Simone, we hardly knew ya

IN THE NEWS
Serendipity is just another word for, I have no idea what the Fates have in store for me.

Case in point is the readership of this blog. Typepad lets you see how people get to your blog, and not surprisingly, Google and other search engines figure prominently. After all the carefully worded, borderline scholarly pieces I've written here, guess which keywords show up most often on Google searches that lead to Arms and Influence?

#1: Thomas Schelling.
#2: Simone Ledeen.

Now, the first name was apparently a bit of, um, inadvertant genius, apparently. I would have never guessed that a lot of people were looking up Thomas Schelling or his book, Arms and Influence, on the web. But, apparently, they're out there.

The second name...That's a bit of a surprise, too. On one of my more frustrated days, I cited an article that profiled Ms. Ledeen and other Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) staff members. According to this news item, these people couldn't quite claim to have made up in youthful enthusiasm what they lacked in genuine (and much needed) expertise. This wasn't the only case of "only the underqualified need apply" that I'd seen; in one case, a senior IT person in the Department of Homeland Security turns out to have received a degree from a diploma mill. (You'd think information might be kinda, sorta important for homeland security. As Steve Martin used to say in Saturday Night Live sketches like "Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber": Naaaaaw.)

Ms. Ledeen posted a response to my piece about her. It was a pleasant surprise, since one of the reasons I started this blog was to start building some substantive bridges between the political extremes in the United States. I'm still not 100% sure that Ms. Ledeen's credentials exactly matched what was needed, nor am I convinced at all that the Administration did its job recruiting more qualified people for posts in the CPA.

I am confident from corresponding with her that the Post did Ms. Ledeen a disservice. She has more to her resume than they indicated. And the Post certainly downplayed the physical risks that Ms. Ledeen and others faced.

She has a short piece at this link that summarizes her response to the Post article and other comments about her. I appreciate her patience and open-mindedness during our exchange in the comments section of this blog.

Comments

[Steven Dee]

I'm sure Ms. Ledeen is a wonderful human being, but that still doesn't make her qualified to assume the responsibilities she underttok in Iraq as part of the CPA. We should have been hiring only the MOST qualified individuals regardless of political stripe, not just bright young people who came with impeccable political credentials.

[Kingdaddy]

Just to clarify...

(1) I think the Post did a poor job of summarizing her skills.
(2) At the same time, I also think the CPA did an outrageously poor job recruiting for the best possible candidates.
(3) I recognize that Ledeen is more qualified than she was depicted. However, that still leaves open the question of how qualified she is, and for what job. The first question is something which, frankly, we made some progress in our exchanges in resolving, but by no means completely. The second is, like many other things in the Bush Administration, far too difficult to find the relevant information needed to make a judgement. I remain a skeptic on both counts.