David J. Williams

Alright! Hard Lessons:  The Iraqi Reconstruction Experience is now available online, with the inspector general himself, Stewart Bowen, testifying pretty much as I write this. The big conclusion, of course, is that enormous amounts were wasted in Iraqi reconstruction, and—hold on to your hats—can’t be accounted for.  But is “wasted” really the right word? After all, the $ went to line the pockets of the very folks it was supposed to all along:  the same contractors who ended up making (and continue to make) millions of dollars a day for every day we stay in Iraq. Perhaps that’s the grease necessary to make the wheels of empire turn, but all that dough would have been a lot better spent on the Iraqis themselves. Which was, of course, the central missed opportunity back in 2003.  Repeat after me:  Rule #1 in taking over a third world country is . . . Get Everybody On the Payroll. As opposed to say, dismissing them from duty and letting them keep their guns.

My novel, Mirrored Heavens, is available in mass-market on Amazon.

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