Here's something you should know about GOP frontrunner, Tom Foley:
http://www.ctnewsjunkie.com/...
In 2003, President George W. Bush, fresh off the conquest of Iraq, needed a director of private sector development for the new Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which would govern the country from Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone. He found an old Harvard classmate running a business specializing in corporate “turnarounds,” and offered him the job. Thomas C. Foley of Greenwich accepted.
Foley’s hire, given that he’d raised a ton of money for the 2000 Bush campaign, drew some speculation that it was a reward. Foley saw it instead as his skills being put to use. “[President Bush] knows that I have been involved in operating companies and particularly had done some turnaround work and managed companies in high-stress situations,” Foley told AFP at the time. “Does this sound [like] a reward? It sounds like the short straw.” And so off he went.
It’s surprisingly hard to pin down specifically what Tom Foley did in Iraq. Major sources on the CPA or the war in general tend to gloss over or ignore him. His campaign, when I contacted them for information, said that in addition to creating a privatization plan for Iraq’s state-owned businesses, “Mr. Foley [oversaw] 160 or so of Iraq’s state-owned enterprises. He was also responsible for restoring the foundations of a private-sector economy including a new stock exchange, a new commercial code, new credit-based lending, for example.”
Mostly it seems that Foley was concerned with the plan to privatize Iraq’s creaking state-owned enterprises — a plan that was eventually torpedoed by the Iraqis over fears the companies would be sold to foreign firms, among other things.
Other than that, was he successful? A RAND Corporation report from 2009 argued that the CPA was at least partially successful in reviving Iraq’s economy, pointing to vast growth in post-conflict GDP. “The CPA achieved these results,” says the RAND report, “By curbing inflation, issuing a new currency . . . reducing external tariffs, reforming the banking system, expanding liquidity, and stimulating consumer demand.”
Foley clearly played a role in some of this. “Mr. Foley’s team accomplished a lot while there,” his campaign said, including “. . . a modern stock market, a well-functioning, western-style commercial code, restored sources of credit for businesses and individuals, and so forth.”
But that isn’t all there is to the story. The book Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post portrays the CPA as hopeless bunglers, and Foley as incompetent. “After Foley had been in Baghdad for a few months,” writes Chandrasekaran, “Bremer concluded that he wasn’t the right guy for the job, but he was a friend of the president. Bremer told people in the palace that Foley was ‘untouchable.’” The book also suggested that Foley actually stood in the way of the re-opening of the stock market, wanted to privatize everything within 30 days, and when told that seizing state companies would violate international law, he said “I don’t give a s*** about international law.”
Foley denied Chandrsekaran’s accusations during a 2010 interview with the Connecticut Post, calling the book “fiction.” Imperial Life in the Emerald City won the 2007 BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, and is still one of the most-cited works on the CPA.
As for whether his Iraq experience ties into how he might run Connecticut, Foley’s campaign said that there are “few lessons that could be applied to Connecticut.” One lesson could be that “. . . centrally planned economies and over-involved government do not work, but that lesson was obvious before Mr. Foley’s arrival.” - CT News Junkie, 7/11/14
The story about Foley cronyism came about back in 2004:
http://www.commondreams.org/...
…I couldn’t help but think about something Senator John McCain had said back in October. Iraq, he said, is “a huge pot of honey that’s attracting a lot of flies.” The flies McCain was referring to were the Halliburtons and Bechtels, as well as the venture capitalists who flocked to Iraq in the path cleared by Bradley Fighting Vehicles and laser-guided bombs. The honey that drew them was not just no-bid contracts and Iraq’s famed oil wealth but the myriad investment opportunities offered by a country that had just been cracked wide open after decades of being sealed off, first by the nationalist economic policies of Saddam
I was also reminded of the most common explanation for what has gone wrong in Iraq, a complaint echoed by everyone from John Kerry to Pat Buchanan: Iraq is mired in blood and deprivation because George W. Bush didn’t have “a postwar plan.” The only problem with this theory is that it isn’t true. The Bush Administration did have a plan for what it would do after the war; put simply, it was to lay out as much honey as possible, then sit back and wait for the flies.
The honey theory of Iraqi reconstruction stems from the most cherished belief of the war’s ideological architects: that greed is good. Not good just for them and their friends but good for humanity, and certainly good for Iraqis. Greed creates profit, which creates growth, which creates jobs and products and services and everything else anyone could possibly need or want. The role of good government, then, is to create the optimal conditions for corporations to pursue their bottomless greed, so that they in turn can meet the needs of the society….
Bremer had two lieutenants on the economic front: Thomas Foley and Michael Fleischer, the heads of “private sector development” for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Foley is a Greenwich, Connecticut, multimillionaire, a longtime friend of the Bush family and a Bush-Cheney campaign “pioneer” who has described Iraq as a modern California “gold rush.” Fleischer, a venture capitalist, is the brother of former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. Neither man had any high-level diplomatic experience and both use the term corporate “turnaround” specialist to describe what they do. According to Foley, this uniquely qualified them to manage Iraq’s economy because it was “the mother of all turnarounds.” - Harper's Magazine, September 2004
And in the end, Foley's plans achieved nothing:
http://www.juancole.com/...
Reuters confirms earlier reports that Tom Foley, the Coalition Provisional Authority official in charge of economic policy, has given up on a plan to privatize 150 state-owned companies. The plan, submitted to the Interim Governing Council last fall, was shelved by that body. Many Iraqis feared that the state firms would be sold cheaply to foreign concerns, but Foley insists that the plan all along was to sell them to Iraqis. This statement contradicts the economic plans announced in August, in which the CPA said there would be no licensing or restrictions placed on foreign firms investing in Iraq, and that they would be allowed to own 100% of Iraqi companies and to expatriate profits immediately. - Informed Comment, 2/19/04
Foley's role in Iraq came up in the GOP primary back in 2009:
http://www.ctpost.com/...
In an interview last week and earlier remarks to the editorial board of the Connecticut Post, Foley defended his work in Iraq, denied the depictions presented in Chandrasekaran's book and recalled Baghdad as place where he gambled daily with the potential for random violence, mostly from indiscriminate mortar rounds lobbed into the heavily fortified Green Zone.
Foley's opponents in the Aug. 10 Republican gubernatorial primary -- Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele, of Stamford, and R. Nelson Griebel, of Simsbury, said last week that Foley's campaign claims are overstated and indicate a weakness of character.
Griebel said that between the Iraq experience and recent reports on his business dealings and old arrests, Foley's candidacy should be scrutinized closely.
"The significant discrepancies between Tom's characterizations of his arrests, leveraged buyout business deals and, now, time in Iraq, reveal a troubling pattern of misrepresenting facts for political gain," Griebel said last week. "The continual evolution and exaggeration of Tom's ambitions and resume raise serious questions about his judgment, temperament and ability to win. These reflect his judgment."
Pattern of exaggeration?
On June 2, Hearst Connecticut Newspapers reported that a textile mill in Macon, Ga., purchased by Foley in the mid-1980s went bankrupt when the American-made fabric industry went under about 10 years later.
Foley also announced recently that he had two legal run-ins, including breach of peace charges shared with his ex-wife that were dropped about eight years ago, and a 30-year-old vehicular arrest after a Southampton, N.Y., party that resulted in an overnight stay in jail.
"Foley has a pattern of exaggerating and distorting his true record on a number of issues," Fedele said.
"He touted his job-creation credentials on his website, too, until it was revealed that he ran the biggest textile mill in the country into bankruptcy and laid off hundreds of workers while he personally pocketed millions of dollars," Fedele said. "The fact is that it is hard to know with Tom Foley what is truth and what is fiction, because he won't disclose sealed records about his arrests, he has distorted his business experience and now apparently, he is distorting the truth about his failure in Iraq as well." A month after his March 2004 return to the United States, Foley told the annual meeting of the Export-Import Bank of the United States that he moved freely about Baghdad. - CT Post, 7/10/14
And this haunted Foley in the general election:
http://the40yearplan.com/...
Foley maintained that his Office for the Development of the Private Sector had nothing to do with the missing billions.
His office, he said, "had a small team, a small budget for our mission. There was a group within the CPA, the equivalent of the Office of Management and Budget, they were distributing funds to the government of Iraq, ministries, and contractors."
The OMB of the CPA, Foley claims, "didn't have teams of accountants running around Iraq, accounting where it was going. A lot of it was being paid in cash. The banking system had collapsed. It didn't disappear. It was all spent in ways consistent with the policies of CPA and the U.S. government."
I told Foley how foolish I thought this policy was, and that governing the state of Connecticut would be much easier if our foreign policy didn't consist of military adventures that drain the public fisc. That $8.8 billion could settle Connecticut's budget deficit, and make life much easier for the new governor.
"That's an issue for you to take up with the federal government," Foley said. "I had nothing to do with policy, any of the decisions that resulted in the US government being in Iraq."
But you were there, I said. Your very presence seems to indicate that you were behind the idea of invading Iraq.
"There were a lot of people serving in the armed forces who didn't agree that they should be there, but it was consistent with the agreement they made with the armed forces," Foley said. "I was a volunteer. I didn't go because I agreed with the policy.
"I went because we were there and the government needed people to make sure that we succeeded to the extent we can," Foley said. "Ultimately, the goals that were set by the Bush Administration for Iraq will be achieved."
So, Mr. Foley, do you think it was a good idea to invade Iraq?
"I think our grandchildren will have to decide that," he said. "We don't know what the outcome is, and we don't know how much it is going to cost. Until those two things are known, I don’t think you can decide. I think it will be for people a lot younger than I to decide." - The 40-Year Plan, 3/4/10
We shall see if Foley's cronyism will cost him another shot at the governorship. In the meantime, please do consider donating and getting involved with Governor Dannel Malloy's (D. CT) gubernatorial campaign, you can do so here:
http://www.danmalloy2014.com/