We Meant Well by Peter Van Buren

Peter Van Buren is an experienced State Department foreign service officer. We Meant Well recounts his adventures during his tenure in Iraq.

Van Buren has a wry sense of humor so some of his anecdotes will make you laugh. But others will leave you dumbfounded--particularly those involving the boatloads of money the U.S. government threw at programs to rebuild Iraq that were clearly doomed to failure (such as experiments in beekeeping). (It was interesting to see which programs did work--such as a small 4-H club set up for Iraqi children.)

Some of the passages will be indelibly imprinted in your mind. The one that comes to my mind was the chapter describing a medical training course involving pigs, designed to teach soldiers how to immediately respond to life-threatening battlefield injuries.

You may think you understand the Iraq War but We Meant Well is a fascinating look at the war from a totally different perspective.

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