Economy improves in Iraq, Bush says

The president did say there are still security and economic shortfalls.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
WASHINGTON -- Seeking to shore up Americans' sinking support for the war, President Bush on Wednesday presented a picture of Iraq now climbing back from economic ruin with U.S. help, and he argued that such progress is one of the keys to building democracy and political stability there.
In the second of four speeches before Iraq's elections, scheduled a week from today to choose a new, permanent government, the president said the United States was helping Iraq build a free-market economy and rebuild its roads, electrical systems, schools and other public buildings.
"We're helping the Iraqis rebuild their infrastructure, and reform their economy, and build the prosperity that will give all Iraqis a stake in a free and peaceful Iraq," Bush said.
Bush's address to the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan organization that seeks to promote understanding of foreign policy and the United States' role in the world, was intended to convince Americans that the war in Iraq is making more progress than news accounts suggest and that it would ultimately succeed.
At the same time, he acknowledged that serious economic and security shortfalls that remain, saying: "Reconstruction has not gone as well as we had hoped."
Bush presented the efforts to rebuild Iraq politically and economically as the next important steps, along with the campaign to provide security. U.S. deaths in Iraq have passed 2,100. Attacks are expected to spike before the elections.
The speech drew criticism almost as soon as the president finished speaking to the foreign relations group at a Washington hotel.
Disputing Bush's claims of progress, Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Pa., cited recent government reports as well as his own sources within the military -- ranging from front-line troops to generals, he said -- to question the president's portrait of progress in Iraq.
At a news conference, Murtha said that of the $2.1 billion allocated for the production of potable water, only $581 million had been spent. Only occasionally, he said, have electric utilities reached pre-war service levels.
At the same time, there are serious shortages of demolition experts, special forces personnel, intelligence officers and even translators, Murtha said.