Another Wilson-Flame Case?

Read carefully the following quotation from "On Iraq, U.S. Turns to Onetime Dissenters" By Rajiv Chandrasekaran (The Washington Post, January 14, 2007).

Timothy M. Carney went to Baghdad in April 2003 to run Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Minerals. Unlike many of his compatriots in the Green Zone, the rangy, retired American ambassador wasn't fazed by chaos. He'd been in Saigon during the Tet Offensive, Phnom Penh as it was falling to the Khmer Rouge and Mogadishu in the throes of Somalia's civil war. Once he received his Halliburton-issued Chevrolet Suburban, he disregarded security edicts and drove around Baghdad without a military escort. His mission, as he put it, "was to listen to the Iraqis and work with them."

He left after two months, disgusted and disillusioned. The U.S. occupation administration in Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), placed ideology over pragmatism, he believed. His boss, viceroy L. Paul Bremer, refused to pay for repairs needed to reopen many looted state-owned factories, even though they had employed tens of thousands of Iraqis. Carney spent his days screening workers for ties to the Baath Party.

"Planning was bad," he wrote in his diary on May 8, "but implementation is worse."

When he returned to Washington, he made little secret of his views. They were so scathing that his wife lost a government contract. He figured his days of working on Iraq were over.

The article's main thrust suggests that the new team of Americans in Iraq is composed of people who objected to the ideologically driven, stupid policies of the last four years, and is complimentary to Mr. Carney. (Comment: I don't mind ideology all that much, although I mind people implementing their ideology that differs from mine in my name, but I do mind bad planning and worse implementation. JAD)

Note the comment (which is almost an afterthought) that Carney's wife lost a government contract, implying that the loss was in retaliation against "retired Ambassador" Carney's public statement of his views. Assuming that the government contracting process had worked correctly, and his wife had submitted a bid that was cost-effective in achieving the government's objective, I think action to cancel the contract in retaliation against her husbands actions was not only wrong, but probably illegal.

The situation sounds similar to that described in the charges being made with regard to the Scooter Libby case, that involved outing Valerie Plame (a covert CIA agent) in retaliation against her husband, retired Ambassador Joe Wilson (who criticized the false claim of Iraqi importation of Yellow Cake from Africa).

I hope the inspector general and investigative reporters will look into the matter! If in fact a contract was in the offing and was lost, either the contracting procedure didn't work right before Carney went public, or it failed afterwards.