{"id":20243,"date":"2014-04-01T13:40:46","date_gmt":"2014-04-01T19:40:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=20243"},"modified":"2014-04-01T13:40:46","modified_gmt":"2014-04-01T19:40:46","slug":"krajeski-a-slacker-bumbling-boob-but-embassy-gate-has-little-to-do-with-failed-bahrain-regime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=20243","title":{"rendered":"Krajeski a &#8220;slacker, bumbling boob&#8221;, but &#8220;embassy-gate&#8221; has little to do with failed Bahrain regime"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Embassygate in Bahrain Not the Fundamental Problem<\/strong><br \/>\n31 March, 2014 &#8211; Brian Dooley &#8211; Huffington Post<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. State Department Inspector General&#8217;s office has sunk the knife pretty deeply into U.S. Ambassador to Bahrain Thomas Krajeski. A report released last week alleged that his &#8220;failure to maintain a robust planning and review process has led to confusion and lack of focus among some staff members.&#8221; The report also claimed that &#8220;Management controls processes are weak across the board,&#8221; and &#8220;A lack of transparency in management policies exacerbates low morale.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The report charges that Krajeski&#8217;s &#8220;belief that reactive &#8216;seat of the pants&#8217; leadership works best in Bahrain&#8217;s challenging environment has left staff members who do not have access to him on a regular basis confused.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The report from the 11-member team is nothing if not thorough, finding fault in all sorts of places, and making 74 recommendations, including that &#8220;Embassy Manama should adopt a policy that forbids drivers to put a car into gear until all passengers fasten their seat belts,&#8221; and that &#8220;Embassy Manama should implement and publish a policy restricting use of personally owned furniture and furnishings.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I cannot assess whether Ambassador Krajeski is as poor a manager as the report suggests &#8212; I&#8217;ve only met him a few times, largely because I haven&#8217;t been allowed into Bahrain for over two years. But when we have spoken, he&#8217;s been refreshingly frank about the challenges he faces and more open to a candid discussion than many of his colleagues.<\/p>\n<p>Yet some of the report&#8217;s most interesting findings are not about Krajeski&#8217;s performance, but the reality of the U.S.-Bahrain relationship and the functioning of the embassy. It states, for example, that &#8220;Embassy Manama has two Leahy Vetting officers, both in the political\/economic section&#8230;. In 2012, the embassy vetted 308 individuals.&#8221; U.S. Leahy laws prohibit the Departments of State of Defense from providing military assistance to foreign military or police units believed to have violated human rights. It&#8217;s unclear from this report how many Bahraini security officials were denied U.S. support under this law.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/brian-dooley\/embassygate-in-bahrain-no_b_5063857.html\" target=\"_blank\">&#8230;more<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"igit_tsb_button\" style=\"float: left; margin-right: 10px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crookedbough.com%2F%3Fp%3D20243&amp;text=Krajeski+a+%22slacker%2C+bumbling+boob%22%2C+but+%22embassy-gate%22+has+little+to+do+with+failed+Bahrain+regime&amp;count=horizontal&amp;via=\" style=\"\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embassygate in Bahrain Not the Fundamental Problem 31 March, 2014 &#8211; Brian Dooley &#8211; Huffington Post The U.S. State Department Inspector General&#8217;s office has sunk the knife pretty deeply into U.S. Ambassador to Bahrain Thomas Krajeski. A report released last week alleged that his &#8220;failure to maintain a robust planning and review process has led <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=20243#more-'\" class=\"more-link\">more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[3161],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20243"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20244,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20243\/revisions\/20244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}