"Mission Unaccomplished, Madness of King George, Potemkin Chicken Factories"

[KoKo]

(It's a good read...and the snips I could give don't do the preview of the book justice. But, for those interested here's a snip & link)

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Mission Unaccomplished

Why the Invasion of Iraq Was the Single Worst Foreign Policy Decision in American History
By Peter Van Buren

I was there. And “there” was nowhere. And nowhere was the place to be if you wanted to see the signs of end times for the American Empire up close. It was the place to be if you wanted to see the madness — and oh yes, it was madness — not filtered through a complacent and sleepy media that made Washington’s war policy seem, if not sensible, at least sane and serious enough. I stood at Ground Zero of what was intended to be the new centerpiece for a Pax Americana in the Greater Middle East.

-snip-


The Madness of King George

It’s easy to forget just how normal the madness looked back then. By 2009, when I arrived in Iraq, we were already at the last-gasp moment when it came to salvaging something from what may yet be seen as the single worst foreign policy decision in American history. It was then that, as a State Department officer assigned to lead two provincial reconstruction teams in eastern Iraq, I first walked into the chicken processing plant in the middle of nowhere.

By then, the U.S. “reconstruction” plan for that country was drowning in rivers of money foolishly spent. As the centerpiece for those American efforts — at least after Plan A, that our invading troops would be greeted with flowers and sweets as liberators, crashed and burned — we had managed to reconstruct nothing of significance. First conceived as a Marshall Plan for the New American Century, six long years later it had devolved into farce.

In my act of the play, the U.S. spent some $2.2 million dollars to build a huge facility in the boondocks. Ignoring the stark reality that Iraqis had raised and sold chickens locally for some 2,000 years, the U.S. decided to finance the construction of a central processing facility, have the Iraqis running the plant purchase local chickens, pluck them and slice them up with complex machinery brought in from Chicago, package the breasts and wings in plastic wrap, and then truck it all to local grocery stores. Perhaps it was the desert heat, but this made sense at the time, and the plan was supported by the Army, the State Department, and the White House.

MORE RE the "IRAQ POTEMKIN CHICKEN FACTORY" at:

http://my.firedoglake.com/tomengelhardt/2013/03/07/peter-van-buren-one-day-even-the-drones-will-have-to-land/

[KoKo]

1. I'm amazed how little interest in "Potemkin Chicken Factories" on

our TAX DOLLARS and the REST in BILLIONS wasted in Iraq!

This is BUSH Stuff...but, no one here seems even vaguely interested.

I don't see how this reflects badly on Obama that folks would ignore. Instead it's BUSH's WATCH that this RAPE of TAXPAYERS took place. But, Dems don't seem to care.

Why is that? If you know please PM me if you feel it's "disloyal" to post a reply here.

It's puzzling to me how we are faced with AUSTERITY for BUSH/CHENEY/RUMSFELD/PNAC WARS...that broke us...and any reports bringing out new information are just ignored.