We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People (American Empire Project)

One diplomats darkly humorous and ultimately scathing assault on just about everything the military and State Department have doneor tried to dosince the invasion of Iraq. The title says it all.The New York TimesA work of scathing, gallows humor (The Boston Globe), We Meant Well is a tragicomic voyage of ineptitude and corruption that leaves its writerand readersappalled and disillusioned, but wiser.Charged with rebuilding Iraq, would you spend taxpayer money on a sports mural in Baghdads most dangerous neighborhood to promote reconciliation through art? How about an isolated milk factory that cannot get its milk to market? Or a pastry class training women to open cafs on bombedout streets that lack water and electricity?As Peter Van Buren shows, we bought all these projects and more in the most expensive heartsandminds campaign since the Marshall Plan. We Meant Well is his eyewitness account of the civilian side of the surgethat surreal and bollixed attempt to defeat terrorism and win over Iraqis by reconstructing the world we had just destroyed. Leading a State Department Provincial Reconstruction Team on its quixotic mission, Van Buren details, with laserlike irony, his yearlong encounter with pointless projects, bureaucratic fumbling, overwhelmed soldiers, and oblivious administrators secluded in the worlds largest embassy, who fail to realize that you cant rebuild a country without first picking up the trash.