Peter Van Buren spent a year in Iraq serving as Team Leader for two Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) as a State Department Foreign Service Officer. Now in Washington, he writes about Iraq and the Middle East at his blog We Meant Well. His book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the War for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People (The American Empire Project, Metropolitan Books) will be published this September and can be preordered by clicking here.