Another NeoCon Failure

BushCheney is pulling the plug on Iraqi reconstruction. Major infrastructure remains damaged and unreliable–electricity output and oil production are still below pre-invasion levels despite the fact that 80 percent of our promised $18.2 billion reconstruction is gone. “The US never intended to completely rebuild Iraq,” says the commanding engineer general. “It was supposed to be a jump start.” In 2003 BushCheney promised Iraqis the best infrastructure in the region.

US officials attribute the lack of reconstruction success to the insurgency. They had not anticipated the difficulties of Iraqi resistance; much of the money has been eaten away by security priorities. They don't mention waste, fraud and abuse by overpriced contractors and corrupt officials that's cost several billion dollars. (The former Iraqi defense minister alone stole almost 1$ billion.) Anyone with even a passing understanding and familiarity with Irag history could have seen the insurgency and chaos coming. I did and so did a lot of others. Hell, Saddam Hussein predicted it. But BushCheney and his simple-minded neo-con allies missed it entirely. Ignored it actually, preferring their own fantasyland of version of reality. Oh, yes, the war was also supposed to pay for itself.

Contrast America’s performance with Iraq’s reconstruction after the Gulf War. Mahdi Obeidi reports in The Bomb in My Garden that Iraq restored electricity and energy production to pre-war levels within a year of the war’s end, despite international sanctions. Obeidi, no friend of Saddam Hussein, takes pride in this Iraqi national accomplishment. Perhaps the best perspective is that of an Iraqi merchant.

"It is easy for the Americans to say, 'We are doing reconstruction in Iraq,' and we hear that. But to make us believe it, they should show us where this reconstruction is," said Mustafa Sidqi Murthada, owner of a men's clothing store in Baghdad. "Maybe they are doing this reconstruction for them in the Green Zone. But this is not for the Iraqis."
"Believe me, they are not doing this," he said, "unless they consider rebuilding of their military bases reconstruction."

Promises without performance. That's BushCheney all over.

Juan Cole’s observations on this announcement event are also worth noting.