A round-about trail started by Instapundit lead me to this insightful critique of the CPA's handling of the "business side" (as apposed to the military side) of the occupation in Iraq:

It was Bremer, his deputy Clay McManaway, and Crocker — not the Pentagon — who cast aside the "Transition to Democracy" report. The Future of Iraq program report states, for example, that "abuse of power by one regime after another since 1958 has resulted in the practice of 'legislation through decree', the tendency to subvert constitutionalism by way of a flurry of proclamations, decrees and laws which ultimately serve the purpose of strengthening autocratic politics." This is exactly what Bremer began to do, as the decrees listed on the CPA website demonstrate.

This is the kind of report we need to see. Some of it can (will) be chalked up to partisan turf battles, but such a detailed critique is difficult to discount completely. It is also the second or third report I've seen in the past six months roundly criticising the monument to bureaucratic bungling the Green Zone seems to have become.

One of the root causes of failure in Vietnam was the inability of US organizations in that country to react to changing circumstances and failed policies. Stragetic hamlets, free fire zones, "Vietamization", and dozens of other concepts and programs were tried and failed, but instead of learning from those failures and moving on they were renamed and tried again and again, with tragic, even deadly, results.

Debacles such as the recent prison scandal are important in that they expose destructive policies and incompetent leaders to public scrutiny. But the inability of various government agencies to free themselves of turf wars and pissing contests to get the job of reconstruction done is every bit as big a story. I find it disheartening, albeit not surprising, that the press does not give equal time to both.