One of the characters they mentioned was James Haveman. That is a name I recognized, so I started paying attention.
At the NPR site, there is a bit about James Haveman (PDF bio). Mr. Haveman was the director of the Department of Mental Health from 1991 to 1996; from 1996 to 2003, he was the director of the Department of Community Health. He oversaw the transition to managed Medicaid, and the implementation of a restricted formulary. Those were changes that were necessary, and did not have to be bad. However, they were badly implemented. I moonlighted at a community mental health agency at the time, so I was in a position to see the problems as they unfolded. As a person who follows Michigan politics, I wanted to know what happened to Haveman.
In 2003, Haveman was recommended by Michigan's former Governor to be the director for reconstruction of the Iraq health care system. The excerpt from the book is fairly critical, although I can't say if it gives a balanced perspective.
Others (1 2 3 4) have cited Haveman's appointment as an example of cronyism, alleging that such political appointments were a major reason for the failure of the reconstruction efforts. That is a good point, but it is not the point I am making today. I just want to know what ever happened to the guy.
Any Internet search engine will turn up many hits on his name. But until the book came out, there was very little after January 2005. That is despite the fact that his company, the Haveman Group, still has a website. Among the services offered by the Haveman Group is "website construction." So you'd think they'd have a big web footprint. Not so. Curiously, there are two versions of the site. The original is here. The new one is here. The new one is flashier (literally) but has exactly the same content as the old one. It does not mention anything the group has actually done.
Until the recent flurry about the book, two of the most recent web mentions occur on the Calvin College site. Haveman graduated from Calvin in 1966, and was on campus on September 22, 2004, to give a lecture. There are two accounts that I could find. One, a PDF, is here.
Some selections:
...The flood of satellite dishes into the country, non-restricted travel, as well as press and internet-access have enabled the Iraqi people to enjoy diversity of opinion and gain knowledge of the world beyond Iraq. According to Haveman, this new openness and awareness of the world around them explains most of the destruction of the cities during the invasion: it resulted from looting by people who were angry because “they could now see what the rest of the world ha[d].” ...
...According to Haveman, the Iraqis knew that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. However, they prefer to now focus on the fact that the dictatorship is over, moving forward with reconstruction of the nation...
The account from the student newspaper, The Chimes, includes these statements:
...With regard to weapons of mass destruction, Haveman said that “it’s not a big deal to them [the Iraqis] because they know they’re there...
...Hussein hanged 7,200 of his own people each day since 1979, but the slanted news coverage never allowed Americans to know that. Anti-U.S. protests are often orchestrated and represent the sentiment of a small number of Iraqis. The Iraqi people “couldn’t believe we spent months on Abu Ghraib; just apologize and move on,” Haveman said was their attitude...
Numbers always get my attention, especially if there is a little math to do. Let's see: 7,200 people hanged every day, over a period of 23 years. That would be 60,444,000 people hanged (That's a conservative number; I did not count leap years.)
The population of Iraq now is about 26,075,000 (after the sixty million hangings). No wonder the guy is on trial: he hanged 70% of the population!
Maybe that is nitpicking. Maybe he misspoke, or maybe he was misquoted. Maybe the reporter who wrote about the satellite dishes got it wrong. Maybe he did not really say that the flood of satellite dishes was responsible for most of the destruction during the invasion. If he did say those things, though, I woudn't blame him for ducking from public attention now.
There is a report that he gave a similar lecture to a hospital in Colorado, but there is no mention of what he said.
The most recent web mention is from January 2005. It is an account of the awarding of the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, given to Haveman by Rumsfeld in a Pentagon ceremony.
Not everyone is critical about the Haveman story. On Townhall.com, Rich Galen has this to say:
Haveman is portrayed as a religious zealot unwilling to talk with, or listen to anyone. As I remember the story, Jim Haveman was so unqualified that the Health Ministry was the first Ministry to be ready to be handed back to full Iraqi control. In fact, Haveman was required to delay the hand-over to allow some other Ministries to catch up.
The Coalition Provisional Authority prepared a report on the status of the reconstruction, in June 2004. In it, they mention:
The entire country is at pre-war capabilities for providing health care - 240 Iraqi hospitals and more than 1,200 primary health centers are operating.
I don't know about that. They do cite a number of glowing statistics, which look good in the context in which they are presented. But is is hard to believe that the Health Ministry in Iraq is back to its pre-war capabilities. Perhaps it was the first Ministry that was ready to be handed back to the control of the Iraqi people. But, unfortunately, that tells us nothing.
My interpretation is that Haveman came back to the USA trumpeting the accomplishments of the reconstruction effort, but found that nobody believed him. Given the statements that were attributed to him, that would be understandable. But what happened to him? What is he doing now?
It turns out that he has been appointed to the Defense Business Board. The DBB was established in 2001 by Donald Rumsfeld:
The Board consists of approximately twenty private sector executives who have amassed a vast range of experiences in business management. The Board shall provide the Secretary of Defense, through the Deputy Secretary of Defense, independent advice and recommendations on effective strategies for the implementation of best business practices of interest to the Department of Defense. The ultimate objective of this advice is to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of organizational support to the nation's warfighters.
The strange thing about this is that Haveman appears to have no particular experience in the business world. Most of his professional experience has been in government, or in nonprofit agencies.
The DBB site lists 28 reports that various task groups have completed. Of those 28 reports, 14 have been produced since May 2004, which is when Haveman returned from Iraq. Haveman's name appears in two of them.
I have little business experience myself, but I am fairly sure that one of the "best practices" in business is to not pay someone to sit around and do nothing. Ironic, isn't it?
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