MEGAN: You know, I think if She wanted my mood to be better, it would not be raining again today.

MOE: They're not calling it the Great Depression for nothing! Unless it's some April Fools joke.
Ha ha ha, the number of Americans using food stamps for essential groceries is the highest since food stamps were introduced! Yes really!

MEGAN: One in eight residents in Michigan is on food stamps.
They're blaming part of it on the rise in gas prices making shipping more expensive. Good thing we have an adequate rail transport syst... Oh, shit. Sorry. No, we're fucked.

MOE: hahaha here's a funny joke the Washington Post website and/or all its readers are playing on us. The Most viewed thing now is called Yes, It Was A Good War. Ooooh oooh click!

MEGAN: Yeah, that article totally made me happier.

There were pacifists around before WWI, asshole.

MOE: Oh wait no better, Memeorandum is telling me the most important news meme happening right now is Obama bowling. I think people just love the word "dainty."

MEGAN: Joe Scarborough, I am not a dainty person or a dainty bowler. I just SUCK. I hereby challenge you to a bowling tournament. I will bowl drunk and without the benefit of either my contacts or glasses because, apparently, not seeing the pins makes me a better bowler. And then when I smack you in the face with the ball, you won't be talking about dainty no more.
Also, please, with that hair? Joe Scarborough doesn't bowl.

MOE: Oh this is a cool April Fools Day storyabout all the cool badges with crazy slogans that are the only things we know about the Pentagon's $32 billion in triple classified deep secret appropriations. I mean, I think it is a true story but there is really no information and instead of leaving me with a sense of "Wow, our Defense Department is doing destructive things with our tax dollars and no oversight" it left me with a sense of "Dog Latin? That is a language? I knew pig latin but what is dog latin?"

One patch shows a space alien with huge eyes holding a stealth bomber near its mouth. "To Serve Man" reads the text above, a reference to a classic "Twilight Zone" episode in which man is the entree, not the customer. "Gustatus Similis Pullus" reads the caption below, dog Latin for "Tastes Like Chicken."

Also, this just in over the transom! "Deborah" Gibson is going to be playing at Harrah's Atlantic City for an unprecedented three week performance from May 4-24.

MEGAN: OH MY GOD.
Please tell me that's not a joke
Please.
Also, I hate Atlantic City but I might have to find some slouch socks and puffy paint and Keds and head on up there.

MOE: I love Atlantic City. Atlantic City is just America writ very small. No economy besides gambling and whores! Middle class standing around waiting to die! Overleveraged! Crumbling infrastructure! Abject poverty! Gradually being invaded by Chinese! Bottle service! Trump! And some of the greatest italian food I have ever had. I love AC, I have to say. The future of our nation, you can find it there. I bet Ashley Alexandra Dupre had some good underage times there.

MEGAN: Actually, you've just listed almost everything I hate about AC, but you missed the part where the "outlets" suck.

MOE: Oh yes OUTLETS THAT ARE NOT REALLY OUTLETS. A.C. is where "brands" go to die at the hands of tourists who are too dumb to go to real outlets... A.C. is like the Paula Abdul of all latitude/longitude combinations. Or something

MEGAN: Ok, but you and I are so getting Debbie Gibson tickets and meeting there, I'm just saying.
I'll find colorful scrunchies!

MOE: The Pentagon is over budget on only about 95 weapons systems. Um, also...speaking of...the Mike and Juliet show just showed an old clip of Paula Abdul and um Mike said something really funny.

MEGAN: Ok, I suppose we should, at some point, quit talking about the music of our tween years or something. Did you see the editorial on Obama by Alice Walker? It's a little hippie-dippy for my taste, but she did tell me that the whole "we are the change we have been waiting for line" that was totally mocked a couple month ago was a deliberate reference to an African-American poet and a modern spiritual. Whoops. Guess that's why the news networks might need a leetle more diversity in their commentators.

MOE: Wow, $1.6 trillion is the total budget of the weapons systems. That is a lot of money. Like the size of the russian economy but plus 60% or also the amount that banks are expected to writeoff plus 60%. Oh look it's the IO Digital cable commercial!

MEGAN: Dude, the commercial that needs to stop airing RIGHT NOW are those creepy AT&T mobile broadband commercials with the fake British guy finding the internet. They freak me out.

MOE: Wait, is this a joke? Stock futures are looking up! Because the "worst is over"? Because it's all priced in?

MEGAN: Because once us poor people are out of the system the institutional investors and hedge fund guys can have their say without being worried about lawsuits?

MOE: So this Alfonso Jackon stuff: what's the word? Are we going to get a fun scandal with whores outta this guy?
Not that scandals with whores are really that fun anymore.

MEGAN: Sadly, no whores except the political ones I think. Donors, favors, friends, incompetence. You know, standard issue Bushie stuff.

MOE: The bar, it has been raised SO HIGH this year.

MEGAN: It has, you're right. I mean, I guess hooray for Spitzer for being the scandal champ? I mean, do you think we can have a national conversation about expecting Puritan functionaries from our politicians?
Because I just feel like if we all had a healthier attitude about sex, and the "need" to be married, especially if you're a politician, maybe this shit wouldn't happen? Or else I've had just enough coffee to be utopian and not enough to get back to cranky. Or I'm just sorta depressed and thus want to pretend like the world that isn't my life could be better than it is.

MOE: Between the one trillion in bank writedowns and the $1.6 trillion weapons budget and the $9 trillion national debt there sure are a lot of people we owe money to! Thank goodness we have all those weapons, you know?

MEGAN: Oooh, is that the new way to pay your credit card bill? Because that would be kind of awesome. No, see, AmEx, I have bigger guns so I really think we're going to renegotiate these terms, thanks.

MOE: The second amendment is totes underrated.

MEGAN: Not anymore! The Supremes are about to throw out DC's gun ban on
its basis. Hooray for strict constitutionalism except when it comes to guns.

MOE: Dude the IO digital cable commercial is on AGAIN. "$29.95, don't forget to sign the label." Okay now I have to write the introduction to this stupid post that no one besides SinisterRouge can follow. (In that vein, I totally drank sangria with SinisterRouge last night! I never drink drinks like sangria but she is very convincing. As anyone who is still reading at this point which is to say no one because they have all boycotted Crappy Hour knows well, or not well enough.)

MOE: ah tere you are
  you can tell by my typing that I am extraordinarily hungover
But you will tell even moreso from my thought process
 
MEGAN: I am a little hung over myself, and dying for a Diet Coke. But it's pouring rain here.

MOE: OH my god the "Video Professor" himself is on Fox and Friends.
 
MEGAN: Nuh-uh! Switching now!
  
Wow, he's orange.

MOE: He's giving away a FREE BASKET of HIS INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEOS
Um and then they cut to a big segment on who got kicked off American Idol
Never suggest that Fox only has time for its right wing ideological agenda.
 
MEGAN: Does Elton think AI is still racist?
Okay, NO WAY is Donald's hair not thinning. Also, this is pretty much why I watch CNN even though they replaced my Soledad.

MOE: Yeah I would watch MSNBC probably because it's the Fox News of Trotskyists but ...I still can't figure out why they're both muted on my cable box. I think I should probably call time warner. But who wants to do that?

MEGAN: Oh, God, and be on hold forever? But at least it's not Comcast. Neener neener, Comcast, I got FiOS
Oh, God, that asshole that asked Chelsea about Monica is going to be on CNN. Does he not realize that everyone thinks he's a complete douchebag?

MOE: Okay so, some stories. Hillary wants grandkids. But why should we trust you, lying pimp puppet Chelsea? How do we know she didn't actually say, "I want a grandcat so in the middle of the night I can slaughter it??"
  Also, I don't care that that guy asked Chelsea that question.
  I mean, the way it was phrased was annoyingly Fox News.
  But fuck, she is an adult  
He looks like an ass.

MEGAN: OMG, totally. I just think it's a douche move to ask a girl about her father's affair. He is an ass.
 
MOE: Meh.
 I mean, I guess.

MEGAN: Ha, he's saying other dudes from his communications class wanted to know the answer. Because they're dudes.
 
MOE: The chance it would get answered by someone like Chelsea are so slim...the chance you'll look like an ass are so high.
 
MEGAN: They're all trying to figure out how to cheat on a woman and get her to stick around.
 
MOE: Fuck if Chelsea knows. She wanted her mom to leave him when she was ten or something.

MEGAN: Dude, so, remember how they passed that law allowing pilots to carry guns in the wake of 9/11? Yeah, some guy shot up his own plane by accident yesterday. I feel safer. You?

\
MOE: Oh god: 1. Who. 2. You know what's depressing is I just checked Facebook and my Horoscope says it's a good day for my "intellect" rating. And my initial thought was, "And I squandered it on THIS HANGOVER" and my immediate corollary thought was "Which is so bad I am believing my horoscope"? I think we should talk about that Pakistan story though. In the Washington Post, on how Musharaf's reduced powers are forcing us to bomb them with our own two ...well, bomb them unilaterally. Does this vindicate Obama? Because I'm really hungover.
  
But that's how it seems.
Also Donald Trump is on Fox & Friends talking about his brief run for the presidency. And he's saying that he didn't plan to run. "People tinkered with me. I made a speech in New Hampshire and people said, 'He's running!'" Um, Donald? Remember that book you wrote about your plan to run for president? Because I do. And it was AMAZING.
Donald Trump is like the apotheosis of everything I love about this country/city/dudes/etc.
 
MEGAN: Can Donald Trump just disappear again, like he did in about 1996? Because that was amazing.
Also, my Facebook horoscope says "A dramatic change in your attitude or appearance could have a negative impact on family relationships right now. You may not have done anything as drastic as a nose ring or a facial tattoo, but you could risk making a bad impression on someone whose help you will need in the future." Luckily, I barely leave the house, so I can't make a bad impression on anyone!

MOE: Ooooooh, this is what mine says.

It is impossible for you to be content with superficial answers now, and you are impatient with people who avoid looking candidly and honestly at root causes and hidden reasons for any problem or situation. You tend to force your views on other people now. Also, you can become obsessed with an idea or problem until you have figured it out.

MEGAN: My God, the Facebook horoscope people, like, know you. Today.

MOE: So did Hillary plagiarize her Bosnia trip account from Olympia Snowe?
  Is Chuck Phillips as much of an idiot as Bill O'Reilly, as Jay-Z once notably suggested?
Oh look, the GDP is suffering, but corporate profits are still on the rise! That's great, great news for those of us in the problem solving business.
 
MEGAN: Anyway, so on Pakistan. I can't believe that people were all freaked out about Obama saying we'd go after OBL in Pakistan with or without Pakistani permission. I mean, had it been the anti-war people freaking out, fine, but hawks were the ones who wigged. I mean, the only reason we haven't yet is so's we don't destabilize Uncle Pervy. But if we go after them now, maybe, Obama can actually live up to his doctrine about changing the way we do foreign policy or something.
Olympia Snowe's totally voting for Hillary I bet.
And Chuck Phillips must be the only person in the world that thinks that Diddy is anything but a middle class guy. He's probably even nice.
Also, if you'd like, a moment of silence. The inventor of the Egg McMuffin has gone to the Playland in the sky.
 
MOE: Oh, and shit, just in time for tax season: guess who's suddenly "under scrutiny" as a result of this financial crisis that no one understands: the accounting industry. What a surprise! You mean, the ones who actually understand this shit are the culprits? When was the last time the accountants were blamed for some arcane financial scandalcrisis thingy? The last time one happened? Speaking of, calling all corrupt accountants: I still need one! And now, to resume denial. Re Pakistan: everything you said. This is why I'm eager to see a McCain-Obama foreign policy debate play out. But Hillary is taking it to the Convention. Where, by the way, we are going. Don't worry if you want to bring someone home I can sleep through pretty much anything.
Holy SHIT re the egg mcMuffin! Did you see that I wrote about egg mcmuffins yesterday?
 
MEGAN: I did! Also, I was sad you didn't mention the time I actually made you one on your actual stove.
 
MOE: I was really hungover that time.
Or wait, in pain...something.
 
MEGAN: I remember, that's why I made you one! Runny yolks and all.
 
MOE: But thank you. I used to make those all the time on the actual stove but english muffins are curiously hard to come by and/or expensive in this neighborhood, in contrast to Harlem, where they were abundant and cheap.
I know you care, audience.
 
MEGAN: No, we were both shitty drunk the night before. That's when we met up with Greg Wassertrom and Hunter Walker and then you went to a party and I got drunk and waited for you at the bar downstairs and argued with some Hillary supporter just because I could.
Because I was feeling argue-y.
  Really? I'll bring English muffins up next time.
By the way, how much do you want to give a low dollar donation to get in on the raffle to have dinner with Obama? Because I want to. Bad.

MOE: Oh right. That night. I went to Jessica's house and we discussed ...cannibalism. I had just read that Harper's reading re cannibalism during the Great Leap Forward. Which, inspires me to bring you this small update re Tibet. 660 people have been held, according to the government. I am not sure why we are supposed to believe them, but that is what they say. And dinner with Obama: I knew when it started looking like he could become president that I was foregoing any chance for dinner with him, and that is okay.

MEGAN: Also, CNN is reporting live from Philly in front of the Art Museum and they are apparently having a Frieda Kahlo exhibit. I think we should task Commenter Braak to go and report back.
 
MOE: Hey Braak, speaking of, do you know about ESCHACON????
 
MEGAN: Only 660 people? That doesn't actually seem like a lot for China.

MOE: I am supposed to go down on Saturday and meet TRex and sundry other leftblogger types in Philly but...I also have like ninety other commitments, one of which is my sister, who just texted me telling me her newest documentary plan was "My Sister, The Marxist," and I should really try to do my taxes this weekend, if only for the sake of the art. Do you know there is a giant picture of ammunition on the front of the Times today and I havent' gotten to the story yet?Something about the Afghans. Ammunition is not the most photogenic thing, you know? I guess it's an image that conjures ...possibility. But.

MEGAN: Well, if you go, tell TRex I say hi and that I am mad at him for not inviting me, too. I mostly did my taxes earlier this week, I just now have to figure out that whole home office thingie and whether there's anyway that I can possibly get enough of a deduction out of that to make it worth my time to figure it out.

MOE: Oh my god the story is actually kind of amazing.

But to arm the Afghna forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.

MOE: Okay, so the company is called AEY. Hedquarters: Miami Beach. 22-year-old CEO Efraim Diveroli: hott.In a shaggy way. Contracts up to $300 million. Wiretap suggesting: corruption; old arms; everything made in China. I haven't gotten to the jump, but already I am going to tell you: Israeli mob. Ecstasy trafficker family. And that brings me back to Trump, and this story I did about how he was doing business with the Israeli mob — unwittingly of course. everything is unwitting with him.

MEGAN: Because he is witless?

MOE: But yeah. I'm telling you. Mark my words. His family is in the ecstasy business. If only they were selling that to the Afghans. Also: how are you supposed to transport anything into Afghanistan if you aren't somehow wound up with contraband traffickers? No one talks about what logistics geniuses the drug traffickers are, and how we could probably make business a lot more efficient by legalizing drugs and learning their secrets. Well no one talks about that because it is a retarded thought. I'm jumping.

MEGAN: Actually, that's not a completely retarded thought. I mean, heroin is really Afghanistan's most successful export and it gets grown and distributed well despite all its problems. Like, we can't even manage to distribute money not to grow it well.
 
MOE: Here is the masseur. Also hott.

MEGAN: Albania's defense minister? Totally fuckable.
The masseur looks high as shit and like a drug dealer. I'm sticking with the defense minister.
  The masseur's eyes are like something out of a horror movie.
Efraim looks stoned.
 
MOE: Oh Jesus.

Michael Diveroli, Efraim's father, had incorporated the company in 1999, when Efraim was 13. For several years, a period when the company appeared to have limited activity, Michael Diveroli, who now operates a police supply company down the street from AEY's office, was listed as the company's sole executive.

MEGAN: Nice. Efraim looks like one of those guys I would happily allow to hit on me in a bar and use his rather limited vocabulary to tell me how fucking sexy I am and how I should go home with him and who I will never actually go home with because I think if you cannot say "cunnilingus" correctly you probably aren't going to be worth the time or the condom to fuck.

MOE: Ephraim is a young Israeli mobster from Miami. I interviewed one once. He was a year from federal prison, not that he revealed that to me at the time. He was the cockiest motherfucker I've met in my entire life. But, in the words of the intern who transcribed the interview: "God he sounded hot."
'
MEGAN: A little arrogance can be attractive in a man, especially, say, if a girl is particularly used to dating guys with maybe not a ton of self esteem NOT THAT I DO THAT OR ANYTHING but too much just pisses me off because normally it's not backed up by anything.  
But I'm also older than your former intern.

MOE: On a note unrelated to sex, the thing this story is making me realize is that the cool thing about selling arms is that, unlike with lead toys or drugs, they don't seem to get screened so much. This guy seemed like he was picking his up in Albania — straight-arrow country, that Albania — and they'd originally come from China in the sixties and seventies. In the sixties and seventies, when arms were probably being smelted in backyards while people subsisted on other people, not to get to circular about things. I am still awestruck by the... awesomeness of this story. 
Incidentally, the Albanian they hired to repackage this shit, Kosta Trebicka, is also pretty hot.

MEGAN: Our government defense dollars at work. No wonder we're winning the war.

MOE: OH my god best. So last summer, Trebicka and Diveroli, the 22-year-old, were talking about how tough it was to do business in Albania, and the 22-year-old suggested that Trebeckia send "one of your girls" to have sex with the head of the export agency. "Money might help too." It always comes back to whores.

MEGAN: And money. Also, really? Did any of these guys have trouble getting laid without having to pay for it?

MOE: Not if they're drinking with me. But you know the neocons: they like a challenge.

Megan: When I agreed to interview you, I figured you'd be all Mr. Hulking Muscular Bad Boy in camo with a seamy side. But you're, like, totally The Office without even the slightest touch of Jarhead, and I had all-but-naked Jake Gyllenhaal dreams. What gives? Why the bad rep if everyone is pedestrian. Anonymous Defense Contractor: I can do this naked if you want.

Megan: Hmmm, maybe later. For now, enlighten me why you guys get bad raps if you're not all 'roid-rage and testosterone and really big guns.
Anonymous Defense Contractor: Because we, and they, are easy targets. We're all paid more than your average government employee — be it military or civilian — and we're everywhere.

Megan: So, you're more like cockroaches or Bai Ling?
Anonymous Defense Contractor: Uh, I don't know who that is, but, okay. Basically, there's tons of us for all manner of things- everything from building planes to answering phones. So, it's real easy for a government guy to point at a contractor when something goes wrong and say, fucking contractors, you guys suck. And, by that, I'm talking about the State Department Diplomatic Security Bureau in particular and their issues with Blackwater and other private security contractors. Blackwater has its faults, but they take a lot of the public outrage and furor over private security contractors when there are, in fact, hundreds of companies that do that.

Megan: I mean, plus "Blackwater" just sounds so dirty-sexy in comparison to, like, "Bluewater" or "Smart Water" or something. But, are you saying that there are other companies that go around, like, raping cute girls from Texas in the name of freedom? What the fuck is up with that?
Anonymous Defense Contractor: Back in the early days when there weren't that many contracts to do that work, it was really easy to have good people — Blackwater and those guys were hiring special forces guys, Navy seals, etc, just as they were getting out of the military. As time went on and the demand got bigger and more contractors were needed in different parts of the world, Blackwater (and others) had to recruit more people and there just aren't that many ex Green Berets in the world. So what you were invariably going to get was a stable of lesser qualified security officers — guys that haven't have Special Ops training, are more likely to shoot first and ask questions later, etc. The pedigree has thinned out because of the demand. And, in some cases, you just get a boatload of idiots.

Megan: Wait, so, like, defense contracting today is sort of like reality TV? Like, it used to be about endurance contests or interesting characters or challenging challenges and whatever and now it's just all who is willing to get wasted and make the biggest fool of his/herself for the cameras and pick the right numbered box and make out with Flav or something? I mean, I'm sure you could trace that all back to, like, Temptation Island or something, but why has our government become Rock of Love?

Anonymous Defense Contractor: That's an interesting analogy. I'd say the dumbing down of defense contracting due to increased demand is a direct result of the Clinton-era cutbacks in the military — the Clinton era, if I recall correctly, which also gave us Temptation Island. Those cutbacks led to less troops, less innovation, less training, less everything...then the war came and we were fucked and now it's time to call in the contractors. But, at the same time, having private military contractors employed in a variety of different operations — be it security, protection, even everything up to stability operations and intelligence operations- is not a bad thing in all circumstances. Here's the thing: you see a corporal in Ramadi, and he's got an army uniform, body armor, sunglasses, American flag on his shoulder, that very image makes the locals feel like they're looking at the invading force, just because that guy has a uniform on. And it's less obvious when it's just a contractor out there. Granted, many contractors wear body armor, but some folks- particularly USAID contractors- they're digging wells, building schools, staffing provincial reconstruction teams and making things better for the people we're supposedly trying to help, and that's not a bad thing.

Megan: So, like, are you worried for your job since Republicans are all like, increase the military! Expand Gitmo! Or do you think that they're just going to keep all you guys and do that, too, like having tons of SATC reruns and then trying to make us all watch Lipstick Jungle and Cashmere Mafia besides?
Anonymous Defense Contractor: if there's anything Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us, it's that we've spread ourselves too thin. We don't have enough people, our equipment sucks, we can't replace it fast enough... if you're talking about conventional warfare like we've been doing. But, conventional warfare isn't how we're going to win the fight that we're in right now. The reason that we have a whole organization dedicated to figuring out ways to defeat improvised explosive devices (IEDs) is that insurgents use low-tech solutions to defeat us. They know Humvees can't withstand the power of a 155 artillery shell buried underground. But, the thing is, they're not attacking the Humvee to kill the guys inside, they're attacking it to film the guys inside getting killed. It's a situation where the kinetic benefits of the operation are subordinate to the informational benefits.

Megan: Um, kinetic benefits? Is that like Pilates or something?
Anonymous Defense Contractor: No. What I mean by that is that insurgents get more from the image of Americans getting blown up than they do from actually killing the Americans. That video uploaded to YouTube can radicalize 100 more kids who will then become insurgents and start fighting Coalition members. If you want to increase the size of the military, that's fine, but you don't need to really to make it more effective. Rumsfeld's transformational plan wasn't a bad plan, it's just the wrong plan for conventional warfare and long-term counter-insurgency and the status-quo lovers in the military. What you really ought to do is spend the money not on beefing up the military but on beefing up the other elements of national power, like, the State Department, the Justice Department, Treasury, Commerce — the executive branch agencies that control other, and much more positive, aspects of American's interaction with the rest of the world.

Megan: Whoa, hold up there, cowboy! So, like, Rumsfeld had good ideas? I thought that everyone agreed that he was old and wrong and stupid these days?
Anonymous Defense Contractor: Nah, Rummy was all about building a smaller, more lethal force. Transformation was about trying to make do with less, which more or less succeeded for conventional warfighting (read: the initial invasion of Iraq). But it was all done with little or no attention to the decay of other parts of the government's foreign policy apparatus or the decay of relationships between agencies.

Megan: So, like, even though you work for the Pentagon, you actually think the other parts of the government are important? That's like the Kardashians cheering for the writers of The Wire or something!
Anonymous Defense Contractor: Well, not really. Lots of people on the defense side of things recognize that we're not going to win an ideologically-based war with more tanks and more troops. We need thousands of diplomats, interagency-trained and skilled, worldwide. What the real problem is is that we need to replace just about everyone currently working at State. The folks there now feel perfectly justified in not following mandated executive assignments to the new Iraq embassy, and that's no way to serve your country.

[But wait, who really buys this whole "no way to serve your country" crap if all anyone is actually "serving" is the rich connected guys canny enough to start a perversely profitable corporate behemoth staffed by arrogant assholes who have been making twice as much the average multilingual Ivy League educated diplomat while pursuing an agenda that has been systematically ignoring and undermining their sole purpose for existing for the past eight years? Thanks to agreeing to be interviewed, but also, you know, you're wrong. Anyway. Carry on! -Moe]

Treasury is an integral part of the threat finance interdiction mission, if not the lead, but they need to be better-integrated with everyone else in the government working on the threat from terrorism. No Department can do it alone — and when DOD tries, we get Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and a gaggle of Public Affairs retards running around the Pentagon thinking they own the ideological war.

Megan: Gaggle's a funny word. But, why those things? Didn't Rummy and Cheney spend, like, half the time trying to limit the power of those agencies?
Anonymous Defense Contractor: Right now we're resource-imbalanced. We spend more on the military than we do on any of those other elements of national power. Compare the defense budget to the State Department budget- that's comedy right there. You can't rely on the military alone to win an insurgency, let alone this war, because the military has become the selling point for insurgency ideals: look at Bad America, infidel feet on Muslim land, etc. Take all those boots out and replace them with loafers — diplomats, aid workers, bankers, agricultural specialists, anybody that can help the population get to a better standard of living, because the population is the center of gravity in this fight — and then you can start to move towards a real victory.

Megan: Dude, put this in some terms I can understand here. Hit me up with the reality TV comparisons you've been resisting.
Anonymous Defense Contractor: Oh, Jesus. I'm glad now that I made you promise me anonymity. Ok, so, like, lemme try: the military sucks because we're still making American Idol when it's clear that people really want Dancing with the Stars.

Megan: I don't exactly get that show, but okay.
Anonymous Defense Contractor: So, DOD is like American Idol — an old idea that hasn't been updated for the future. State is more like Real World or Road Rules — tired, old stupid bullshit full of vapid assholery. USAID is like The Next Great American Band — they are the rock stars of the government but no one pays attention to them. Treasury is totally Rock Star INXS because [Treasury Secretary Henry] Paulson is so J.D. The CIA is One Shot at Love With Tila Tequila because it looks like it's gonna be hot, but once you get a couple of episodes in you want to scrub your brain with a Brillo pad. DHS is Rock Star Supernova, all doomed. ODNI [the Office of the Directorate of National Intelligence, created to oversee everyone else] is a similar case. As for the NSC, well, there's got to be a reality show about retarded people, right? That would be apropos here.

And where's Dancing with the Stars in this lineup, you ask? Nowhere. And that's the problem.

Megan: I actually hate Dancing with the Stars, but okay. If I may, say we return to scripted TV. What with the protection and attention salaries are sort of like government salaries Maybe State is the Daily Show during the strike, only the strike has lasted eight years. The CIA should be The Wire, but instead it's To Catch A Predator thing. But back to the thing you were saying about shoes, putting nicer shoes in Iraq to win. I'm assuming we're not talking Louboutins or anything, but didn't we have a guy in nice shoes running things initially? Some guy who used John Edwards' barber, El Paul or something, was in charge back in the day? Like, he had an accounting degree or something and he was over there and then he had to leave and things kept getting shot up?
Anonymous Defense Contractor: Uh, it was L. Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority, also called CPA.

Megan: I was totally close. You knew what I meant.
Anonymous Defense Contractor: Right. Well, the CPA was a bad idea, period. From the get go, it was a occupational authority with no long term plan on how to "wage peace." The CPA thought they'd be there, kick out all the Baath party members and go home in 6 months and the Iraqis would take over. But Iraq was way more destroyed than they expected — Saddam just brutalized that country and his own people. De-Baathification meant kicking almost everyone out of government, because everyone in Saddam's government had to be a Baath party member, and making a bunch of previously comfortably middle-class government workers and their families immediately impoverished. They couldn't get work because there wasn't a functioning external economy and they weren't allowed to work for the government, so they couldn't even feed their kids. Anybody with foresight would've expected that some of them were naturally going to become insurgents, or take money from insurgents to bury IEDs in the road because they don't have any other way to make money. So the CPA created a lot of the problem we have right now with the insurgency by making stupid decisions and not thinking through or planning for those decisions' ramifications.

Megan: Way to be Debbie Downer, there. But, we're totally smarter now, right? We've learned from our mistakes?
Anonymous Defense Contractor: Probably not. A lot of the people in the Administration remain clueless. There's a reason so many people have left the Administration in the last year — it's because they know it's a lost cause, and no one wants to take the responsibility for fixing it in the last year. Which isn't to say that there aren't any smart people in the Executive today working on this problem, there are plenty. Sadly, having smart people is one thing, but if they don't have the resources to succeed, they're going to fail anyway.

Megan: Hey, did you know I'm kind of unemployed? If what you're saying is that don't need to be smart or have any really relevant skills and are willing to fail at everything for about a year, can you hook me up?
Anonymous Defense Contractor: Ummm, have your people call my people.