Desert swarm.

• Position: Letters - Letter to the Editor

"Who's Who in Baghdad" (by Joshua Micah Marshall, Laura Rozen, and Colin Soloway, December) is a most overheated and conspiratorial tract, but I feel it useful to offer a few rather inconvenient counter facts. There is no credible case to be made that the Coalition Provisional Authority has a partisan element. Among the senior CPA officials since its conception one could find Mr. Walt Slocombe, a senior Clinton administration Pentagon official, retired Rear Adm. David Oliveh also a political appointee in the Clinton administration, numerous career and retired U.S. ambassadors who have served other presidents of both parties, and no small number of retired military and general flag officers of equally non-partisan stature. The CPA is represented by hundreds of dedicated Americans and citizens from many other coalition nations, working hard to help secure the blessings of liberty for 23 million Iraqis.

Lawrence Di Rita

Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for

Public Affairs

I have no knowledge to quarrel with your...