Money for Nothing

"When the final page is written on America’s catastrophic imperial venture, one word will dominate the explanation of U.S. failure—corruption. Large-scale and pervasive corruption meant that available resources could not be used to stabilize and secure Iraq in the early days of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), when it was still possible to do so. Continuing corruption meant that the reconstruction of infrastructure never got underway, giving the Iraqi people little incentive to co-operate with the occupation. Ongoing corruption in arms procurement and defense spending means that Baghdad will never control a viable army while the Shi’ite and Kurdish militias will grow stronger and produce a divided Iraq in which constitutional guarantees will be irrelevant."
-- Philip Giraldi, former CIA Officer, currently an international security consultant, writing in the American Conservative. Full article.

Don't you love it when Bush & Co. get a "left" hook from their fellow travellers? Never thought I'd be plugging Pat Buchanan's magazine in my blog.