Rebuilding Iraq remains a long, expensive proposition

Rebuilding Iraq remains a long, expensive proposition

It’s a cautionary tale for the new president of the United States, Barack Obama: The reconstruction of Iraq will not occur simply because billions of dollars are being pumped into the war-ravaged country. Indeed, as of mid-2008, $117 billion had been spent on reconstructing Iraq, including some $50 billion in U.S. taxpayer money, and yet an unpublished report carries the ominous title, “Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience.”

The New York Times, in an exclusive story Sunday headlined “Official History Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders,” delved into the findings in the report and offered this observation:

“Among the overarching conclusions of the history is that five years after embarking on the largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II, the United States government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale.”

The bottom line of the Times’ story: For all the money spent and promises made, the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the convulsive looting that followed.

Barack Obama takes office Jan. 20, and while stopping the nation’s economic free-fall will be his first order of business, the new administration can expect to be presented with the official history of the rebuilding — the word is a misnomer in light of what has been revealed — of Iraq. And the question it will have to answer is this: Would the attitude of the Iraqi people toward the United States have been more positive had the ouster of murderous dictator Saddam Hussein resulted in a better life for them?

Electricity outages

Freedom and democracy lose their glitter when roads remain impassable, clean water is unavailable in many parts of the country and when electricity is to be had just several hours a day.

To be sure, the lack of security following the invasion and the subsequent civil war involving the Sunnis and Shiites undermined the reconstruction effort, but the fact remains that billions were being spent on reconstruction even when the streets of Baghdad and other population centers were battle zones.

There is also a political subplot in this sordid tale of waste that the Obama administration must investigate.

Here’s what the Times reports: “When the Office of Management and Budget balked at the American occupation authority’s abrupt request for about $20 billion in new construction money in August 2003, a veteran Republican lobbyist working for the authority made a bluntly partisan appeal to Joshua B. Bolton, then O.M.B. director and now White House chief of staff: ‘To delay getting funds would be a political disaster for the President,’ wrote the lobbyist, Tom C. Korologos. ‘His election will hang for a large part on show of progress in Iraq and without funding this year, progress will grind to a halt.’ With administration backing, Congress allocated the money later that year.”

The unpublished 513-page federal history of the reconstruction of Iraq is being circulated in draft form in Baghdad and Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials, according to the newspaper.

The Obama transition team would do well to not only become familiar with it, but should be prepared to react when the new administration takes office.

The one question that demands an answer is simply this: What happened to the money?