"Shocking Mis-Steps" ???

Well, the MSM has a new talk-show guest who'll make the rounds (and a few bucks, too.)

In a rueful reflection on what might have been, an Iraqi government insider details in 500 pages the U.S. occupation's "shocking" mismanagement of his country — a performance so bad, he writes, that by 2007 Iraqis had "turned their backs on their would-be liberators."

"The corroded and corrupt state of Saddam was replaced by the corroded, inefficient, incompetent and corrupt state of the new order," Ali A. Allawi concludes in "The Occupation of Iraq," newly published by Yale University Press.

Allawi writes with authority as a member of that "new order," having served as Iraq's trade, defense and finance minister at various times since 2003. As a former academic, at Oxford University before the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, he also writes with unusual detachment.

Detachment?

Although Allawi, a cousin of Ayad Allawi, Iraq's prime minister in 2004, is a member of a secularist Shiite Muslim political grouping, his well-researched book betrays little partisanship.

Mnnnh...

It's clear that the Bush Boyzzz were not well-prepared for the eventualities in Iraq; on the other hand, I think we're still waiting for the Iraqis to send $200 billion or so in fees and expenses for the toppling of Saddam, the restoration of electric service, rebuilding of schools, and training of their army--not to mention the value of time the voluntary US Armed Forces spent over there.

This ungrateful asshole can go back and remain in Iraq. Perhaps he can even join the Iraqi Army and put things right.