[Vision2020] U.S. Iraq Projects Are Failing

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Greetings:

Some people on this list cannot read a newspaper story very carefully.  The recent federal audit on Iraq reconstruction was not meant to be exhaustive.  

The team planned to visit more sites, but they were too dangerous to visit.  The primary responsibility of an occupation force is security, and in five years we have utterly failed in that task.

The team did focus on eight projects that the Bush administration had declared successful.  The audit concluded that only one of the 8 could be called successful.  A failure rate of this magnitude does not bode well for the rest of the projects.

It should be stressed that this Office of Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction was almost trashed by conservative Republicans last year.  Good thing that we now have some accountability with a Democratic Congress.

A good general comment on Iraq Reconstruction can be found in this statement from Wikipedia:

"Some say that the reconstruction would have been both much more efficient and inexpensive if more contracts were granted to local Iraqi firms, many of whom were shut out of the process due to that fact that they were state-owned.  Congressman Henry Waxman was once told by members of the Iraqi governing council that paying Iraqi companies to rebuild Iraq instead of American ones would save American tax payers 90% of the costs."

Rumsfeld's dream of outsourcing military projects to private companies has turned into a nightmare of gigantic cost overruns and corruption everywhere.

Nick Gier