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Michael Hirsh Newsweek March 22, 2006 - Andrew Natsios has taken a lot of flak over his role in Iraq. In the ensuing three years, Natsios, a lifelong Republican, has played the loyal soldier for the administration. He regularly defended the US reconstruction effort in Iraq even as he was lumped with other errant prognosticators like Paul Wolfowitz (That's "wildly off the mark") and Dick Cheney ("We will be greeted as liberators"). After Natsios resigned in January to take a teaching post at Georgetown University, he maintained his silence about Iraq. But this week, for the first time, Natsios publicly gave vent to his long-suppressed frustrations over the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq occupation. In an interview with NEWSWEEK on Tuesday, he harshly criticized the Coalition Provisional Authority led by L Paul Bremer III for botching the reconstruction effort and allowing ill-qualified or corrupt contractors to dominate it.
were constantly hitting at our people, screaming at them. Natsios's low-cost estimate from April 2003, he made clear, was not based on the kind of chaotic, top-heavy occupation that he says Bremer eventually installed in Iraq but on the more traditional, streamlined US aid effort that Natsios had urged. NATSIOS Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP Natsios: Says CPA didn't hire the 'best people' Dan Senor, former spokesman for Bremer's CPA, dismissed Natsios's criticisms, saying the insurgency in Iraq made ordinary contracting procedures impossible. "I'm not familiar with the traditional USAID program that was recommended," Senor told NEWSWEEK. "If it was traditional and conventional, it may have made sense for the reconstruction of Switzerland. But it sounds like it was completely irrelevant to the facts and conditions on the ground that we found in Iraq." Senor added that the CPA had "recruited some of the top career Foreign Service officers from the State Department to serve in the CPA's management roles. We would have welcomed suggestions-from Andrew or anyone else-of who would have been better experienced." Natsios, who served as USAID director for nearly five years and was considered one of the top development and aid experts in Washington, says that his advice was largely ignored. Other administration officials, usually speaking anonymously, have backed Natsios's dim view of the CPA's competence level. The conventional wisdom today is that while most CPA officials were enthusiastic and brave, too many were inexperienced and second-rate.
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