Word: garnering
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...sunset last Monday, Jay Garner climbed to the top of the 4,000-year-old ziggurat in Ur in southern Iraq and looked down over the remains of the city of Abraham's birth. The former three-star general, assigned to invent a democracy from scratch, was preparing to preside the next morning over the first freely convened meeting of Iraqi leaders in memory. "There we were, at the birthplace of civilization, and we were about to create a democracy," says Garner. "I had tears in my eyes...
That's about as moist and mystical as it gets from Garner. For all the lofty dreams of planting liberty in fresh soil, the Bush Administration dispatched a pragmatist with a low-key manner and rolled-up sleeves to get the job done. "Jay's way," as his subordinates call it, involves no waffling, full accountability, foot on the gas, getting results. He has a staff of 200, but they were still stuck in Kuwait last week waiting to be told it was safe to set up shop in Iraq. "There is the physical thing--roads and bridges...
Just getting started was harder than anyone expected. Many ministries were looted, and some workers were still afraid to go to work. As an incentive, Garner's operation will give each returning worker an emergency one-time payment of $20, equivalent to a month's pay. As for order, some police officers went back to work in Baghdad, but all was not quiet there or in other cities. Those police officers were all products of the old regime, and many Iraqis were reluctant to accept them as arbiters of the new. In Kirkuk, says Ahmad Shakir, an Arab teacher from...
...finding a new generation of leaders, "It is like walking in a dark room holding your hands out, feeling for the walls and trying not to touch the furniture," says Garner. Discerning who is credible and who is corrupt requires trial and error. The night before the conclave, Garner met with exile leader Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress. He would not be attending in the morning--in many quarters there is deep opposition to him as a Pentagon puppet--but Garner wanted a chance to hear Chalabi's take on the situation. Pressed and proper...
...Garner plans to hold an important meeting in Baghdad on Saturday to discuss postwar political planning. And getting the Shiites on board is clearly the key challenge. But al-Hakim's group stayed away from the last such meeting, and may boycott this one, too. The reason cited by al-Hakim is that his group are not sure what the American agenda is, right now. Unfortunately, that uncertainty may be shared among the Americans themselves...