we went with the other guy

General Anthony Zinni was one of Obama's earliest and most important endorsers during the battle with Hillary Clinton. He is also pretty much universally regarded as a highly capable and intelligent man, with much direct experience and knowledge of the Middle East. The extraordinary story of how he was offered the ambassadorship to Iraq only to see the job go to someone else makes for painful reading.

"Then two weeks ago, Jones called," Zinni continued, "and said, 'We talked to the secretary of state, and everybody would like to offer you the Iraq job. I said yes.

"The president called and congratulated me," Zinni said.

Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked for a meeting last Monday night, Zinni said. He said he went to the meeting in her office at the State Department, where Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Williams Burns were also in attendance.

"She thanks me, asked me my views on Iraq," Zinni recalled. "She said to Burns and Steinberg, 'We've got to move quickly, Crocker is leaving, we've got to get someone in there and get the paperwork done and hearings... Lots to do to get ready to go."

Zinni said he expected a call from Burns the next day. Not hearing from him, he called him.

"To make a long story short, I kept getting blown off all week," Zinni said. "Meantime, I was rushing to put my personal things in order," to get ready to go.

"Finally, nobody was telling me anything," Zinni said. "I called Jones Monday several times. I finally got through late in evening. I asked Jones, 'What's going on?' And Jones said, 'We decided on Chris Hill.'"

"I said, 'Really,'" Zinni recalled. "That was news to me."

I say it's extraordinary, and it is. But in a way it's familiar to anyone who's had to deal with the frustrations of a shadowy bureaucracy that dicks you around and doesn't feel it has to explain itself.

Christopher Hill, by the way, has no experience of Iraq or the Middle East.

UPDATE: commenter Mark is quite right to point out that a correction has been issued by Foreign Policy to the story I quote from here to the effect that it was Biden who called to congratulate Zinni, not Obama. An odd error on their part, and not a trivial one.

Comments

[Mark Roberts]

It was the vice president that called him, not Obama himself.