WASHINGTON — Just below the Beltway's public radar screen, many a civil service eyebrow was raised last week over a US official's resignation and his scathing critique of the US diplomatic corps' inability to engage and assist Iraq's fledgling government.
Manuel Miranda, who recently left his post as director of the Office of Legislative Statecraft in Baghdad, said in his memo to US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, that he didn't question State Department's officials' capabilities or their sense of duty, but rather whether it was the right organization for the job at hand.
"After a year at the embassy, it is my general assessment that the State Department and the Foreign Service (are) not competent to do the job that they have undertaken in Iraq," said Miranda, a conservative former Senate staff member who is part of the Office of Legislative Statecraft in Baghdad.
If he's anti-State Department, Miranda is also overtly pro-Pentagon. He applauded the military surge for "putting the effort to stand up the (government of Iraq) in more competent hands," he wrote.
While noting the military surge is working, Miranda said State Department support for civilian efforts to pacify the country is a disaster due to bureaucrats' "built-in Attention Deficit Disorder."
Miranda called the State Department an "albatross around the neck of the coalition command."
"The State Department bureaucracy is not equipped to handle the urgency of America's Iraq investment in blood and taxpayer funds," Miranda said. "You lack the 'fierce urgency of now.'"
In 2004, the State Department won a battle inside the Bush administration for control over the money to rebuild Iraq, though the Pentagon still oversees the training of Iraq's security services and military. Many retired Foreign Service officers have complained in the press of meddling by Bush Administration appointees in the first phases of the Iraqi reconstruction.
Foreign service officers sent to Iraq have "ludicrously little experience" in managing programs and hundreds of millions of dollars in funds and other resources used to help the Iraqi government, he stated.
"It is apparent that, other than diplomacy, your only expertise is your own bureaucracy, which inherently makes State Department personnel unable to think outside the box or beyond the paths they have previously taken," he said.
Eighty people in Washington, Mirada said, second-guess embassy officials, which leads to paralysis and infusing embassy work with "the State Department's culture of delay and indecision."
The unclassified memo, also sent to dozens of other government officials and leaked to this reporter, may be the least diplomatic document in the recent history of the State Department.
Miranda accuses the State Department of lacking leadership, noting that the American people would be "scandalized" to learn that during the debate over the surge, the embassy in Baghdad was more concerned about bureaucratic reorganization.
Miranda added that matters would not improve if more Foreign Service officers were sent to the undermanned embassy, and instead urged Ambassador Crocker to seek out experts in the private sector.
Miranda said the State Department's Iraq operations, judged by private sector standards, is "willfully negligent, if not criminal."
Adding salt to the wound, he also accused the embassy of blocking the flow of information to the White House and other policy-makers, the State Department in Washington, and the commanding general in Baghdad — fearing leaks to the press.
Another major target of his criticism focused on "areas of legislative reform and the rule of law," he added.
A key "benchmark" of such reform, announced more than a year ago by President Bush, was an oil law. It was touted as a way to ensure all Iraqis benefit from the massive oil reserves - the third largest in the world -- and in doings so ensure a path toward political reconciliation.
The oil law was drafted more than a year ago and included varying efforts to ensure all sectarian-based sides on the debate would be satisfied. It was instead a lightning rod, and even today the draft law is stuck in Parliament. Iraq's Kurds and the central government are at odds over who should control the oil strategy, among other issues.
Last February a deal, following intense pressure and lobbying by soon departing Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, was reached. It was Khalilzad who announced the agreement, which fell apart by April.
"Any experienced international lawyer could have judged in 15 seconds or less that the draft that your predecessor checked off as if done, was one in which Iraqis were not invested," Miranda wrote. "This has repeated itself again and again.
"Our approach has assumed that Iraqi lawyers, who work on drafts after politicians have their say, are ignorant and careless. As a result, (government of Iraq) officials involved in legislation have been justified in dismissing our political demands."
Conservatives and Bush appointees have been at odds with the State Department bureaucracy since before the Iraq war even began. Back then, the State Department's office for transition in Iraq, headed by Tom Warrick, clashed with the undersecretary of defense, Douglas Feith, over the contours of the Iraqi opposition and whether the body should be led by the Iraqi politician, Ahmad Chalabi.
The memo has caused acute embarrassment. Deputy spokesman for the State Department, Tom Casey, joked last week when asked about the memo at the daily press briefing. "Yeah, I guess he needs to tell us how he really feels," he said.
"Obviously, he's expressing his own views and he's entitled to his opinions," he said. "What I can tell you is that you've heard from the president, Secretary Rice, and many others about the job that Ryan Crocker is doing as the US Ambassador to Baghdad. We think he and his team are doing a tremendous job under what obviously is very difficult circumstances.
A longtime Republican, and former top aide to Bill Frist, the former Senate majority leader, Miranda recently endorsed Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for president.
