Funds to Rebuild Iraq Are Drifting Away From Target

[priller]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9627-2004Oct5.html

As little as 27 cents of every dollar spent on Iraq's reconstruction has actually filtered down to projects benefiting Iraqis, a statistic that is prompting the State Department to fundamentally rethink the Bush administration's troubled reconstruction effort.

Between soaring security costs, corruption and mismanagement, contractors' profits, and U.S. governmental costs, reconstruction funding is being drained away, leaving little left to improve the lives of Iraqis, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies. Senior administration officials and congressional experts on the reconstruction effort called the analysis credible.

<snip>

Too much money has been filtered through major American businesses such as Halliburton Co. and Bechtel Corp. on large-scale electricity, water and oil infrastructure projects, and not nearly enough has gone to smaller, more decentralized reconstruction efforts that could be handled by Iraqis...

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With the Bushies it's profits for your cronies over the needs of the people. Every time.

[Parche]

1. IRAQ

WHAT ABOUT THE FUNDS TO REBUILD AMERICA?????

[davidinalameda]

3. maybe one of the states needs to invade it's neighbor

I always said that West Virginia should declare war on the rest of the country so it can get the funds necessary to bring it into at least the 20th century, let alone the 21st

[maxsolomon]

2. and this is the main evidence of poor planning

every able bodied iraqi male should be in the armed services or reconstructing the place.

instead its going to american contractors.

its half of why iraqis are pissed.

[DulceDecorum]

4. Every US male

should be in the armed services or reconstructing Iraq.
And if Bush wins, they will ALL have the opportunity to do so.

PS.
WHo are you to tell the Iraqis how to conduct their lives?

[The Magistrate]

5. You May Have Missed Mr. Solomon's Point, Sir

There is a tremendous amount of reconstruction work to do in Iraq, and no doubt the men-folk of that place would be eager to have paid employment doing it. But that is not what is being done; what little reconstruction there is being done is being done through foreign contractors, who often bring in foreign labor to do it. Local enterprises are being shut out at every step of the process, even though they could do the job more cheaply and efficiently.

The reason for it, beyond the crony capitalism of the current administration, is that only by keeping unemployment artificially high among the people of Iraq can the occupying authorities hope to recruit any men for their puppet government's police and army. This is just about the only thing hiring in Iraq nowadays, and the need to provide for their families can be relied on to move many to brave the danger and opprobrium of collaboration with the invader.

"Can't nobody here play this game?"

"LET'S GO GET THOSE BUSH BASTARDS!"

[w4rma]

7. I disagree with that reason. Imho, the reasons are they are incompetent

and corrupt. Simple as that. They went in without a plan. Now their only plan is to coverup their mess as best as they can until after this election. And they have no plan after that either.

[DeepModem Mom]

6. Very damning info -- this is a boondoggle, of death and destruction --