US Leaving Iraq in Worse Shape Than Saddam

US Leaving Iraq in Worse Shape Than Saddam

By Michael O'Brien
AntiWar.com
September 9, 2010

I spent 14 months as the Real Estate Advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of Defense in Baghdad. My job was to assist the ministry in its efforts to rebuild the infrastructure for its army, air force, and navy: the land and facilities they would need in the future. The need for my services, and those of the other Coalition staff there, was primarily to reverse what Paul Bremer did when he dissolved the Iraqi Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior. This work was being done exclusively by the US military, which was part of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, or MNSTC-I (pronounced "min-sticky").

MNSTC-I was commanded by a US Army 3-star general named Martin Dempsey when I arrived there in July 2006. Under his command was a US Navy captain in the civil engineers. By his own admission, the captain had never run a construction project larger than $12 million dollars in total value. Compared to what he was responsible for in Iraq, this is like a one-car garage next to the Bellagio Resort in Las Vegas. His deputy was a reserve US Army lieutenant colonel whose full time job in the States was teaching high school in Mississippi. The entire operation was run by rank amateurs. Whenever I tried to get the attention of these men, and their replacements after they departed, I was up against a stone wall. You see, they wore uniforms, and
I didn’t.

Continued. . .