Book World Live

At its heart, Blood Money is the tale of how Washington left a country desperately in need of rebuilding to the whims of money-hungry private contractors, and of how the lack of clear lines of authority doomed efficiency, effectiveness and accountability from the start. (Review: The Spoils of War , Post, Sept. 3).

T. Christian Miller, author of "Blood Money," will be online to field questions and comments about his book and the U.S.-led reconstruction effort in Iraq.

T. Christian Miller is an investigative reporter who writes for the Los Angeles Times' Washington bureau.

Join Book World Live each Tuesday at 3 p.m. ET for a discussion based on a story or review in each Sunday's Book World section.

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T. Christian Miller: Hi all. I'm "Tee" Miller, an investigative reporter with the LA Times, and the author of Blood Money. It's a book that looks at the failures of the reconstruction of Iraq. I've been to Iraq four times and have had a chance to see first hand what's been happening. So far, a lot of money has been spent, and few of the goals of the rebuilding have been accomplished.

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Lyme, Conn: Are our reconstruction efforts what the Iraqi people want, or are they what we want them to have? Do we guide our construction efforts towards what we can build and should we spend more time figuring out what types of needs, building design, open spaces, parks, etc. that the Iraqi public might prefer? When I read about a country that needs schools, electricity, and infrastructure, I wonder to what degree our construction is needing their most urgent needs, and whether we are mostly building bricks and mortar that only becomes and open invitation for terrorists to destroy?

T. Christian Miller: All very good questions.

First, Iraqis have had only limited participation in the rebuilding, especially in the days after the invasion. Iraqis frequently complain that they have had no input, and don't know what's going on.

Second, most international development specialists that I have talked to said that the Pentagon's reconstruction philosophy was simply wrong. Building large infrastructure projects in 2nd and 3rd world countries usually results in lots of white elephants. The Iraqis needed basic, simple improvements that delivered immediate results, rather than what we gave them.

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Harrisburg, Pa.: Who is overseeing what is being spent in Iraq and how it is being spent, and what does it appear that the audits only find outrageous expenditures long after they have been made?

T. Christian Miller: Stuart Bowen was appointed by the Pentagon to be the Special Inspector General for the Reconstruction of Iraq. It's Bowen's job to oversee spending for the rebuilding project, now worth about $30 billion.

Your point on the timelag with the audits is well made. Bowen has frequently said that he wants to be a "real time" auditor. During interviews, he has told me that he has tried to speed up the process, and frequently communicates his findings as soon as he finds them. I tell in my book how he's won over many of his critics by his willingness to criticize waste and abuse in Iraq.

T. Christian Miller: Stuart Bowen was appointed by the Pentagon to be the Special Inspector General for the Reconstruction of Iraq. It's Bowen's job to oversee spending for the rebuilding project, now worth about $30 billion.

Your point on the timelag with the audits is well made. Bowen has frequently said that he wants to be a "real time" auditor. During interviews, he has told me that he has tried to speed up the process, and frequently communicates his findings as soon as he finds them. I tell in my book how he's won over many of his critics by his willingness to criticize waste and abuse in Iraq.

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Fallbrook, Calif: Your book gets to the core of what I believe to be the core of this country's ills: lack of accountability coupled with the almost pathological, self-aggrandizing interests of most individuals in our modern government. Even more troubling is the lack of interest on the part of citizens to learn about many of the transgressions, a sense of "What can ya do?". When you researched and wrote this book, did you come to any conclusions about how the "powers that be" viewed the old-fashioned stricture of "in the public interest". Did most of the transgressors believe that the risk/reward ratio was too attractive to pass up, because they knew that even if they were caught, any judgment against their actions would be light? Thank you for your thoughts and writing.

T. Christian Miller: A thoughtful question. My sense is that the Pentagon chose to outsource the reconstruction for many reasons: economic, political, military. There was no standing government agency at the time the war began that was capable of doing the work. So it was contracted out. Certainly, one of those benefits was that the government was less directly responsible for the work--and thus, less directly accountable.

You have seen the results, I think, in the relative lack of interest by Congress in holding anybody accountable for the problems in the reconstruction. It's a largely invisible issue by design.

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Washington, DC: Mr. Miller,

I must confess to having not yet read your book, but I have been reading up on the role of the CPA under Bremer and the only words that come to mind are "monumental incompetence". Even a sympathetic book (Babylon By Bus) does much to reveal how misguided and ill-managed the whole enterprise was.

Considering how badly the American people were fleeced, what do you think the chances are that there will be some sort of reckoning? I hate to say this, but I honestly think that those who profitted from this will die peacefully in their sleep having lived long and comfortable lives (many having received the Presidential Medal of Honor).

T. Christian Miller: Your question goes to the heart of the book. Who is accountable? So far, Congress has shown almost no interest in answering that questions. Democrats such as Rep. Henry Waxman and Sen. Frank Lautenberg have tried to hold hearings, but the Republicans have so far blocked most attempts. Most importantly, the Republicans have stymied any efforts at a Truman Commission--a body specifically tasked to root out waste, fraud and abuse by war profiteers.

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Oklahoma City, Okla.: It's one thing to criticize and find out problems with regards to money being wasted/stolen but it's a totally different animal is stemming/stopping the problem. Where is the accountability or prosecution of the vast amounts of wasted treasure?

T. Christian Miller: The government's efforts to prosecute anybody for any wrongdoing in Iraq have had little result. To my knowledge, there has been a single federal prosecution that has produced guilty pleas by a contractor. While that was a case of outrageous conduct (Breitling watches and SUVs traded for contracts), it was relatively small in terms of the money involved (some 10 million).

So far, most of the corruption, the waste, the fraud, has gone completely unpunished.

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Arlington, Va.: What do you think of Tom Ricks's book, Fiasco?

T. Christian Miller: Fiasco is an excellent book. I like to think that Blood Money is its complement. It's the untold story of Iraq: the contracting and money that the Bush administration relied upon to cover up the true cost of the war.

For instance, few people realize that almost 500 contractors have now died in Iraq. If they were added to the total number of soldiers killed, the death toll would be well over 3,000

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Arlington, Va.: What does the Pentagon's use of contractors on this scale mean for the long-term status of civilian-military relations in our democracy?

T. Christian Miller: To me, the outsourcing has gone overboard, and the reconstruction of Iraq is proof.

Rebuilding Iraq was a central U.S. goal. We handed over most of the actual work to private contractors. A private company has different goals than the U.S. government. They want to make money, the U.S. wants to achieve a policy aim.

My favorite example is this: Parsons, a contractor in Iraq, was given the job of cleaning up a site to make way for a trash dump. Parsons brought in two bulldozers to do the work in a matter of days. The government had to fight them to use Iraqi labor instead. For Parsons, it was about making a higher profit. For the U.S., it was about putting as many Iraqis to work for as long as possible.

Different ends, different means. U.S. goals get lost in the middle.

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New Jersey: Thanks for your participation today. I don't know if you had a chance to read the massive NY Times front page article on Afghanistan today, but it shows the same disastrous Bush administration policies failing in Afghanistan.

I'm curious as to your analysis of the mindset of top Bush officials - as in, what ARE they thinking as private contractors grossly overrun budgets w/out accountability, as funds are pocketed by corrupt local officials, as projects come to a complete halt. (Does anyone high up ever see a list of projects that simply stop?)

Please, please tell me what top Bush administration officals are telling themselves about what is going on. I can't make any sense out of it.

T. Christian Miller: The Bush administration maintains that the reconstruction is working. They point to thousands of repainted schools, more electricity, clean water plants. Bowen, the Inspector General, has said that perhaps 70% of reconstruction projects have gone as planned.

Of course, one only need step back and look at Iraq to wonder about those answers. Why do Iraqis still have less than 12 hours of power per day? Would worldwide oil prices be so high if Iraq was pumping out the 3.5 million barrels per day that the administration once hoped for?

I see the reconstruction statistics kind of like a body count. They are comforting numbers, providing the appearance of success without actually measuring it.

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Oakland, Calif.: what is life like as a journalist/reporter in Iraq, tracking down these stories?

T. Christian Miller: Before Iraq, I worked in Colombia, long ranked as one of the most dangerous places to be a journalist. I had covered a couple of wars. But when I got to Baghdad, I realized that Iraq was a whole different world.

It struck me as the most dangerous place on Earth to be a reporter. I called it the place of near misses. You were always in a place that had just been bombed, was in the process of some kind of action, or would be bombed a few days after you left.

The reporters who work in Iraq--Americans, Iraqis and others--are the bravest people in journalism. They're doing amazing work. Anybody who thinks different isn't paying attention.

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