To me the most relevant part was this:

> She was an assistant to Paul Bremer in the Coalition Provisional Authority. She was Senior Director for Iraq at the United States National Security Council.

Around that time, Bremer decided to bar former ba'ath officer from either serving the new military or getting pension. That decision almost single-handedly created the backbone of the terrorist networks that would become ISIS.

People from that admin should be shunned from any published analysis but failing that, I am happy that forums like this allows us to augment their biographies.

On the other hand, I have yet to see a Bloomberg article not about finance that was not misinformed. Those about tech especially are pretty bad, and every time I dug a bit around their geopolitical analysis, I was pretty underwhelmed.

> Around that time, Bremer decided to bar former ba'ath officer from either serving the new military or getting pension. That decision almost single-handedly created the backbone of the terrorist networks that would become ISIS.

This isn't true. The Ba'ath party had already largely lost its Arab nationalist identity and become progressively more and more Islamist after the first Gulf War.

Saddam announced the "return to faith" campaign[0] in 1993 (which he publicly hinted at by writing Allahuakbar on the Iraqi flag in 1991) and by the time of the second 2003 invasion, Ba'ath party loyalists were already beheading suspected prostitutes in the streets.

What created the backbone of ISIS is a culmination of things - mostly around the collective, ongoing punishment of the Middle East. Arab nationalism was challenged in every direction by the West, country-based nationalism was challenged in every direction, and then the US put on a surprised pikachu face when the only thing left was religious identity.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_campaign

> The Ba'ath party had already largely lost its Arab nationalist identity and become progressively more and more Islamist after the first Gulf War.

That's not so much the point the parent comment was making, I believe. Mostly that by making sure the previous military and political leaders would not be allowed to play any role in the future and not get pensions, they'd obviously have zero incentive to work with the new regime/administration/whatever.

On the other hand, they had plenty of incentive to work against it, which they then did. They may have gone full Arab nationalist if that had been an option, but to be funded in the middle east in a war against the US and Shiite-aligned governments, you'll look to the Saudis, and that pretty much only leaves Wahabi fundamentalism as your rally-cry.

Exactly. Actually, it created an incentive to join the insurgent.

Picture that: your skill is to organize soldiers and military operations but the only local and legal employer refuses you and denies you any pension. Did they really think they would go beg in the streets rather than join the militias in dire need or organizational advices?

If your objective is to engender low-level conflict that will justify billions of military dollars for decades, destabilising the country and fostering insurgency is a feature, not a bug.

"People from that admin should be shunned from any published analysis"

Interestingly, it was GWB that also put a lot of effort into pandemic preparedness. See: https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/homeland/pandemi...

History is kind of a weird place.

GWB is war monger and torturer.

Sure he may have done some things that are good, but he made many horrible decisions.

Among the good things, George W. Bush contributed more to the fight against HIV/AIDS than any other president. [1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President%27s_Emergency_Plan_f...

I can't find the full funding breakdown, but I'd guess Obama contributed more. Purely as he had 8 years to Bush's 5 though.

George W. Bush held office for 8 years. You may be thinking of his father, George H. W. Bush.

Bush started that program in 2003.

> to Bush’s 5

How did Bush get a fifth year from a four year presidency?

GWB was elected twice (Nov 2000 and Nov 2004) and served in office for two terms from January 2001 to January 2009.

Why is this complicated and where did the number 5 even come from?

The program started in 2003.

Oh, now I see what you mean.

I think this is splitting hairs over who gets credit. Remember that Congress needed to raise the money and the taxpayers needed to pay it.

From a practical standpoint, usually some credit is given for leadship to the one who gets a program off the ground. It seems fair in this case that GWB gets credit for that. You can also look at later people over a longer span of time and give them credit/blame for maintaining and administering it, as well (or letting it stagnate, like his pandemic plan, unfortunately).

The main point here is that the GWB presidency was not black and white. I think he was a good person and made many good decisions and one really bad one. Quite possibly, with a different VP, he would be a lauded and dignified president, and a lot of things would be different.

Or, if his pandemic plan had been maintained, and bore fruit today (that is showed benefits in fighting coronavirus), it may have redeemed his presidency entirely.

I try not to remember war criminals for all the good things they did.

I’m not sure anything I can say will convince you that he had any but evil intentions.

But consider at the time, the United States had just suffered an unprecedented terrorist attack, the conventional wisdom (and much intelligence) was that Iraq held chemical weapons and finally the United States was engaging the Iraqi military on a regular basis as the sole enforcer of the UN sanctioned no fly zone. I won’t argue that the Iraq War wasn’t a mistake. It was, but it was made in good faith and largely, I think, out of fear.

I remember quite well when the US administration was displaying a parade of outright lies for months and months whose only purpose was to justify a war.

He was a warmonger. His aides and his vice president stood to make tons of money out of that war.

Pandemic preparedness is one of the simplest thing in the world: have trained personnel, listen to a few epidemiologist expert when it comes to quarantine, make sure a few of the incredibly cheap and easy to manufacture protective equipments are available.

The GWB admin still had the level of competence to organize something like the last Iraq war so it made sense it could have pandemic preparedness which is orders of magnitudes easier.

I don't think the US public really realize how incompetent and dumb the current administration looks from abroad.

Any normal mildly competent government does the same.

As a huge critic of Bush and the disaster that war caused, I'm no fan of Bremer.

But O'Sullivan came to Iraq via the State Department, and Rumsfeld didn't want her there, which seems to indicate that perhaps she wasn't as insane as the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Cheany neo-con people.

In anycase, I think this article makes a good basic point: lots of countries are going to be in deep trouble with this oil price.

> lots of countries are going to be in deep trouble with this oil price.

Yeah, I really needed a State Department analyst to tell me that.

Not sure what this means?

The point of analysis pieces often isn't to share new information, but instead is to share that fact that information is now very important.

Also I for one didn't realise that most of Saudi support in Congress had eroded enough in favor of the US industry to the point where is was now (to quote) "a sharp increase in hostility from members of the U.S. Congress who in the past appeared to appreciate the multifaceted relationship between Riyadh and Washington"

That's for analysis such as "Saudi support amongst crongressmen is eroding" that you need to remember that the author is nowhere near competent enough to be trustworthy on that.

>She is Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School and a board member of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Kennedy School.[2] She is a member of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations,[3] where she was previously an adjunct senior fellow, and the North American chair of the Trilateral Commission.[4]

Damn, checks all the boxes

Interesting. So why is this person not shunned from her industry for being partly responsible for a geopolitical disaster?

It's akin to taking business advice from Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling.

Jeff Skilling could probably give some real fantastic advice on business and finance, particularly structured products, operating, etc. That's not to say you'd want to FOLLOW the advice, but it would likely increase your knowledge or insight into something.

His failure was in ethics. THAT might be something you'd not want to look towards him for.

It's very useful to separate the two.

In this instance, an expert's read on a situation is interesting and informative. You just might not want to take his policy recommendation.

The problem is that motivated experts, especially unethical ones, generally feel no compunction about analyzing things in ways biased towards their recommendations. Jeff Skilling would surely describe some frauds to you as just a normal, slightly complicated structured product.

Their "Industry" is selling political agenda and influencing governments for corporate benefit. Seems successful.

> geopolitical disaster

"disasters" are profitable (for those able to benefit from corruption). And enable western/democratic governments to get away with violating their citizens. PATRIOT Act for instance. Read 1984 for background of how "fear of attack" and "security" is used to keep the masses in line.

You seem to be not distinguishing between the effort to start that war and the effort to manage and end it. Specifically, Rumsfield's opposition to her involvement would seem to speak well of her in that regard.

> endured some harrowing experiences while in Iraq, including escaping from a terrorist attack by scaling a building ledge ten stories up

This is fascinating :)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/0...

As fascinating as hillary, brian williams, jessica lynch, pat tillman, etc war time fiction peddled by the media. Pretty much every nonsense you read in the papers during war is bound to be a lie or highly exaggerated.

The first casualty of war is the truth after all. Last I checked we've been in a neverending period of war.

Please expand on Pat Tillman. He does not belong on that list. This is the same man that as soon as the war moved from Afghanistan to Iraq was quoted as saying “this war is so fucking illegal.”

Full disclouse: I knew him personally… mostly from a distance. It was disgusting seeing the likes of Senator John McCain try to capitalize on his death. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t the man depicted in Jon Krakauers’ book.

You are misunderstanding my point. My issue isn't with the individuals, my issue was with the war time "stories" made up by the military/news.

Pat Tillman was killed in friendly fire. But the story we got initially was that he was killed by the enemy.

"Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal approved the Silver Star citation on April 28, 2004, which gave a detailed account of Tillman's death including the phrase "in the line of devastating enemy fire," but the next day he sent a P4 confidential memo warning senior government members that Tillman might actually have been killed by friendly fire"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Tillman#Surrounding_Tillma...

Certainly Tillman didn't spread the lies. Jessica Lynch didn't spread the lies either. It was the military/news/etc.

Hence : The first casualty of war is the truth.

> Full disclouse: I knew him personally… mostly from a distance.

Yeah, I knew him "personally" too like millions of other football fans.

Between the Kennedy School and the law school, it seems like everyone I hear about coming out of Harvard these days is stupid and/or evil in some profound way.

I read O'Sullivan reports and some of her works in my student years.

First, I have no idea how she got her scholarly titles when her writing is so incoherent, and devoid of line of though. Some times she outright descends into polsci technobabble, and I loose her. She is not a scholar, but a person who went to school and bullshited her way to the degree with every mean and way, in hope to get a cushy government job.

Second, for a portion of her writing making sense, her vision of reality is a laconic polsci101 recital, and carbon copy of her mentors views, without a iota of extra thought. The reality of politics is that shit happens, the reality of war is that you don't improve global stability by starting one. Her works state that it can be otherwise.

My criteria for a politician who knows his onions, is caution. Above all is caution, and an understanding that whatever he or she does returns threefold if made in error. Anybody claiming a clear, logical, rational picture of the world has never worked a day in job where his life depends on it.

I repeat my opinion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23051520

> People must stop decrying types like McNamara, Kisinger, Dulles as some kind of "smart calculating types." They were top idiots at the apex of power, and their coming was a prelude to what America got itself in now.

Every big name "strategist" USA had since the WW2 I can name was a big joke, and such types will keep coming unless people will start calling things their real names. The "geopolitical technobabblers" should not allowed to sit in high posts.

In this case, I think there can't be a better way than to pull her early works, and her academic writing for everybody to see.

That seems to be a common disease of old money institutions - caring about self perpetuating themselves with illusion of merit instead who is actually the best fit for the job. See the goalposts on rails of the Ivy League to try to keep out "model minorities" like their physicals, analogies specifically designed to not be in the high school literature canon but among New England old money, the extraciruculars requirements, and more. The game is all about blending the wheat and their chaff.

EDIT: THE FOLLOWING DATA IS WRONG. (I foolishly misread a chart. Leaving this up for continuity, but the numbers are completely off.)

---

Less than a third of Harvard students come from a household with income greater than $100,000/year. Almost half the students come from households with income between $30,000 and $75,000/year. One in six students comes from a poor family.

Harvard is firmly middle class. The data simply doesn’t support the argument that Harvard admissions is some old money New England conspiracy.

I'm a little curious where your data comes from, because:

"The median family income for Harvard undergraduates is $168,800—more than three times the national median, according to a recent study."

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/1/25/harvard-income-...

Oh shit. You’re right. I googled “Harvard demographics” and got a nice chart from US department of education. I just looked at it again, and it looks like it’s data for _all_ students in the U.S. Sorry to the OP. I was wrong. I’ll edit my posts in a minute.

Also check out the portion of white students who are legacy admits.

There is the non-elite "meritocracy" and elite finishing school, side by side. Which are the suckers propping up the other? You tell me.

> the portion of white students who are legacy admits

I’m curious to learn more about this. Do you have a good source for this data?

Isn't that practically poverty level on HN? That's like one person making $100K and a spouse making $68K. Don't entry level SWEs make as much by themselves these days? Plus stock options. And ping pong tables.

In SF, maybe. In most places, hardly. And keep in mind that entry level SWEs usually don't have kids that are at the age of heading off to Harvard, so they'd earn that income for a decade or two. That would probably put them somewhere in the range of the average income with their dividends alone.

You seem to start with a tone of disagreement about something, but overall seem to be agreeing with what I said, that in context, around here, $168K is not very much, especially when it, on average, would be more than one earner.

Why do you tell me to "keep in mind" essentially the very point I was making?

And way more than 1/6th of America is part of a 'poor family'. Old money is vastly over-represented in Harvard, and even more vastly over-represented in the backbone of the institution.

EDIT: THE FOLLOWING DATA IS WRONG. (I foolishly misread a chart. Leaving this up for continuity, but the numbers are completely off.)

---

No. Only 25% of households in the US have annual income between $35,000 and $75,000. About one in five families in the US is below the poverty line. So middle class students are over represented at Harvard. Students from poor families are only slightly underrepresented, and considering that household income and academic achievement are correlated, it’s actually a testament to their efforts to have socially conscious admissions. The facts do not support your argument. On this you are simply wrong.

Their purpose wouldn't be a monopoly but maintaining their disproportionate influence niche from family status. It is to get the legacies in. Regardless of the rightness of my assessment it wouldn't be a conspiracy as it isn't illegal.

It is legal to influence the instituions themselves with money as they have ownership of all resources involved. The admissions scandal demonstrated the difference quite well. Of course the admission has other unspoken reasons for wanting them - contacts for tbeir network and their own pride and flatrery about "cultural worth". Stupid human social trick stuff of skewed priorties.

What is your point?

It's useful to understand the biases of an author when reading an article. We all have them, and no media is free from them. It contextualizes a piece, and it's information I found useful to my understanding of the piece.

Also adds to it to see where the author have been wrong before. Doesn’t mean they are wrong this time, but a piece of data.

It might, but a given tidbit is only so much context.

A random bit of context with no obvious connection isn't much context. Context is more than a single given fact.

I agree, but at the same time, it could also introduce a bias and prejudice into your perception of the article. This would be especially true if you already had strong feelings and opinions about the author. Maybe the ideal way would be to read it without any knowledge of the author. And then go back and reread it after knowing who wrote it.

And what better way to find out who wrote it than to scan the comments after reading the article? In all seriousness, I don't see how wilful ignorance on the first-read through is some ideal analytic strategy.

Not knowing who the author is is actually a component of an ideal analytic strategy.

Same principle behind why double-blind tests have high efficacy.

Double blind studies help with biases during data collection, not during analysis. It doesn't matter if you have the perfect double blind clinical trial for diabetes medication if you measure efficacy using body thetans as a proxy when you get the results back.

Reading news articles or analyses is in effect a metastudy and doing it double blind is pointless - a metastudy requires an analysis of the provenance of the information in order to weigh the results from multiple sources.

Reading an article is different than a double blind test. Reputation exists because it is critical shorthand when dealing with other humans. It's not always right. It's not always useful. But it shortcuts a lot of preamble.

Also, most geopolitical problems aren't simple analytical problems. There isn't a 'right answer' that one can divine by approaching the space with an emotionless evaluation.

Especially in complex "human" problems like geopolitics where every action has 5 re-actions, some of which are only apparent 5 years later. When there aren't scientifically right answers then deceit can become an important part of the field. See - all politics. Pretending that there is no deceit in political writing and that it's in any way objective seems completely naive.

You know the expression let the chips fall where they may? Well this is just stating "here are the chips." i.e the author is knowledgeable in the field and either is offering expert opinion or expert manipulation.

Not sure why you are being modded.

A third option, which I consider most likely, is that this piece is doing both. The author most likely believes in what they are saying and are trying to manipulate things in a certain direction. There is noting wrong with this, and I think understanding the bias is merely a more effective way to gain more from reading this.

no idea what modded means. That's a fair point. so you're saying that maybe the author doesn't know they are being manipulated despite being an expert -- that's also possible!

> the author doesn't know they are being manipulated despite being an expert

Actually I meant the author was aware of his view and is being both manipulative while fairly forwarding his agenda. Your option would be a fourth possibility? Which would make sense since any two binary outcomes will give a 2x2 sample space for a total of 4 outcomes.