50books_poc | 2.21 - Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone (2006)

2.21 - Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone (2006)

This book lurches from horrifying to darkly funny to horrifying again. According to this book (and I find it quite plausible) every single member of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq was an ideologically driven, grossly incompetent moron.

Horrifying: they had no plan, actually, literally, no plan for how to do the reconstruction of Iraq. They had a plan for the invasion but not for what to do afterwards.

Horribly funny: a group of six recent college graduates were put in charge of distributing literally millions of dollars.

Horrifying: the moron in charge of reforming the Health sector was obsessed with installing an American-style free market health system (like that works so well!) so he spent all his energies on editing the list of drugs they could buy rather than ensuring the looted and bombed hospitals had, say, any drugs at all or electricity.

It's a really, really good read and gives you great insight into how Iraq came to be so totally stuffed up during the occupation. He goes through all the things you need for a functioning society - employment, security, electricity, a health system, an education system, and examines the squandered opportunities that lead to the disaster that is now Iraq.