E-Mail This Article to a Friend Picking up the pieces (continued)

AMBASSADOR LEWIS Paul Bremer III bears much of the responsibility for whether that chance is ever fully realized. Pulled from a private-sector job in crisis management by President George W. Bush late in April to handle stabilization, occupation, and reconstruction, Bremer represents the diplomatic arm of the US government, not the military.

He was ambassador to the Netherlands in the 1980s and the State Department ambassador for counterterrorism for President Reagan. He speaks French, Dutch, and Norwegian and holds an MBA from Harvard.

The paradox of his work in Iraq can be seen in his mufti. As the civilian administrator of Iraq’s interim government — the so-called Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA — he always appears in public wearing a suit, a crisp shirt, and tie. But on his feet he wears the same government-issue desert-combat boots as the 130,000 American soldiers who work in Iraq as both combatants and street-level diplomats.

Known as Jerry to his friends and Washington insiders, Bremer is an avid marathoner and skier and is young-looking for a man in his early 60s. But since arriving in Iraq on May 12 to replace a foundering retired Army general put in charge of the no-plan post-invasion era, Bremer has famously worked 20 hours a day, and it shows.

Besides constant meetings, he makes regular addresses to the Iraqi people but travels nowhere without a heavy phalanx of intimidating armed guards. The CPA, which is headquartered in a former Saddam palace in what’s now a heavily fortified quarter of Baghdad known as the Green Zone, has been attacked several times. Right around Christmas it was disclosed that weeks before, on December 6, Bremer’s convoy had been ambushed.

To get to Bremer’s office at the CPA, one must first get into the tightly defended Green Zone, then into the tightly defended CPA headquarters, which is still called the palace. Once a grandiose fortress of big empty hallways and strange murals, it’s now a beehive, crammed with offices of every kind. The entrance to Bremer’s office sits somewhere in the middle of a warren of hallways in a vaulted stone lobby cleared of everything but a metal detector and two unsmiling Marines in combat gear.

On the desk in Bremer’s small office sits a long plaque with large letters that reads SUCCESS HAS A THOUSAND FATHERS. (The corollary, "Every failure is an orphan," is not visible.)

The nation-building task taken up by the likes of Major Nunis, done largely without the help of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or Foreign Service officers, does not go unnoticed by Bremer, even if it gets little attention from the rest of the nation.

"The civil-affairs guys are doing a terrific job," Bremer says in an interview on December 30, the day following Nunis’s encounter with the rock-throwing kids. "We’ve completed over 1700 projects around the country. It’s a fact that doesn’t get reported to the American public very often."

One thing evidenced both on the ground and in regular press reports is the contradiction of Iraqi attitudes about the US presence. Asked to comment about incidents like the rock-throwing students at Al Anwal primary school, Bremer offers a stiff response, referring to regular polls of the public: "The polls are very clear. They don’t like being occupied, and they don’t want us to leave."

Over the holidays there was a long report in the Washington Post noting that many goals set out by the US for Iraq, such as the privatization of its economy, will have to be abandoned in light of the unstable security situation. According to an agreement made on November 15 between Bremer and the Iraqi Governing Council, the CPA dissolves on June 30, and the Iraqis are free to write a constitution and hold elections by the end of 2005.

Many soldiers are concerned about the quickened tempo for success in Iraq, some blaming it on election-year politics. Bremer dismisses claims that any schedules have been compromised, and he remains confident that Iraq will have its way after years of someone having its way with it.

"This is a rich country," he says. "There’s no reason this country cannot set up a representative democratic system."

In fact, despite being attacked himself and despite a fragile ground situation, he shares Major Nunis’s optimism.

While Iraqis wait hours in line for dirt-cheap gasoline, while electric power remains unreliable, while American soldiers face an ugly insurgency, Bremer focuses on the fact that Saddam Hussein no longer rules the land and now faces the mother of all war-crimes trials, with the blood of half a million people on his hands.

"Life is getting better every day here," he says.

BREMER’S OPTIMISM is all but contradicted by what the Army calls "ground truth." While he is highly respected, the CPA below him gets low marks from many soldiers who see their credibility harmed by the CPA’s bureaucratic static.

When it comes up in conversation, military officers will sneer about how the Provisional Authority is full of DC paper-pushers they call "90-day wonders," who, they say, take temporary gigs at CPA to buff out their résumés, but get to go home in three months and talk about their adventures at cocktail parties.

One Army officer calls the CPA "worthless." Another officer has his own definition of the CPA acronym: "Can’t Produce Anything." Another Army officer puts a sympathetic spin on those frustrations: "Everybody has good intentions and there’s a lot of money flying around, but it’s a challenge to coordinate all those pots of money and all the projects."

An incident on Christmas morning illustrates the frustration Iraqi leaders have with the CPA. It took place at a meeting between a council of sheiks who represent Iraqi farmers, and the American colonel responsible for security in north-central Baghdad.

The commander, Colonel Russ Gold, came to Iraq with no training in nation-building or civil affairs. His job parameters as an armor leader are to take over territory with overwhelming force and violently destroy what gets in the way. When the invasion wound down and his unit settled into its region of Baghdad in late April, it was being watched not only by wide-eyed Iraqis, but by their leaders, a group of tribal sheiks who represent the farmers of Iraq and live in the area — an old part of the city with an ancient farmers’ market. As the sheiks tell it, the tribal leaders were impressed by the way the American troops were treating their people.

At the meeting on Christmas morning, a spirit of good will prevailed. The chief, Sheik Mohammed Ahd Ali, arrived at the Al Kadhimiya meeting hall dressed in gold brocade robes and white kaffiyeh, holding plastic roses and electronic Christmas cards that played "Jingle Bells" for Gold and his staff. Mohammed was accompanied by a dozen other representatives. Gold had his assistants and two contract translators with him.

The farmer sheiks are in a desperate situation. Under the old regime, agriculture was subsidized at 80 to 90 percent. The war that toppled Saddam put an end to those subsidies and also interrupted the planting season.

"What you have is a transition to a market economy and a government with no subsidies anymore," says Major Clark Taylor, an artillery officer pressed into service as Gold’s civil-affairs aide. "They missed the winter crop because they didn’t have any money to buy the seed."

Since Gold’s troops are the closest thing to a government agency in the area, the sheiks went to him, and he’s taken their concerns to the Coalition Provisional Authority: they need seed, fertilizer, fuel, and pesticide, as well as recognition from the CPA. But despite the good feelings, something is wrong at the palace.

"We’ve run into stonewall after stonewall after stonewall," Taylor tells me before the meeting.

Gold arrives in helmet and flak jacket. The meeting begins with his pledge to help the farmers, delivered through his translator, an Iraqi-American from Michigan.

A guest at the meeting, an Iraqi named Zaid A. Abdul Hameed El-Noeimy, a representative of an NGO in Iraq trying to set up business organizations, was there to help the farmers achieve legitimacy with the CPA.

Sheik Mohammed has more immediate priorities: he wants basic necessities for Iraq’s farmers.

"We don’t need these little medals and rags that say we are in the law," he says in Arabic. "If we don’t plant our land for two years, it will be ruined. We are not asking for new cars or new equipment. All we are asking for are the seed and fertilizer."

Zaid replies in Arabic. "All we are worried about is the needs of the farmers and taking those needs to the governing council."

As the two talk, the translators relay what they are saying to the Americans in the room. "We are working against the terrorists, and we are thankful for freedom from dictatorship," says the sheik. "We are asking for something very small."

Zaid then gives the farmers a piece of advice about how he feels they can deal more effectively with the CPA.

Gold explodes. He has been lobbying hard on the farmers’ behalf — to no avail. He blames the CPA.

The colonel had assembled a convention of the farmer sheiks over the summer. He personally invited the CPA’s ministers of agriculture and irrigation. They did not attend. Some 1500 farmers did. Gold tells Zaid that middle management at CPA is putting up walls.

Zaid says the CPA sometimes acts like the old regime, that it doesn’t venture from behind the palace walls and shows little regard for the people.

"They stay in the Green Zone, and they don’t know what is the hell happening," Zaid says.

Eventually Gold and Zaid simmer down, with Gold saying, "I get emotional about this because I’ve been fighting for it."

For Gold the situation is extremely frustrating. He knows Bremer, and he personally took Mohammed to meet him. Bremer was impressed enough that he took the farmers’ issues back to Washington, where they made their way into one of President Bush’s speeches.

Outside after the meeting, in the warm sun of Christmas morning, Gold prepares to leave in his humvee. A farmer from Southern Iraq rushes up to him and says, "Thank you, thank you for working day and night." Gold replies: "Thank me when we win."

Before leaving, Gold offers a fable he’s learned in Iraq: there’s a tortoise and a scorpion and they both want to cross a creek. The scorpion can’t swim so it asks the tortoise for a lift. The tortoise asks, "How do I know you won’t sting me halfway across?" and the scorpion says, "Why would I do that? If I sting you, I will drown, we will both die." The tortoise sees the reasoning and tells the scorpion to hop on. Sure enough, halfway across, the scorpion jabs its stinger into the tortoise. As it’s dying in the middle of the creek, the tortoise looks up at the scorpion and says, "Why did you do that?" and the scorpion, which is about to die too, tells the tortoise, "Welcome to the Middle East."

After telling the story, Gold says, "Things don’t make sense. I’ve had people here tell me, ‘Don’t trust anyone. Don’t even trust me.’ Then they’ll turn around and die for me."

With that, Gold turns to leave for what’s left of Christmas. "I’m going to go smoke a cigar," he says.