Does anyone believe that a version of a report that criticizes the never-wrong White House will ever be released? Me either. I'd wager a rather large sum that by the time this report is finally officially made available, the Iraq reconstruction program will have somehow been better executed than the Marshall Plan, and everyone will get cold-fusion generators in their basement swimming rooms. Or something.
Iraq Rebuilding Badly Hobbled, U.S. Report FindsThe first official history of the $25 billion American reconstruction effort in Iraq depicts a program hobbled from the outset by gross understaffing, a lack of technical expertise, bureaucratic infighting, secrecy and constantly increasing security costs, according to a preliminary draft.
The document, which begins with the secret prewar planning for reconstruction and touches on nearly every phase of the program through 2005, was assembled by the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction and debated last month in a closed forum by roughly two dozen experts from outside the office.
and, wait for it....
“It's incomplete,” said a spokesman for the inspector general's office, Jim Mitchell. “It could change significantly before it is finally published.”
(image courtesy of freewayblogger.com/
In the document, the paralyzing effect of staffing shortfalls and contracting battles between the State Department and the Pentagon, creating delays of months at a stretch, are described for the first time from inside the program.The document also recounts concerns about writing contracts for an entity with the “ambiguous legal status” of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the question of whether it was an American entity or a multinational one like NATO.
Seemingly odd decisions on dividing the responsibility for various sectors of the reconstruction crop up repeatedly in the document. At one point, a planning team made the decision to put all reconstruction activities in Iraq under the Army Corps of Engineers, except anything to do with water, which would go to the Navy. At the time, a retired admiral, David Nash, was in charge of the rebuilding.
“It almost looks like a spoils system between various agencies,” said Steve Ellis, a vice president and an authority on the Army corps at Taxpayers for Common Sense, an organization in Washington, who read a copy of the document. “You had various fiefdoms established in the contracting process
Tags: Iraq, /Worst_President
Hey, it is the freaking Marshall plan, they just appointed a team of zombies to execute the plan. Other than that, it's perfect.
Oh, and yeah for the Freeway Blogger image. I freeway blog, from time to time, do you too?
I keep meaning to - seeing as I live fairly close to a freeway, but am just an interested observer at the moment.
well he said right from teh start the US wouldn't engage in nation building, didn't he?
I guess Shrub meant, wouldn't do a competent job at nation building.They certainly blew enough money on the attempt.