Department, which has never been particularly good about talking about its past or future, only of what is now.  Not enough money is often the excuse. Not in its institutional DNA is more like it.    

Here is Secretary Gates, still my favorite ultimate insider/outsider bureaucrat in all of DC:  

[W]hen it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagements, since Vietnam, our record has been perfect.  We have never once gotten it right, from the Mayaguez to Grenada, Panama, Somalia, the Balkans, Haiti, Kuwait, Iraq, and more – we had no idea a year before any of these missions that we would be so engaged.
[..]
The need for heavy armor and firepower to survive, close with, and destroy the enemy will always be there, as veterans of Sadr City and Fallujah can no doubt attest.  And one of the benefits of the drawdown in Iraq is the opportunity to conduct the kind of full-spectrum training – including mechanized combined arms exercises – that was neglected to meet the demands of the current wars.  Looking ahead, though, in the competition for tight defense dollars within and between the services, the Army also must confront the reality that the most plausible, high-end scenarios for the U.S. military are primarily naval and air engagements – whether in Asia, the Persian Gulf, or elsewhere.  The strategic rationale for swift-moving expeditionary forces, be they Army or Marines, airborne infantry or special operations, is self-evident given the likelihood of counterterrorism, rapid reaction, disaster response, or stability or security force assistance missions.  But in my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should “have his head examined,” as General MacArthur so delicately put it.
[...]
I hope you take some instruction and inspiration from the career of Russell Volckmann, Class of 1934.  At the outbreak of World War II Volckmann was serving as a full-time embed in the Philippine army.  After the Japanese invasion, Volckmann fought alongside his Philippine unit, and rather than surrender, he disappeared into the jungles and raised a guerrilla army of more than 22,000 men that fought the Japanese for the next three years.  When the Japanese commander finally decided to surrender, he made the initial overtures not to General MacArthur, but to Volckmann, who went on after the war to help create the Green Berets.  My point: if you chart a different path, there’s no telling the impact you could have – on the Army, and on history.

Indeed, the Army has always needed entrepreneurial leaders with a broad perspective and a diverse range of skills.  As President Kennedy put it, speaking on these grounds half a century ago, “your military responsibilities will require a versatility and an adaptability never before required in war or in peace.”  And for an era of full spectrum conflict, when we confront security dilemmas that Kennedy called “new in intensity, ancient in origin,” America can succeed only with leaders who are themselves full-spectrum in their thinking.  The military will not be able to train or educate you to have all the right answers – as you might find in a manual – but you should look for those experiences and pursuits in your career that will help you at least ask the right questions.
[...]
Which brings me to the third and greatest challenge facing your Army, and frankly, my main worry.  How can the Army can break-up the institutional concrete, its bureaucratic rigidity in its assignments and promotion processes, in order to retain, challenge, and inspire its best, brightest, and most-battled tested young officers to lead the service in the future?  After the major Afghan troop deployments end in 2014, how do we keep you and those 5 or 10 years older than you in our Army?
[...]
Consider that, in theater, junior leaders are given extraordinary opportunities to be innovative, take risks, and be responsible and recognized for the consequences.  The opposite is too often true in the rear-echelon headquarters and stateside bureaucracies in which so many of our mid-level officers are warehoused.  Men and women in the prime of their professional lives, who may have been responsible for the lives of scores or hundreds of troops, or millions of dollars in assistance, or engaging in reconciling warring tribes, they may find themselves in a cube all day re-formatting power point slides, preparing quarterly training briefs, or assigned an ever expanding array of clerical duties.  The consequences of this terrify me.
[...]
One thing I have learned from decades of leading large public organizations is that it is important to really focus on the top 20 percent of your people and, though it may be politically incorrect to say so, the bottom 20 percent as well.  The former to elevate and give more responsibility and opportunity, the latter to transition out, albeit with consideration and respect for the service they have rendered.  Failure to do this risks frustrating, demoralizing and ultimately losing the leaders we will most need for the future.

Read his entire speech here.

Related articles

• Quote Of The Day: Military Adventurism Edition (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Gates: No more wars like Afghan, Iraq ones (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Defense Secretary Gates´Common Sense (businessinsider.com)
• Gates to Army: No More Wars Like Iraq (newser.com)
• Gates's warning: Avoid land war in Asia, Middle East, and Africa - Christian Science Monitor (news.google.com)

Video of the Week: Condi not going to chirp at the people inside

The former Secretary of State, Condi Rice is still doing the rounds plugging in her new family memoir and end up of all places -- with Jon Stewart in The Daily Show!   It's quite fun to watch... but of course, you'll have to wait for that other future book in this series that will "talk" about her other gigs as controversial national security adviser and later as USG's top diplomat. 

But -- you'll be pleased to know that she is not/not going to "chirp at the people inside." Watch:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Condoleezza Rice Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Rally to Restore Sanity

Michael Shaw, publisher of progressive site on visual politics, the BagNewsNotes writes: "Can't we just be honest about the function of this, as well as so many other so-called blockbuster political biographies, though? The objects above represent just the latest PR act of "wiping the slate clean," of reintroducing a notorious public figure, of cementing a personality and reputation make-over by interjecting someone who has otherwise been laying low back into the media sphere by way of a "comeback tour."

Oh, Michael, Michael, must you say that out loud?

 

Related articles

• Rice will return to White House for private meeting with Obama (washingtonpost.com)
• Growing Up Condi (thedailybeast.com)
• Um, Can Condi Bench More Than You? [Femiladyism] (gawker.com)

NYT Review on Condi's book: "rarely a hair out of place"

Image by World Economic Forum via FlickrYou know, of course, that the former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, also known as 66th  has written a memoir, "Extraordinary, Ordinary People A Memoir of Family" (342 pages. Illustrated. Crown Archetype. $27), right?   NYT's Dwight Garner has written a review of the book in its Books of The Times. Excerpt below:

For all this, “Extraordinary, Ordinary People” is often aloof. There are few unguarded moments, little humor. There’s rarely a hair out of place. (She does talk about several of her boyfriends over the years, including, in the mid-1970s, the Denver Broncos kick returner Rick Upchurch.) Like so many public figures and those in government and politics especially, Ms. Rice is not especially reflective. Her energy is directed out, not in.

It’s frustrating. Here’s a woman, you think, who has been secretary of state and provost of Stanford University. During the fall of the Berlin Wall, she was George H. W. Bush’s adviser on Soviet policy. Her doctoral dissertation was published by Princeton University Press. Surely there’s a keen and kaleidoscopic mind in there. But that mind is rarely apparent in this softly flowing book. Reading it, from the perspective of ideas and intellect, is like watching a Toyota Prius compete in the Indianapolis 500.
[...]
“Extraordinary, Ordinary People” follows Ms. Rice to the University of Denver, where she studied international politics with the former Czech diplomat Josef Korbel, the father of Madeleine Albright. Korbel would become the first of her many influential mentors, who would come to include Brent Scowcroft, George H. W. Bush’s national security adviser, and George Shultz, secretary of state under Ronald Reagan.

This book takes us through her years at the National Security Council under Mr. Scowcroft and her disputatious tenure as the Stanford provost, where she slashed budgets and alienated much of the faculty. Ms. Rice skims quickly over both of these periods. Much fuller accounts can be found in the New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller’s comprehensive biography, “Condoleezza Rice: An American Life” (2007).
[...]
The most ringing line here may belong to Barbara Bush, then first lady, who said to Ms. Rice as she was preparing to leave the White House to return to Stanford: “You are such a good friend of the Bushes. This won’t be the last we see of you.”

Active links added above.  Read the whole thing here.

 

Related articles

• Growing Up Condi (thedailybeast.com)
• Condoleezza Rice admits to mistakes (telegraph.co.uk)
• 'Extraordinary, Ordinary People': Condoleezza Rice's incomplete tale (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Robert Young Pelton: The chatter behind the scenes is that Baghdad is not the place you want to be posted to next year

Cover via AmazonVia David Isenberg at HuffPo on the DOD to State transition in Iraq:

"We may be waiting a long time before security conditions allow what Mr. Bowen recommends. At my request I asked Robert Young Pelton, author of Licensed To Kill, one of the better books on security contracting in Iraq, his thoughts. He emailed me back that:"

The chatter behind the scenes is that Baghdad is not the place you want to be posted to next year. Triple Canopy is allegedly 30 percent undermanned and DynCorp according to scuttlebutt has yet to get anything in the air. The current push to double hired guns also comes after Blackwater was dropped and others were asked to fill the gap. The turmoil in protection services began not because Blackwater gunned down 17 Iraqis, but because the State Dept was frozen by the Iraqi government. Condi thought it would be cute to flush BW down the drain but was wise enough to keep them in place under different names. But Hillary nuked them ten days after the inauguration.

The irony in all this is that HIllary Clinton who once sponsored legislation to ban PMC's and specifically Blackwater finds herself at the head of the largest mercenary army in America's history. We have yet to actually see if the U.S. government can operate in Baghdad without Erik Prince and Blackwater. Triple Canopy tried and failed before, resulting in a massive influx of BW in April of 2005 until 2009. We know from Leon Panetta the CIA can't operate without Blackwater, I doubt the State Department is going to magically double their protection overnight without some serious teething problems.

Now that Erik has packed up and taken his toys with him. My advice to Hillary....don't go to Baghdad.

It's rough out there these days.  Read the whole thing here.  (active links added above).

We have previously posted a piece by RYP on Afghanistan here.  

On RYP:  "Author and filmmaker, Robert Young Pelton has made a career of bypassing the media, border guards and the military in his goal of getting to the heart of the story.  In his travels to and through the world’s most dangerous places, Pelton has shared risks with his hosts and often has become the sole surviving witness to history-shaping events. His recent journeys have taken him inside the siege of Grozny in Chechnya, the battle of Qala-I-Jangi in Afghanistan, the rebel campaign to take Monrovia in Liberia, inside the hunt for Bin Laden in the Tribal Areas with the CIA, with insurgents during the war in Iraq and running RPG Alley every day for four weeks with Blackwater in Baghdad."

Check out his official website ComeBackAlive.com, where he also has a Dangerpedia.



Related post:
Our Shooty-Shooty and Talky-Talky Teams in Afghanistan | Diplopundit | January 23, 2009

Related articles by Zemanta

• David Isenberg: The State Department Takes Charge: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid (huffingtonpost.com)
• U.S. Businessman: Blackwater Paid Me to Buy Steroids and Weapons on Black Market for Its Shooters (alternet.org)
• Blackwater's Erik Prince Moves to Abu Dhabi (nytimes.com)
• Blackwater Won Contracts Via Dozens Of Dummy Corporations (huffingtonpost.com)

On the Infamous Q21, PTSD (Again) and High Threat Unaccompanied Assignments

The OIG has released its inspection report dated July 2010 on  the State Department's support for high stress, high threat, unaccompanied posts.  Some interesting details excerpted below. I have also republished the full report in ScribD for easy access (read below).

The Stigma of Seeking Mental Health Care:

The Department of Defense, led by the Secretary of Defense, has undertaken a campaign to reduce or eliminate this stigma. The Department also has made an effort in the past but can do more. The Department, as have the Department of Defense and other federal government agencies, now exempts mental health consultations relating to service in a military combat environment (i.e., Iraq and Afghanistan) from being reported on employees’ security clearance forms (it still has to be reported on medical clearance forms). That is just one, though important, step.

There is still a lack of clarity as to what employees must report on the security clearance form. For example, does a discussion between an employee and a health professional on how to manage stress have to be reported even if it does not involve diagnosis and treatment of a mental disorder? Opinions differ on that point. However, if such “preclinical” discussions have to be reported, that will ensure that fewer will take place, even if the Department is more successful than in the past in reducing the stigma. This would undercut the Department’s efforts to build resiliency among its employees.

The Department needs to address the overall issue of the stigma. The next step should be a message from the Department’s leadership to all employees making some of the following points (which have been made to the OIG team by MED and DS):

• The Department encourages its employees to seek mental health care. It is a positive act and a normal part of maintaining one’s health and preparedness.

• Employees could be more likely to put at risk their clearances and job performance when they do not seek such care.

• Only two employees have lost their security clearances over the past fi ve years because of mental health issues (which did not involve PTSD).

• Of the 517 cases concerning mental health issues that DS referred to MED during 2009, not one resulted in denial of a security clearance for mental health reasons.

Two years ago, we called for such a high level message from Secretary Rice in On the Infamous Q21, PTSD and the Wholeness of People in the Foreign Service(May 2008): 

Considering that State has its own clearance process and is a separate agency from DOD, I’m waiting for revised guidance for State Department personnel from Secretary Rice herself. Uhm, no offense intended; the guidance from “M” or “DGHR” or “DS” is fine but I don’t think that really cuts the cake here.

I’d like to see the Department of State, at the highest level of the 7th Floor, affirm and strongly endorse the practice of seeking professional help to address all health related concerns, including mental health. The press guidance above only refers to service in Iraq and Afghanistan, but what about service in the rest of the FS hardship assignments? The emotional toll of constant moving and relocation coupled with dangerous and challenging assignments is not something that we can or should ignore.

We're a small fly in a thick soup, of course; that did not go anywhere.  Secretary Clinton as far as we are aware has not issued a message similar to Secretary Gates' message. 

This report by the way, notes that "In the past five years, 18 employees have been formally diagnosed with PTSD. Of these, 10 had served in posts other than Iraq or Afghanistan." So there are more posts at play here than just the war zones. 

Leadership and Stress:

In practically any conversation about the causes of stress and inefficiency in the Department or at overseas posts, the issue of inadequate leadership/management comes up. For some employees, this is a greater problem than danger and hardship. Good leadership can do a great deal to create high morale and effectiveness at difficult posts. Poor leadership, of course, can be a problem at any post or bureau, but it can be especially harmful at a high stress, high threat post. In the OIG survey, leadership problems were cited by 45 percent of the respondents as a source of stress for them or their colleagues. As noted above, this was less than the percentage citing danger, workload, and separation from families, but leadership problems generated more passionate comments than any other issue. That is probably because, unlike danger and separation, employees feel that something can and should be done about leadership.

This is not to say that poor management is widespread at high stress or more “normal” posts. In fact, OIG inspections have found that at a substantial majority of posts, the top leadership is doing fairly to very well. Also, inspections have found that inexperienced personnel have put an additional burden on top leadership as well as middle managers. (See section below on whether the right people are being assigned.) However, recent inspections have found too many cases of managers at the top and middle levels who cause unnecessary stress and inefficiency and thus impair the morale and smooth functioning of their post, bureau, office, or section.

Are the right people on the right bus?

The OIG survey asked whether the Department generally was assigning employees with the necessary skills, experience, and temperament to high stress, high threat posts. Over 60 percent of respondents said no. In their comments, those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and answered in the negative made observations such as: there are too many people who are there just for the money, their next assignment, or to save a failing career. There are people who do not have the necessary experience or the mental and physical resiliency to be effective; such people make work more difficult for the others. There was a feeling that taking virtually anyone who volunteers has a negative impact on the post.

Lessons not learned, again:

Care should be taken in setting numerical staffing targets. A smaller, higher quality staff can usually do a better job. The OIG inspection of Embassy Baghdad found that many employees thought that staffing levels were too high as a result of the “civilian surge,” even taking into account the need to compensate for the absence of staff because of rest and recuperation leave (R&R) and other factors. The OIG inspection of Embassy Kabul found that the Baghdad experience was being repeated, with staff added before functions were identified and job descriptions developed.

An ALMOST “fitness for duty” policy:

OIG would support the Department’s developing a stronger “fitness for duty” policy that would be fair not just to the individual, but also to his or her colleagues, and that would maintain the effectiveness of a high stress, high threat post. Administrative and legal barriers, however, limit the Department’s options. In a recent review of the issue of physical fitness for high threat posts, the Department concluded that providing employees with the information to make an intelligent self-assessment of their capabilities was the best available means of handling this problem.

Finally, in Recycling News:

Care should also be taken in reviewing the skills and experience of employees hired under the 3161 authority for Iraq and Afghanistan, both for fi rst-time hires and re-hires. A number of people in the OIG survey expressed concern that 3161 employees who did not do very well in Iraq were being hired to go to Afghanistan, and many more thought that 3161 personnel in general needed greater knowledge of the objectives and operations of the Department and other government agencies to be effective in their jobs.

The original OIG report is posted here (OIG Report No. ISP-I-10-44 - Review of Support for High Stress, High Threat, Unaccompanied Posts - July 2010).

State Department/OIG Report of Inspection | Review of Support for Employees (Unaccompanied Posts)

Related articles by Zemanta

• Robert Morgenthau: Ending the Stigma of War Related Stress (online.wsj.com)
• "About 1 in 10 Iraq veterans develops a serious case of PTSD, researchers say" and related posts (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• Vets can lead fight on mental health stigma (airforcetimes.com)

International Career Advancement Program Opens for Mid-Career Professionals

Image via Wikipedia

Thought this might interest some of our readers:

The Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, and the Aspen Institute invite applications for the International Career Advancement Program (ICAP) for 2010. ICAP will bring together mid-career professionals from groups underrepresented in leadership positions in international affairs with senior officials, faculty and staff to spend one week in Aspen, Colorado from September 25-October 3, 2010 discussing:

•    Major international issues to be faced during the next decade;
•    The credentials and experiences normally sought for senior leadership positions;
•    The importance of diversity if US interests are to be served adequately;
•    Career issues or problems and how they can be addressed;
•    Obstacles faced by those seeking advancement and how to overcome them; and
•    Programs and policies designed to increase diversity at senior levels

The purpose of ICAP is to help bring higher quality and greater diversity to the staffing of senior management and policy-making positions in international careers in the US, both governmental and private. The aim is to assist highly promising mid-career professionals advance to more senior positions in international affairs. Those selected for the program pay for their own travel and must pay a $200 registration fee but their room, meals and program expenses in Aspen are provided by the program.

Applicants should:

• Have a demonstrated commitment to increasing the quality and diversity of senior leadership in the US in international affairs;
• Be US citizens or permanent residents;
• Be professionals who have been or are now in international careers, with 3 to 15 years of working experience;
• Have a demonstrated interest in a long-term career in international affairs;
• Have credentials and achievements that indicate potential for the highest levels of leadership; and
• Be committed to providing support for their peers and mentoring those junior to them

An application form can be downloaded from http://www.icapaspen.org or requested from:

Professor Thomas Rowe, Director
International Career Advancement Program
Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver
2201 South Gaylord Street
Denver, Colorado 80208
E-mail: icap@du.edu

Completed applications are due by May 10, 2010. 

Josef Korbel (born Josef Körbel 20 September 1909, Letohrad - 18 July 1977, Denver) if the name doesn't ring a loud bell was a Czechoslovakian diplomat and U.S. educator, who is now best known as the father of former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, and the teacher and mentor of SoS 66, Condoleezza Rice.  According to his Wikipedia entry, Korbel was granted political asylum in the United States in 1949. He was hired to teach international politics at the University of Denver, and became the founding Dean of the Graduate School of International Studies (GSIS).The school was renamed the Josef Korbel School of International Studies on May 28, 2008.

Huh? News: Condi Rice admits some regrets over Iraq War?

Image via Wikipedia

AP reported that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday said that the US government failed to understand how "broken Iraq was as a society."

She had great timing – speaking on the 7^th anniversary of the Iraq invasion! Apparently she spoke at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.  She was quoted in the report as saying, "I would many times over liberate Iraq again from Saddam Hussein" {snip} "I think he was a danger to the Middle East."

You can read the brief report here. No, she did not talk about those darn WMDs.

But, um -- ‘xcuse me – wasn’t it the tight “in group" in the US Government who have never been to war, who lived in a tide pool, armed with a shallow understanding of the region’s history who failed to understand the trick question of the century?

Foggy Bottom certainly knew what was going to happen. Remember our folks there even wrote “The Perfect Storm” memo? No, it wasn't written by George Clooney, silly! What, nobody saw that memo? Oh, what a shame …it was in the inbox!

That memo is cited in Ryan Crocker’s Wikipedia entry and is still presumably classified until such time when nobody remembers it or cares about it. And we probably won’t get to read it until the FRUS series on the region is released in 2040. For now, we’ll have to make do with this online source:

According to the book, Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell by Washington Post reporter Karen DeYoung, as the Bush administration was preparing for war with Iraq in late 2002, then Secretary of State, Colin Powell ordered Crocker and then Special Assistant to the Secretary of State, William Burns to prepare a secret memo examining the risks associated with a U.S. invasion of Iraq.^[6] The six-page memo, titled "The Perfect Storm", stated that toppling Saddam Hussein could unleash long-repressed sectarian and ethnic tensions, that the Sunni minority would not easily relinquish power, and that powerful neighbors such as Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia would try to move in to influence events. It also cautioned that the United States would have to start from scratch building a political and economic system because Iraq's infrastructure was in tatters.^[6]

Ah -- lessons learned for reading/not reading the inbox?... consigning the memo to a footnote? What, it wasn't in the footnote? Where ... opps -- what…??

But --  did the somebodies read it, read it but did not understand it, did not read it so nothing to understand, or was it accidentally flushed down the toilet because they run out of toilet paper.... what did the somebodies do with that memo?! Seven years on, and I'm still terribly, terribly confuse about that memo's fate... I may have to see a shrink...

In any case, it’s all history now for folks who did the war kumbaya. For those still fighting the war seven years on, it is as real as ever.  Thousands dead forever lost.  Thousands maimed will never be whole again.  Apparently $747.3 billion spent and we’re not even any safer. Because dammit -- it turned out Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were not BFF as we thought they were!

But we got Saddam! Yep! And democracy is sprouting in the Middle East. Thank goodness! And that -- makes me sleep real tight kind of snuggy as a buggy at night.  I better go to bed now ...

Goodnight Rummy
Goodnight Condi
Goodnight Georgie
And Dickie’s groupies
Goodnight brown outs
And burst balloons
Goodnight dead bears
And broken chairs
Goodnight poor kittens
And torn mittens
Goodnight cracked clocks
And missing socks
Goodnight bombed house
And stinky mouse
Goodnight nightmares
And stale éclairs
Goodnight nobodies
Left on the streets
And goodnight to the old guard
who shouted "duck N cooover!"

Goodnight, goodnight—
Sleep tight dream cakes
Tomorrow is another
Cake walk in the I-E-D park.
God bless Rummy,
God bless Condi,
God bless Georgie
And Dickie's groupies,
God bless them all for our
"Made in China" security blankies.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Rice regrets how US prioritized rebuilding in Iraq (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Little fanfare for 7th anniversary of war in Iraq (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Iraq Inquiry asks to question George Bush's senior officials (telegraph.co.uk)
• Seven years of war in Iraq. (thinkprogress.org)
• Regime Change In Iraq First Discussed In 2001 (news.sky.com)

Revisiting the Global Repositioning Dance er Program

You remember Condi Rice’s Global Repositioning Program? Of course, you do! Most especially if you were in the middle of language training and suddenly heard that you’ve been repositioned. Well, it wasn’t you, really. It wasn’t personal.  One day you were learning Dutch, the next thing you know that position in Brussels had been moved to Shanghai. What were they thinking? Heck if I know! I understand that you end up taking that GSO position in Country X?  Really, they did not speak Dutch there?  I also heard that you absolutely refused to talk about that “learning” experience? I’m really sorry it went down like that. Don't you just hate it when you get a program with a nice name and no juice to fire up the truck? How do you get from point A to point B is beyond me.   

Anyway, I see that the OIG has posted some new reports online. I was actually looking at the compliance follow-up review of US Mission Brazil (not as riveting as the 2008 report, I tell you) when sitting under it is another report on the OIG inspection of US Embassy Brussels from 2009. I scrolled through the report and what do you know – the report actually talked aboutt the GRP (also known as the Foreign Service’s Half-Baked Fiasco)! Excerpt below:         

Officer losses due to the Global Repositioning Program (GRP) initiative hit the political and economic sections particularly hard and caused their consolidation. The new joint section is responding well to the ongoing integration process, but reporting has been reduced.

Embassy Brussels has been forced to reduce its work on economic and political issues since the 2004 inspection. The GRP, which shifted Foreign Service resources to posts in China, India, and elsewhere, eliminated two political and economic officer positions in Belgium. The downsizing no longer justified separate economic and political sections, each of which had been led by an FS-01 counselor. The Embassy combined the two sections under a single political-economic counselor at the FS-01 level in 2008 and eliminated the second FS-01 position.

In addition to the counselor, two political officers, an economic officer, and two LE staff members make up the political-economic section, augmented by frequent short-term interns. The Embassy has recommended in its MSP, the addition of a third LE position to help its efforts in furthering bilateral cooperation in counterterrorism and terrorist financing, and in fostering Belgian development assistance to Afghanistan and Africa. The OIG team sees merit in this request. Once an entry-level officer (ELO) position is restored to the section in the summer of 2009, it will return to roughly the right size. Another ELO is expected in the summer of 2010.

So – just to get this straight in my head – two political and economic officer positions in Belgium were repositioned a couple or so years back. One position was restored to Brussels in 2009. Another one will be restored in the summer of 2010. How many other posts out there that lost officers under the GRP have now regained those officer positions?    

I do wonder - what do you call this kind of fun exercise? There must be a word appropriate for such programs, they roll on, then they roll back (or roll of the cliff). Would “ro-ro” programs be acceptable?          

      

Related Item:

-12/31/09   Embassy Brussels, Belgium (ISP-I-10-04A) Dec 09

Related Posts:

• 2009: Putting the Diplomacy House in Order
• ProPublica on The Foreign Service's 'Half-Baked' Fiasco
• Global Repositioning Review – A Shocker!
• The People Factor and the C Street Bailout
• Transformational Diplomacy: Headache in the Details
• The Challenge of Transforming Organizations

Get Ready for the RiceHadley Strategy Group

Image via Wikipedia

Zachary Roth of TPMmuckraker had some great news on Condi Rice and Stephen Hadley, Rice And Hadley Look Set To Launch Consulting Firm | November 11, 2009, 3:18PM:

"Two top Bush administration officials whose reputations for strategic acumen were badly damaged by the disasters of the Bush years may be about to market their expertise to private-sector clients.

In September, the RiceHadley Group LLC was registered as a business in California, under a San Francisco address. According to a source, the venture is to be a "strategic consulting" firm, headed by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, and will be launched imminently."

Possible company slogans and other advice also offered for free at TPM comments!

In a statement to TPMmuckraker, Rice's chief of staff, Colby Cooper, said:

"Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, along with Anja Manuel, have recently founded a small strategic advisory firm focused on helping U.S. companies doing business abroad -- especially in key emerging markets like China, India, Brazil, the Middle East and others. In addition, Dr. Rice remains on the faculty of Stanford University and the Hoover Institution."

Anja Manuel was a former aide to former “P”, Nick Burns and currently counsel in WilmerHale's Litigation/Controversy Department.

Al Kamen of WaPo points out that RiceHadley is just “the latest big-time entrants in the endless battle of the groups -- as in the Kissinger Group, the Scowcroft Group, the Chertoff Group (with former CIA director Mike Hayden) and so many other strategery outfits.” (links added)

He forgot to mention the Albright Stonebridge Group of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Security Advisor Samuel Berger that merged this past July. Um what? Are you complaining that we have too many of these folks around? Excuse me - but can you imagine just how boring Washington would be without the strategerist ...

Related articles by Zemanta

• Condi & Hadley Determined to Strike in U.S. (firedoglake.com)
• Worst. Idea. Ever. (crooksandliars.com)

State’s “T” Bureau: Where Restructuring Was “Easy” as Pie...

And Condi’s transformational diplomacy went kaplunk

Well, I guess the marching order was to “restructure” so they did. Nobody said it had to be coherent or needed an end state. “Just do it!” Like the ad campaign says. 400 employees were reportedly impacted – but heck -- you don’t have to agree with it, just move wherever they want you to move your desk, right? There were complaints that staff decisions were politically motivated – aw -- I mean, really!

Here is the 2005 on-the-record briefing on the Reorganization of the Bureaus to Better Address the Threat From Weapons and Mass Destruction and to Promote Democracy: “It had to be done right because it is absolutely essential, as part of what the Secretary calls transformational diplomacy, that we readjust the structure of the State Department bureaus in order to be able to best contribute to the national security agenda that has been set by the President.”

Sigh ;> A funny thing happened on the inkway to the history books.  The GAO
just came out with  its assessment of the restructuring of the Nonproliferation,
Arms Control, and Verification and Compliance bureaus in 2005.  Below is a
summary of its finding:

State cannot demonstrate that the 2005-2006 restructuring of its Nonproliferation, Arms Control, and Verification and Compliance bureaus achieved all of its objectives because it did not clearly define the objectives and lacked metrics to assess them. State’s objectives were to enable it to better focus on post -September 11 challenges; reduce bureaucratic inefficiencies and top-heavy management; and eliminate overlap. State sought to achieve its first objective by creating new offices and roles to address terrorism and counterproliferation issues.

To meet its second objective, State merged three bureaus having 30 offices and functions into two bureaus having 26 offices and functions and freed up staff slots for these new roles, but problems with workload mismatches persisted after the reorganization as State employees noted it left some offices overworked and some offices underworked. State cannot demonstrate that it met its third objective, reducing top-heavy management, as its goals were undefined. Although it reduced the number of senior executives from 27 to 20 and reduced office directorships, the overall number of higher-ranking employees increased from 91 to 100 and executive office staff increased from 44 to 50.

Moreover, concerns about mission overlap persist, in part because bureau roles remain undefined in the FAM. State’s reorganization addressed few of the key practices for organizational mergers and transformations that GAO developed in 2002. These practices are found to be at the center of successful mergers and transformations. As illustrated below, State generally addressed one key practice, partially addressed two, and did not address the remaining five. For example, State did not address establishing coherent mission and strategic goals because it did not define an end state with measurable goals, nor did it devise a means to gauge progress toward such goals or assess the results of actions taken. As a result, State lacks reasonable assurance that the reorganization achieved its objectives or that it can identify any lessons learned.

The GAO’s damning assessment of the reorganization process includes the following on State’s unsystematic approach and its contribution to staff and employee group concerns:

Instead of using the above [GAO identified] practices to plan, implement, and assess the results of the restructuring, State reorganized the bureaus unsystematically, contributing to staff and employee group criticisms of the process and suspicions that some staff decisions had been politically motivated. State officials told us that they spent most of their time in the months before September 2005 developing the organizational structure for the new bureau and little time planning to implement the reorganization. In the wake of the reorganization, some ISN staff stated they perceived morale within their bureau to be lower. According to State data, attrition rates rose to levels higher than the average for State’s civil service as a whole.
To implement the reorganization, the T human resource office furnished an informal implementation guide to the SMP at the panel’s request. This paper envisioned a reorganization directed by the Bureau of Human Resources and the T bureaus’ human resource office, while the SMP would serve as an advisory body that would recommend specific actions, such as decisions on acting directors, staffing levels, and other details for the new ISN offices. Instead, according to a senior T official, the SMP made its own implementing decisions and reduced HR’s and the T bureaus’ human resource office’s roles to ensuring that State followed all applicable legal and regulatory requirements.
State officials and employees expressed concerns about the SMP’s direction and conduct of the reorganization even before the panel made its first public announcement about the reorganization on September 28, 2005. While the Office of the Legal Advisor and HR stated that the SMP could direct the reorganization, some officials in HR and the T bureaus’ human resource office disagreed with this decision.38 According to T bureau officials, they were concerned that the panel’s members were not sufficiently knowledgeable about change and personnel management principles. On September 29, 2005—the day after the SMP sent out its summary of the reorganization procedures—a senior T bureaus’ official with human resource responsibilities sent an e-mail to the SMP stating that it was not following sound personnel management principles.39 The email also stated that the SMP had ignored or misinterpreted her office’s recommendations, advice, and suggestions to the extent that the office had been unable to contribute meaningfully to the reorganization process.
Some ISN employees and AFSA officials also criticized the SMP’s decisions after it publicly announced its reorganization procedures and named acting office directors in September 2005. Eleven ISN employees wrote a memorandum to the Undersecretary for Management and the Director General of the Foreign Service in October 2005, stating that morale was poor within the new ISN bureau. ⁴⁰ Moreover, these employees stated that the SMP’s selections for acting office directors (which resulted in passing over several experienced officials for these positions) reinforced their doubts about the impartiality of the process, as did the lack of career officials or representatives from the T bureaus’ human resource office, HR, and the Office of the Legal Advisor. They also expressed concern about other aspects of the process, such as the requirement to express workforce preferences without first having concrete position and office mission descriptions, position grades, or the names of permanent office directors or deputies. The employees asked the Undersecretary for Management and the Director General of the Foreign Service to suspend the reorganization until a comprehensive staffing plan had been developed and add career civil service or FSOs and HR staff to the SMP, among other actions. AFSA expressed similar concerns in a November 2005 letter to the Secretary of State and noted that the reorganization could result in the potential downgrade or elimination of Foreign Service-designated positions. It also requested, among other things, that State form an independent panel to review all proposed reorganization decisions related to Equal Employment Opportunity concerns and allegations of prohibited personnel practices. In response to these concerns, State named a career official to the SMP, and included representatives of the HR bureau and the Office of the Legal Advisor in the SMP’s discussions, and agreed to have HR review the position descriptions of the acting office directors and prepare new position descriptions where necessary.
The lack of confidence in the reorganization may have adversely affected staff morale and may have contributed to increased ISN civil service attrition rates that immediately followed the reorganization, according to current and former State officials and documents. Twelve percent of ISN’s full-time civil service employees retired or otherwise left the bureau in fiscal 2006, the highest level for the bureau and its predecessors from fiscal year 2004 to fiscal year 2008. In contrast, State’s overall civil service attrition rate during the same period averaged about 8 percent.

Wouldn’t you want to know who former Secretary of State Rice appointed to that Senior Management Panel (SMP) tasked with restructuring these bureaus? I think the GAO should start naming names; it is, after all, an agency tasked with providing accountability reports.

Back in 2006, Dean Rust, a 35-year veteran of Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and State (who was acting deputy director of the office that dealt with nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and International Atomic Energy Agency matters) did write about this one in Reorganization Run Amok, a must read if you want an excellent background on this restructuring effort.

My jaded brain assumes that exceptionally talented individuals must now be sharing their restructuring and reorganization talents from some corner offices earning VPs or directorship salaries. Fabulous, really! And no consequences for the mess left behind.

Still, considering that Gonzo did manage to find a job after leaving a higgledy-piggledy DOJ, I am convinced now more than ever that if there is ever a place where second chances can be a lucrative gig (and it might as well be in the bill of rights) -- that is the United States of America. [According to Texas Tech Provost Bob Smith, Gonzales' $100,000 paycheck is on-par with the amount paid to other university employees who are high performers with significant experience or expertise. Someone with a national presence and a long list of accomplishments would be hired at the full professor level," Smith said.]

This is when I get fire ants in my pants -- because really -- where else but in the USA can radioactive blokes “re-invent” themselves time after time, counting on the public’s short memory and apathy, and rise again to wreck havoc once every few years -- all in the name of serving the public like you and me? PS: No offense to the real public servants who gets restructured and realigned and reinvented and rightsized under whatever ice cream flavor is hot.

Related Items:

• GAO-09-738: STATE DEPARTMENT Key Transformation Practices Could Have Helped in Restructuring Arms Control and Nonproliferation Bureaus | July 2009 | PDF
  
  
• On-the-Record Briefing: Reorganization of the Bureaus to Better Address the Threat from Weapons and Mass Destruction and to Promote Democracy | 2005 | PDF