The Technocrats...

Sitting in a meeting today I was discussing with a friend the need to find Iraq's non-sectarian technocrats and make sure they are nominated as Iraq's ministers in the impending cabinet shift. Then the question came, where are they? They are in Amman, Syria, and other countries because of decisions taken after 2003 that disenfranchised many of them or they left because of a seemingly organized campaign to empty Iraq of its secular professional civil service and middle class elite exchanging them with uneducated religious zealots who always seem to have a chip on their shoulder.
Regardless, what must happen in order for Iraq to be fixed is for an organized campaign to return the doctors, educators, scientists, etc. It is only with a true reversal of the aforementioned brain drain can we begin to patch Iraq together. Absent that we will continue to have a government both on a local and national level filled with incompetent ideologues who attain their positions not because of skill but patronage and therefore corruption will continue because they are beholden to whoever put them in that position.
Iraq is salvageable if we can get these people back into Iraq and working past narrow sectarian interests for the good of the country. Parties must understand that running an opposition movement from the outside is a completely different ball game than running a country! The PM is a representative of all Iraqis and not his narrow ideological base, this must be a cornerstone policy in the upcoming cabinet re-shuffling.
QUALIFIED IRAQIS COME HOME! If you feel you are one of them please e-mail and I would be happy to forward your information on to friends in high places....