We Meant Well by Peter Van Buren Read Free Book Online Page A

help support minority businesses such as those owned by Alaskan Natives, the US government offered them an advantage in the otherwise competitive bidding process, a sort of contracting affirmative action, even as they subbed out 100 percent of the work. It seemed like a get-rich-quick Internet scam, but it was legal.
    Like KBR White personnel, the Iraqi Americans had six-figure salaries, free trips home, and sweet benefits. Many of them had not lived in Iraq for years yet we used them as cultural advisers. Some had lived entirely within Iraqi American communities in the States and spoke poor English but served as translators nevertheless. Some were Kurdish and/or Christian, which no doubt impressed the Muslim Arabs we primarily interacted with. The supposed best of the bunch served as BBAs (bilingual and bicultural advisers), each with a specialty topic such as “agriculture” or “women’s issues.” Many were nice folks but knew nothing about agriculture or women’s issues. One BBA who worked with us was named a “women’s program adviser” by sole virtue of her having lady parts; when we moved to another FOB, she became an agricultural adviser because we needed an ag adviser and she was there. No one will ever know how much of our failure in reconstructing Iraq was caused simply by bad translation and subject-matter ignorance, but it would be a decent percentage.

Money and Our Meth Habit
    We lacked a lot of things in Iraq: flush toilets, fresh vegetables, the comfort of family members nearby, and of course adult supervision, strategic guidance, and common sense. Like Guns N’ Roses’ budget for meth after a new hit, the one thing we did not lack was money. There was money everywhere. A soldier recalled unloading pallets of new US hundred-dollar bills, millions of dollars flushing out of the belly of a C-130 cargo aircraft to be picked up off the runway by forklifts (operated by soldiers who would make less in their lifetimes than what was on their skids at that moment). You couldn’t walk around a corner without stumbling over bales of money; the place was lousy with it. In my twenty-three years working for the State Department, we never had enough money. We were always being told to “do more with less,” as if slogans were cash. Now there was literally more money than we could spend. It was weird. We’d be watching the news from home about foreclosures, and I’d be reading e-mails from my sister about school cutbacks, while signing off on tens of thousands of dollars for stuff in Iraq. At one point we were tasked to give out microgrants, $5,000 in actual cash handed to an Iraqi to “open a business,” no strings attached. If he took the money and in front of us spent it on dope and pinball, it was no matter. We wondered among ourselves whether we shouldn’t be running a PRT in Detroit or New Orleans instead of Baghdad.
    In addition to the $63 billion Congress had handed us for Iraq’s reconstruction, we also had some $91 billion of captured Iraqi funds (that were mostly misplaced by the Coalition Provisional Authority), plus another $18 billion donated by countries such as Japan and South Korea. In 2009, we had another $387 million for aid to internal refugees that paid for many reconstruction-like projects. If that was not enough, over a billion additional US dollars were spent on operating costs for the Provincial Reconstruction Teams. By comparison, the reconstruction of Germany and Japan cost, in 2010 dollars, only $32 billion and $17 billion, respectively. 7
    While a lot of the money was spent in big bites at high levels through the Embassy, or possibly just thrown into the river when no one could find a match to set it on fire, at the local level money was spent via two programs: CERP and QRF. CERP was Army money, the Commander’s Emergency Response Program. Though originally provided to address emergency humanitarian needs and