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COPYRIGHT 2006 Texas Monthly, Inc.
The interpreter looked at me with a straight face. "The contractor was just telling you what he thought you wanted to hear." My friend Major Greg Scott and I were talking with some of our Iraqi interpreters, lamenting to them our difficulties with some of the construction contractors in Najaf. A few days earlier, one of our contractors had told us that his project was finished and that he was ready to be paid his final allotment. My team and I always conduct visual inspections of all the projects, so we had gone to check on his. He was supposed to have renovated the restroom at a girls' high school in the Missan quarter. But when I arrived at the school, I became furious. He had done zero work. The contractor had lied to me, thinking I wouldn't check up on him. Now, as Major Scott and I related our frustrations to the group of interpreters, they were trying to explain away the contractor's behavior. I couldn't believe it. Major...
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