Chamblee54

Democracy Now has a chat today with Peter Van Buren. He is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People . It is the story of the bungled reconstruction effort in Iraq. The State department is not pleased.
According to Mr. Van Buren, the efforts to rebuild Iraq, after the shock and awe destruction, have been a big government mess. Conservatives are fond of saying that the government makes a mess of everything it tries to do. These are the same conservatives who supported the war in Iraq. 170k troops, in a country eight time zones away, has always sounded like big government.
“Sitting here in Washington, it is almost hard for me to imagine the things that we spent money on. In our clumsy attempts to buy love, to make friends, to win over the Iraqis, we sponsored pastry making classes is for Iraqi widows, we handed out gifts of sheep and bees in hopes that Iraqis would pick these things up and make a living from them. We spent $2.5 million on a chicken processing plant that never processed any chicken. We give driving lessons to women. We painted murals on the sides of gymnasiums. We handed out bicycles to children that they were supposed to ride on streets that were so pockmarked with shell craters that you could not take a car down them.”
Currently, Vice President Joe Biden is in Iraq. Mr. Van Buren says, among other things, that the visit is a “victory lap”. The money quote: “I would like to propose that no VIP be allowed to go to Iraq, certainly not to announce anything using the words “victory” or “success” until he or she is willing to do that on an announced visit with the airplane landing in the day time. As long as the visits have to be kept secret and the planes have to land at night, I would like to suggest we not use the words “victory,” “success,” “completion” or anything equivalent.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress .