Rebuilding Iraq a Failure

According to an unpublished Federal report obtained by The New York Times, even our government recognizes the failure of efforts to rebuild Iraq.

An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.

The bitterest message of all for the reconstruction program may be the way the history ends. The hard figures on basic services and industrial production compiled for the report reveal that for all the money spent and promises made, the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed during the invasion and the convulsive looting that followed.

A history of chaos and failure is catalogued in the report.

In an illustration of the hasty and haphazard planning, a civilian official at the United States Agency for International Development was at one point given four hours to determine how many miles of Iraqi roads would need to be reopened and repaired.

Hasty deisions made without adequate information were the name of the game. The tale is one of deception, waste, and poor planning. One official quotes Dickens in summarizing the situation.

We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us.

As we approach Afghanistan these days with ideas very similar to those proposed for the rebuilding of Iraq will we learn any lessons? Will we be able to change direction and make the rebuilding of either Iraq or Afghanistan successful? The future is in the hands of our new administration.

Peace.