Cha-Ching

Reading this Needlenose post about how our occupation of Iraq has gone wrong reminds me of a conversation I had with Richard Walton. Walton is an author (the first author on the left to criticize the Kennedy administration, I believe), respected political elder in Rhode Island whose op-ed pieces get published in the Providence Journal, member of the Green Party, and former vice presidential nominee for the Citizens Party back in 1984. In 2000 when I was still a Green, I was able to have a beer with Walton, and despite being mostly sober, I couldn't pass that up.

He had just returned from a trip to Baghdad with other activists. I don't remember specifics about our discussion, but one thing that sticks out was his comment about how many American business people were in Iraq. He defined them as "vultures," there to network, make connections, and trying to cash in when the next war inevitably came to Iraq.

I keep that in mind while reading this quoted portion of Needlenose's post:

...we forgot that when an economy is bleeding, the first priority is to pump in money. Instead, we created a monstrous bureaucracy, with hundreds of contract officers and a "wedding cake" hierarchy of contract layers that drips dollars slowly and excludes most Iraqi companies from participating at senior levels.