Afghan $4 Million Road to Nowhere
In We Meant Well I chronicle an almost endless list of reconstruction projects that failed, either due to corruption, stupidity or both. In Iraq we spent millions to pave roads from nowhere to nowhere...
View ArticleCorruption Consuming Up to 30% of Afghan Reconstruction Money!
Yea Juggalos, we’re winning again in America’s Never-Ending-Gob-Smacker-Sucker of a war, the Afghan-Taliban-Pakistan Warapalooza! For those who have been in a coma or tied up Occupying somewhere, we...
View ArticleFrom the PRT Diaspora: Nation-Building in One Sentence
From a development professional looking at State’s work in the reconstruction of Iraq: To do it right takes some time and expertise. Blow in, blow off and blow out doesn’t work. That about sums it up....
View ArticleHappy Ninth Anniversary Iraq Invasion!
(This article originally appeared on Huffington Post) Just like with my own wedding anniversary, I’m a few days late recognizing the ninth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War, but sincere in...
View ArticleIraqi PM Maliki Sucks Iranian: This is Important
Here’s a story worth repeating in its whole, as it will be one of those articles you wish you had read a few years from now when everyone is wondering how Iraq ended up a vassal state of Iran. Note the...
View ArticleImperial Reconstruction and Its Discontents
If you missed my recent article “How Not to Reconstruct Iraq, Afghanistan — or America A Guide to Disaster at Home and Abroad,” it is available at the following sites, below. Please note that despite...
View ArticleSerious Questions about a Haiti Reconstruction Puff Piece
The default media plan at State is to follow anything negative in the press with a planted puff piece. Rather than tackle the facts in a negative story (seeking to refute them with other information,...
View ArticleHow Not to Reconstruct Iraq, Afghanistan — or America
This article was originally published on TomDispatch.com and Huffington Post on August 16, 2012 Some images remain like scars on my memory. One of the last things I saw in Iraq, where I spent a year...
View ArticleUS to Focus $358 Million on Infrastructure: Not in US
The US is gearing up to drop $300 million of our taxpayer dollars on rebuilding infrastructure, in Palestine. Here is what the US plans for the Palestinians. Can anyone find a town in America which...
View ArticleWant to See a USG Plan for Infrastructure Development? (Not in the US)
One of the issues in the current presidential election is the role of government in creating infrastructure as a path to economic prosperity and job creation. One side argues it requires government to...
View ArticleTold You So: WaPo Puff Piece on Haiti Reconstruction Deflated by Truth
The default media plan at State is to follow anything negative in the press with a planted puff piece. Rather than tackle the facts in a negative story (seeking to refute them with other information,...
View ArticleJust Say No: Syrian Rebel Leader Calls for “Marshall Plan”
Whoever the hell is now a “leader” among the thugs and al Qaeda wanna-be’s in Syria has stated that once his guys kill off most of the other guys and thus free Syria, he wants the west to drop a load...
View ArticleUm, I Told You So: Inspector Shows State Dept Mishandled Iraq Money
So, I, um, like, told you so. And even though I lost my job for telling you so, and even though a related Inspector General opened an investigation into me for telling you so, it’s still nice to learn...
View ArticleWhy Being So Right Feels So Bad
Gentle readers, allow me a moment of angry self-congratulation. I’ll be back to normal with the next posting. This article originally appeared on Foreign Policy. I was right. When they print the next...
View ArticleWar in Afghanistan Won (by Cherry Berry Yogurt and Ace Hardware)
While naysayers belittle a U.S. government unable to even pay itself to not work, other dedicated federal employees are out there winning the war in Afghanistan. Now thirteen years after the conflict...
View ArticleRay Odierno: Living in the Third Person about Iraq
General Ray Odierno lives in the third person regarding Iraq. “Mistakes were made” for sure, but not by him, even when he was in charge. Somehow the mistakes happened temporally on his watch, but by...
View ArticleShooting Ourselves in the Foot in Afghanistan
Did you know the U.S. war in Afghanistan is still going on? While the American war(s) in Iraq and Syria are the Kardashian’s of geopolitics– can’t get them out of the news, don’t want to look but you...
View ArticleYour Most Gigantic Waste of Taxpayer Money Today List, Afghan Edition
Our good friends at the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) released a high-risk list for the Afghanistan reconstruction effort that calls attention to areas that are especially...
View ArticleU.S. Says Details of Aid to Afghan Army Now a Secret, from Americans at Least
The U.S. military decided it will no longer release facts and figures about America’s costly effort to assist Afghan security forces. (As this goes online, the military has announced, having been...
View ArticleState Department Gives 87% of Afghan Funds to Only Five Recipients
The Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) issued a scathing report showing the Department of State gave a staggering 87 percent of all Afghan reconstruction funds to only five...
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