We have met the enemy -- and it's our bureaucracy

There's an interesting op-ed piece I stumbled onto that ran in the San Francisco Chronicle a couple weeks ago, by Newt Gingrich. Here's an excerpt:

In Afghanistan, it has taken us more than five years to complete a 300-mile stretch of road. It's no wonder that the only form of commerce blooming in Afghanistan is poppy production.

And in Iraq, it was estimated that with an infusion of U.S. dollars, we could jump start more than 150 old and new Iraqi factories, creating tens of thousands of jobs. One is a fertilizer plant north of Baghdad. It used to furnish all fertilizer for the ministry of agriculture. It has produced none since Baghdad fell. As a result, crop production has decreased 50 percent, according to the Pentagon's analysis.