New ambassador to Iraq wins high marks

Leila Fadel
McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD — Five years ago, as the Bush administration was preparing to invade Iraq, Ryan Crocker and a handful of other State Department officials wrote a six-page memo warning of the possible pitfalls of a U.S.-led attack.

An invasion could "unleash long-repressed sectarian and ethnic tensions," the memo said. It also warned "that the Sunni minority would not easily relinquish power, and that powerful neighbors such as Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia would try to move in to influence events."

It was titled "The Perfect Storm." It was remarkably prescient.

Now Crocker is the American ambassador to Iraq, and it's fallen to him to help quell the tempest. It may be an impossible task, but there's hardly anyone better prepared to do so.

Crocker has done two previous stints in Iraq, arriving for the first time in 1978, the year before Saddam Hussein came to power. He met his wife, Christine, the same year Saddam seized control.

"She's back here with me right now," Crocker said in his office in what was once the deposed leader's Republican Palace. "We're back where we started."

The wall outside his office bears the scars from a recent mortar round or rocket. But Crocker has worked in hostile environments before.

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