It is a pity that books such as Blood Money have to be written. However, as long as such national hubris exists to prompt the current level of almost unimaginable mismanagement that is prevalent in Iraq today, then it as well that such misdeeds are put under the harshest, most thorough possible, public scrutiny. Any reader of this book should also be grateful that it is written by as competent and thorough an investigative journalist as Christian Miller, a Los Angeles Times staffer.
If there is one thing that makes this story of post-war reconstruction even less palatable, it is that the profiteering has gone from top to bottom, among US and other foreign contractors, as well as Iraqis who now make up the country's government. Not every foreign contractor present in Iraq is guilty of these abuses. There are more than a few good people who were called upon to provide a legitimate service in the reconstruction effort. This point is worth making forcefully, not as a wrongheaded exercise in moral equivalence but rather to highlight to the maximum extent the disgraceful behaviour of the guilty.
Ironically, one of the difficulties for anyone serious about challenging the mischief perpetuated by foreign companies in Iraq is the sheer volume of available evidence. Newspaper stories about the misdeeds of Halliburton, Blackwater, Custer Battles, Zapata Engineering, and the like, are legion. Leaving one staggering under their weight or blinded to the other side of the story, that there are many sincere and professional people who have gone to Iraq for good reasons. It is here that Miller does his greatest service, in the overwhelming thoroughness of the evidence of mismanagement he has gathered and providing a balanced consideration of this.
Anyone with a genuine interest in the facts of just how incompetently mismanaged Iraq has been must read this book.