I got a great Oz reference today while listening to NPR. They had on author Rajiv Chandrasekaran talking about his book Imperial Life in the Emerald City. With a title like that, I'm sure the book is riddled with Oz references.
This has nothing to do with my usual reason for keeping this blog, but apparently the book is about some of the terrible mistakes and bad decisions made inside Iraq's Green Zone during the war. Chandrasekaran discussed certain events, for example: when the Iraqi infrastructure was destroyed by the war, instead of American bureaucrats focusing on rebuilding it, getting electricity back on, or water and food to hungry people, or getting Iraqis back to work, they spent their time re-writing the Iraqi TAX CODE line-by-line. Umm, I don't think the people of Iraq are all that concerned about their tax rate when they're starving, thirsty, and huddled in the dark. It sounds like many opportunities to win some support of the Iraqi people were severely mismanaged and lost. Sad.
But this isn't a political blog, because I know next to nothing about politics. The book sounds very interesting, so check it out.
On a lighter note, I got my Oz reference for the day.
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