Taking these as givens (and I bloody will delete comments that waste my time not taking the givens, simply to enforce a bit of literacy and reading comprehension), let's reflect a moment on his argument regarding downsizing the Green Zone Bunglers:

While Washington sees the constitutional milestone as an opportunity to withdraw some forces, policymakers should not limit their downsizing to the military presence. It's time for many of the civilians to go home as well. The embassy and contractor presence in Iraq has grown too large, and diplomacy and reconstruction have suffered as a result.

Baghdad boasts the world's largest U.S. embassy. More than 800 diplomats and half that many intelligence officials work within the marble corridors of Saddam Hussein's former palace. Large blast walls -- so heavy that they have damaged the local sewer system -- secure the neighborhood.

It would be nice to bring troops home, but many civilians should come along as well. A smaller embassy shifts responsibilities and accountability to Iraq's new government. That is what the country's transition to democracy should be about.

Emphasis added, some ommissions.

Well, there are any number of debatable assertions supra, in some omitted text Rubin makes reference to Kurdistan as a model - not bloody likely I would say, but let's not nitpick.

I underlined a few of the more important points. I would note, I may add that as I noted many, many times in my private blog, I have no sense that American diplos really get out that much in the rest of the Middle East, due to security issues, and I know senior experienced diplos who have complained that with security controls tied to risk aversion, they feel - to play on the ironic observation supra - they might as well be in Washington.

One comes to these sorts of jobs with an understanding there is risk. Excessive attention to security merely hobbles one, with perhaps no real pay off (certainly my feeling after my recent passage through the hell that has become chicken little American airports).

Leaving that aside, what Rubin observers regarding the poor return on US reconstruction efforts has been obvious for, well two bloody years now, including the time he was associated with the effort. Regardless, I give him credit for stating the obvious, but painfully unacknowledged - that the US reconstruction effort is a self-defeating fiasco of mixed khayali non-sense, negative net benefit security efforts to keep alive heavy reconstruction efforts better suited for a peaceful country than one in the midst of a low-grade civil war. As he notes, pitifully little of the reconstruction budget has been spent - the bureaucracy, the ignorance in regards to the country and what it takes to get things going in an emerging market (I still remain agog at the profiles the CPA-Iraq recruited, young American republican party types right out of bloody college, e.g. the type who worked on the Bourse there, bloody fools).

If there is something, however, to fault the opposition (call it the Democrats, or the Left) for in this context, it is the fact that it wants contradictory things (of course isn't that what Opposition is all about?): effective spending in reconstruction now means tolerating more than a bit of graft on the part of the Iraqis. Keeping a handle on things of course is necessary for credibility, but trying to enforce US standards on an emerging market in the midst of low grade civil war is khayali nonsense and magical thinking of the worst kind.

I agree, then, with the author's underlying analysis (however self-serving and perverse it may or may not be), send the big contractors home, pump the money into Iraqi or Iraqi foreign JVs.

I do note, for transparency sake, that I have no small degree of self interest potentially bound up in this kind of decision, however I would make the case (and as long time readers know, I have in the past) regardless. Contra the dreamers and the fools, there is no blooming Iraqi democracy on the horizon, nor flourishing Iraqi economy around the corner. However, there is the potential to spend reconstruction money somewhat less badly, and have moderately better return on one's efforts. Nothing magical (as the amusing fools at the investors in Iraq website imagine in their bouts of fevered self delusion), but some potential for limiting the down side and even creating an up side.