Analysis: Iraqi CPA fires 28,000 (Bremer fires 28K Iraqi Teachers!)

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

http://www.menafn.com/qn_news_story.asp?StoryId=Cp72B0eidAxjHCs1ICMvTzxi

Date: Friday, November 21, 2003 6:40:58 PM EST By RICHARD SALE, UPI Intelligence Correspondent

American's top man in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer, last week fired 28,000 Iraqi teachers as political punishment for their former membership in the Saddam Hussein-dominated Baath Party, fueling anti-U.S. resistance on the ground,

administration officials have told United Press International.

A Central Command spokesman, speaking to UPI from Baghdad, acknowledged that the firings had taken place but said the figure of 28,000 "is too high."

He was unable, however, after two days, to supply UPI with a lower, revised total.

The Central Command spokesman attributed the firings to "tough, new anti-Baath Party measures" recently passed by the U.S.-created Iraqi Governing Council, dominated by Ahmed Chalabi, a favorite of administration hawks in the White House and Pentagon.

"It's a piece of real stupidity on the part of the neocons to try and equate the Baath Party with the Nazis," said former CIA official Larry Johnson. "You have to make a choice: Either you are going to deal with Iraqis who are capable of rebuilding and running the country or you're going to turn Iraq over to those who can't."
<snip>

This is incredible. Punative actions against the teachers of Iraq. Do they really not have a clue.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. they don't get it

people had to be members of the party in order to teach

No way, iffs or buts, this will destroy the middle
class, or whatever remains and INCREASE resistance

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

9. This really is un-effing-believable and underscores even more troubling

things by just the vast number of people fired.

If Saddam supporters are so few and far between in the general Iraqi populace, how in the hell does Bremmer find 28,000 of them in one industry?

And after all the publicity of rebuilding and opening up the schools???? We turn around and fire all the teachers? This is insane.

Or is this part of the new Repug agenda to keep as many people uneducated as possible?

[Gin]

42. Hmmmmmmm....destroy the middle class....sounds familiar...parallel

universes.

[david_vincent]

2. Headline tomorrow: Nation's Schools Scramble to Attract Iraqi Teachers

n/t

[mhr]

3. Stupid Is As Stupid Does!

eom

[qanda]

4. How insane can this get?

Nevermind.

[fishnfla]

5. I dont believe this story

cant get the link to fire through, but anyway Bremer was roundly criticized for firing Baath officials back in May, he cant be that stupid....or can he?

[fishnfla]

8. never mind-fucking Chalabi again!

That son of a bitch Chalabi is totally responsible for leading us into this war. He's a fucking bastard

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. link works for me

it's quite a long story; there's lots of quotes from sources in State Dept, CIA, even Pentagon saying it's monumentally dumb. Internal politics, perhaps?

[LiberalFighter]

48. He's a republican of course he can be that stupid!!

May all the right NFL teams win tomorrow including our Packers!!

[jonoboy]

6. what the hell are they going to do then

how thick are these guys..I mean who the hell do they think they are.
That's 28000 new enemies.

[roguevalley]

7. That is what happens when you don't have a union. <Sarcasm off>

Well, 28,000 more people with donkey carts and a lot of free time.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

12. 28,000 EDUCATED people with donkey carts, free time AND easy

access to weaponry.

[WhereIsMyFreedom]

20. Lots of them will probably still teach illegally

and their message will be decidedly less favorable towards the US.

[JailBush]

13. Actually, U.S. teachers don't have a union, either

The National Education Association consists mostly of a bunch of back-stabbing collaborators. In fact, hundreds, if not thousands, of teachers are probably fired for bullshit reasons in America every year. But most are just driven out by the endless stupidity, pressure and tyranny.

Public education is America's invisible holocaust.

[wabeewoman]

26. There you go again....

"In fact, hundreds, if not thousands, of teachers are probably fired for bullshit reasons in America every year. "
Ummmm, I don't think so. in most places there is a teachers shortage.

"Public education is America's invisible holocaust."
What exactly does that mean???

[mbperrin]

28. 120 Secondary teachers were "excessed"

in Ector County, Texas, last year in spite of increased enrollment.

Teachers 20 years ago taught five sections of students a day and had 2 hours of prep time a day. Today they teach six sections of students a day and have 54 minutes of prep time.

50% of first year licensed and trained teachers quit after their first year in Texas.

250,000 people who hold valid teaching licenses in Texas do something else instead!

Maybe some of these things ....

[drfemoe]

14. and empty school houses

which our military cleaned and painted!! and which has been paraded as our prime achievement in Ira* ..

[Spazito]

10. There is no question in my mind that they have totally lost control

in Iraq. There is absolutely no plan, they are re-acting with more and more desparation. They are running out of troops, they are running out of time.

[drfemoe]

15. And I want to see

a HUGE draft resistance movement .. JUST SAY NO!!

I don't want any more of our children used to mop up their greed and stupidity!!

[Just Me]

11. I SEE DUMB PEOPLE

:silly: :silly: :silly: :silly: :silly:

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

16. (those are Republicans) n/t

[MrPrax]

18. Beyond Belief...

Maybe causing resistance is part of the plan? That is the only possilbe motive...really.
Add the middle class professionals to the ranks of 70%+ unemployed?
In a totalitarian structure like Iraq, you have to expect that Baathism permeated the society and touched everyone at one point or another...using that as a arbitrary denial for people to be involved in the re-construction is just going to fuel 'resentment' and strife for decades...
They are truly mad...

[BlackFrancis]

19. Access to higher education was limited to party members

Exactly who the hell do they think is going to teach these classes?

[jenk]

21. 28,000 is to high, it was only 27,999

[jenk]

22. every child left behind, the Bush education policy taking shape in Iraq

No teacher left employed

[Gloria]

23. Yet, they're rushing to hire security so fast that they're not doing

thorough background checks and the fear, which even Bill Kristol has aired, is that Ba'athists will slip through and the chances of sabotage are increased!!

These people are NUTS!!!

[Eloriel]

43. Of COURSE they are --

but the POLITICAL REALITY at home is that Bush has to turn over political control (if only in name only) by the end of June or so.

It's going to be horrific. We'll need twice as many troops as we have now just to stay even.

Eloriel

[alfredo]

24. After all the propaganda about the new schools. What good are schools

without teachers?

[cliss]

25. Yup. He's a charmer, that one.

And he knows how to win friends and influence people, doesn't he?

I can guarantee that this heavy-handed approach will be like pouring gasoline on the flames.

Great guy, this cousin of George Bush

[HairyPoppins]

27. I can't find this report anywhere else

How reliable and anti-American is this source?

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

30. The source is Richard Sale, a UPI correspondent...

see: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=richard+sale+upi

He's fairly establised. I have no idea of his political leanings, I'll let you do that research. :-)

Welcome to DU.

[HairyPoppins]

32. Why has no other news org picked this up?

That makes me wonder.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

33. It's UPI. One of the largest.

After Reuters, AFP and AP I think. And certainly not one of my favorites.

It's up to the individual paper on which stories to print. This is pretty controversial. You'll probably see more of it in a few days.

[thebigidea]

39. they are the most insidious ANTI-AMERICANS possible

they speak with forked tongues! FORKED TONGUES!

[thebigidea]

38. AHAHAHAHAHHAH! HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!

ohhhhhhhh, that's rich.

"anti-American"?

[goforit]

29. LOL!!!....Really tough guy, eh?

LOL!!!!

[opihimoimoi]

31. I guess they got a lot of Substitute teachers over there

This guy Bremer seems like a "Peter" to me. Incompetent fool put into a position of authority, just like Bush.

Come, we light the fires, cook some ribs

[ninkasi]

34. This whole thing is so weird...

It's almost as if somebody was writing a script, designed to infuriate the most number of Iraqis possible. After killing them, maiming them, blowing up their homes, destroying their orchards, searching and insulting their women and children, the next logical step is this...make sure the children's lives are disrupted even more by having their schools close.

Oh, sure, we probably just forked over tons of money to Haliburton to rebuild them, but hey, we can always cut Cheney's taxes more and increase the burden on the now almost extinct middle class to get more where that came from.

[saskatoon]

37. make sure the children's lives are disrupted even more by having their sch

You mean like this---compliments of "Shock and Awe"

http://www.shianews.com/hi/middle_east/news_id/0000758.php

[muriel_volestrangler]

35. no confirmation from another source yet, but..

here's an interesting story from today's New York Times, about firing senior Baath party members:

The capital of Nineveh Province, Mosul is home to thousands of once senior party members, including 1,100 former Iraqi Army officers with the rank of brigadier general and above, according to the American military. At its university, 120 professors and other workers held high ranks in the party. In its public school system, 937 employees had climbed to Baath's top positions.

"Do you throw 900 teachers out of work and tell them they can never work in their field again, and then not expect them to turn against you?" asked Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the division commander.

Throwing people of authority and expertise onto the street, he said, would negate the mission of the occupation forces to subdue resistance and win friends. "To beat this you can't just kill the bad guys," the general added. "You've got to give people jobs."
<snip>
But it fell to Mr. Hamed to enforce the orders from the Governing Council and Mr. Bremer in Baghdad. Faced with firing 937 people and incurring the displeasure of the American commander, he said he had decided to demote the senior Baathists but keep them on the payroll.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/22/international/middleeast/22BAAT.html?ex=1070082000&en=fe08d4f9226d103d&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

So that general has no intention of doing this kind of thing, if he can avoid it. 937 in Mosul wouldn't translate to 28,000 in the whole country, I think, so I suppose the 28,000 must be those at a lower party rank.

[quaker bill]

36. Wasn't it just two weeks ago that they were boasting

about how all the schools were open again? I guess this takes care of that. Good they got the film crews in first, before the mass firing!

[IndianaGreen]

40. There is nothing on the "official" Iraq website

This is Bremer's official colonial Iraq website:

http://www.cpa-iraq.org/

[snippy]

41. Bush needs terrorists. This will create more. Very smart move.

[leftofthedial]

44. Big deal. This fraudministration has "fired" over 3 million Americans

since seizing power.

Par for the course.

[Buns_of_Fire]

45. They love us, everywhere we go

But in today's Iraq, in spite of steadily escalating attacks on U.S. forces, the desire of the IGC to enforce political correctness produced "incoherence, chaos and disorganization," one Pentagon official said.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld even moved to get rid of 16 of 20 State Department people because they were seen to be "Arabists" -- overly sympathetic to Iraqis, U.S. government officials said.

A former Garner team member was quoted in last week's Newsweek as saying the vetting process for Iraqis "got so bad that even doctors sent to restore medical services had to be anti-abortion" -- an article of faith in the Bush administration.

But we're not there to turn Iraq into a mini-Crawford, no sir. So stop saying that.

[Plaid Adder]

46. Some more context on "de-Baathification"

From the National Review Online (sorry...I know, but anyway), May 2003:

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-aydintasbas051903.asp

Plenty o' spin, of course, but it is written right around the transition from Garner to Bremer and includes a long quote from Chalabi about why he's pushing total de-Baathification, as well as some suggestions about why that may not be totally practical, and closes with Bremer's promise to de-Baathify or bust

From the Christian Science Monitor, June 2003:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0626/p06s01-woiq.html

Criticizes US for "draconian" approach that fails to recognize that most Baath party members are in it out of fear or for personal advancement and have no commitment to the ideology.

From the Houston Chronicle, September 2003:

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/world/2122597

Mostly about how we're retraining teachers to be more openminded and whatnot, but also mentions that thousands of administrators and teachers ahve already been fired, and includes this interesting nugget:

"This month, Iraq's U.S.-endorsed Governing Council voted to block all party members from government jobs, including teaching. But the U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, who has veto power over the council's decisions, warned that such an action could cause an upheaval in the schools."

So, at one point apparently Bremer realized this was impractical, but Chalabi must have offered him his own personal palace or something...

From the Chicago Trib, October 1 2003:

http://www.realcities.com/mld/realcities/news/6905253.htm

By that point, "6,000 to 12,000" teachers and administrators had been fired for being Baath members.

So, the only real news in the article at the top is the size of the figure.

I should point out that I also found a number of articles about the start of the new school year in Iraq which mention that most of hte schools are still in terrible physical shape, and that in general there appears to have been more concern with expunging Saddam Hussein from the textbooks, classrooms, and so on and so forth than with actually equipping the schools...which is about what you woudl expect from this crowd.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

[Plaid Adder]

47. Not only is this not liberation,

It's not even smart colonization.

Folks, learn from history: the only way to have a successful and stable colony is to co-opt a pre-existing middle class who can be persuaded to support your administration as long as you promise to protect their position of privilege in their own society. That way, they do all the work that requires local knowledge, while you just sit up at the top of the pyramid and take a cut of the profits.

If you destroy and gut that potential middle layer, then you have to run everything yourself--and let's face it, you don't know how. You don't speak the language, you don't have a network of informants, you don't know when you're being lied to and you don't know any other way of dealing with things but just to blow shit up. And now we can see the results of doing it THAT way.

Sigh,

The Plaid Adder