I just finished reading this book by Rajiv Chandrakeraran. It was pretty scary. It's about the Coalition Provisional Authority that administered Iraq during the first year of the occupation. It's a pretty damning portrait. The depth of the cronyism and isolation that went on in the Green Zone was absolutely spectacular. The number one criterion for a job administering Iraq: partisan loyalty to the Bush administration. Don't speak Arabic? Never been to Iraq? Have no experience in post war reconstruction or conflict resolution? No problem, as long as you have the correct opinion on Roe v. Wade and have had an internship at a conservative think tank.
The horrors are too many to count: Groups of three people assigned to do the work of thousands. A massive dearth of Arabic speakers. People promulgating flat taxes and free trade and other conservative economic agenda items while basics like electricity and security go neglected. And the complete lack of understanding of the sheer scale of the problem at the top.
Snarking The Odyssey (with AD&D)
WARNING: Those of you who are accustomed to pithy political remarks here on Internal Monologue should brace yourselves for a major dose of gaming geekitude. Here's a link to one "Jamie R." who does a very snarky close reading of Homer's The Odyssey (HT: Mad Latinist via email). I've only read book 1, but it's pretty funny so far. An excerpt: Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men… Sooooo, he’s in charge, and everybody dies. Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero and his colossal failure. What? … for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever rea
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