I’ve been reading Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone, which is a stroll down a Memory Lane full of sadness and nightmare. Who could forget, no matter how hard he tries, L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer III?

The name alone should have told us what we were in for. Never trust a man who, like Bremer and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, parts his name on the left. And if that weren’t enough, “Jerry’s” immediately preceding job was as Henry Kissinger’s top aide. Nature offers no more loathsome employment than that of top toady to the type specimen of the toady, old “Hank” Kissinger.

For anyone who gives a damn, Bremer’s name deconstructs as follows: The L. stands for Lewis, the III stands for pretension, and the “Jerry” is a control freak’s attempt to pass as just a regular guy. The silly combat boots he affected on arriving in Baghdad were as sad and absurd as the cowboy boots Bush wears to make people forget not only that he’s from Connecticut but that he’s afraid of horses besides.

These things seem small. They are not. They are what a poker player calls “tells,” little behavioral tics that betray the strength or weakness of a man’s hand. No man of solid character runs away from his own name or goes to work for a Kissinger or dresses up in combat boots or flight suits, pretending to be a thing that he is not.