Rick's Cafe Americain

Back in November, I posted a bit of dark comedy entitled Why Dubya Wasn’t Lying, which pointed out that Bush had promised to “get the teachers back to work” in Iraq in October, but that just a few weeks later Paul Bremer had fired 28,000 teachers simply because they were registered Baathists, without investigating further whether they were in fact Saddam loyalists or had only registered as Baathists in order to get the job.

COOL! A post with my name on it!

OK, I’m not above eating crow, but if I’m gonna eat some here, I want to see the fine print.

Would I be apologizing because the firings really did create a shortage of teachers and did more damage than good for the process of rebuilding Iraq’s education system? (not mentioned in the LAT article cited)

Or would I be apologizing because Bush really did lie about rebuilding Iraq’s educational system? (no such info in the LAT article cited)

Or would I be apologizing because the original UPI article was actually accurate and that, in fact, 28,000 teachers were fired and all the horrible things predicted have since come to roost? (LAT article says numbers are “murky” and puts TOTAL baath govt purges between 15-30K; doesn’t even cover status of Iraq’s educational system)

I would even say that the LAT article is a bit overwrought, given that it characterizes the implementing of an appeals process as a “revisit” of the purges. Looks to me like it was in the plan all along.

I still contend that the de-baathification was necessary, but I’m open to, uh, corvus recipe suggestions.