There's an article in the January issue of Esquire (http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2004/041222_mfe_dream_1.html) that demonstrates the total ineptitude of the American government in Iraq. Written by Sara Solovitch and titled the "American Dream," it tells the story of Jumana Hanna, an Iraqi refugee, who, in the post-Saddam era, was one of the few people to come forward with information about the terrors suffered by those who had been imprisoned.
She was written about in a long front page piece in the Washington Post (the article was by Peter Finn), and her story was told by Paul Wolfowitz to the Senate Foreign Relations Commitee.
However, as Solovitch proves in her article, Hanna's story was fiction. In truth, she was a homeless prostitute and a compulsive liar who scammed incompetent military leaders -- and got herself flown to a new life in the US by the Pentagon. The government never checked what she said, and once the story came out in the Post, it was treated as gospel by coalition leaders.
