As you probably know, demands by the United States that its forces and personnel be entirely exempt from Iraqi law has been a sticking-point in negotiations with Baghdad over a Status of Forces agreement to govern the U.S. presence in Iraq. But as the Progressive Policy Institute’s Jim Arkedis points out in a post at his fine new national security blog, allourmight.com, the problem also extends to private security contractors (PSCs), such as the famous private army run by the North Carolina-based company Blackwater Worldwide.
Arkedis unravels a new GAO report that seems to offer reassurance that PSCs are operating under the rule of law. But in the fine print, he discovers that PSCs continue to enjoy immunity from Iraqi law under an obscure order from the long-defunct Coalition Provisional Authority. Thus:
In laymen’s terms, nothing has changed – security contractors remain immune because the CPA order is considered Iraq law, and the CPA gave contractors a get-out-of-jail-free card in 2004.
Almost more disturbing is that the GAO leaves the distinct impression in the “highlights” that the situation is vastly improved. Most Congressional staffs only have time to read the executive summaries, and may never dig down to find the devil in the details.
When it comes to the challenge of restoring full Iraqi sovereignty, this is a devil indeed.
This year’s big media narrative has been the confirmation saga of Neera Tanden, Biden’s nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget. At New York I wrote about how over-heated the talk surrounding Tanden has become.
Okay, folks, this is getting ridiculous. When a vote in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the nomination of Neera Tanden was postponed earlier this week, you would have thought it presented an existential threat to the Biden presidency. “Scrutiny over Tanden’s selection has continued to build as the story over her uneven reception on Capitol Hill stretched through the week,” said one Washington Post story. Politico Playbook suggested that if Tanden didn’t recover, the brouhaha “has the potential to be what Biden might call a BFD.” There’sbeen all sorts of unintentionally funny speculation about whether the White House is playing some sort of “three-dimensional chess” in its handling of the confirmation, disguising a nefarious plan B or C.
Perhaps it reflects the law of supply and demand, which requires the inflation of any bit of trouble for Biden into a crisis. After all, his Cabinet nominees have been approved by the Senate with a minimum of 56 votes; the second-lowest level of support was 64 votes. One nominee who was the subject of all sorts of initial shrieking, Tom Vilsack, was confirmed with 92 Senate votes. Meanwhile, Congress is on track to approve the largest package of legislation moved by any president since at least the Reagan budget of 1981, with a lot of the work on it being conducted quietly in both chambers. Maybe if the bill hits some sort of roadblock, or if Republican fury at HHS nominee Xavier Becerra (whose confirmation has predictably become the big fundraising and mobilization vehicle for the GOP’s very loud anti-abortion constituency) reaches a certain decibel level, Tanden can get out of the spotlight for a bit.
But what’s really unfair — and beyond that, surreal — is the extent to which this confirmation is being treated as more important than all the others combined, or indeed, as a make-or-break moment for a presidency that has barely begun. It’s not. If Tanden cannot get confirmed, the Biden administration won’t miss a beat, and I am reasonably sure she will still have a distinguished future in public affairs (though perhaps one without much of a social-media presence). And if she is confirmed, we’ll all forget about the brouhaha and begin focusing on how she does the job, which she is, by all accounts, qualified to perform.
