"Official history excoriates US rebuilding process in Iraq; Data falsified, errors covered up, report says" by James Glanz and T. Christian Miller, New York Times | December 14, 2008
Iraqi Army bulldozers roared into this squatters' camp in Baghdad on Nov. 13, uprooting some 675 families. A federal report is highly critical of the US-led reconstruction effort in Iraq. (Sabah Arar/AFP/Getty Images)
WTF? So Iraq's government now acts like ISRAEL'S?
BAGHDAD - An unpublished, 513-page federal history of the US-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea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 gaps in knowledge about Iraqi society and infrastructure.
Well, they didn't, so....
"Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience," the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among technical reviewers, policy analysts, and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag - particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army - the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.
Translation: The PENTAGON LIED about PROGRESS!!!!
In one passage, for example, former secretary of state Colin L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department "kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces - the number would jump 20,000 a week! 'We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.' "
(Blog author just shaking his head; you can't believe a word the lying military says -- ever!)
Powell's assertion that the Pentagon inflated the number of Iraqi security forces is backed up by Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, former commander of ground troops in Iraq, and L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian administrator until an Iraqi government took over in June 2004.
Among the overarching conclusions of the history is that five years after embarking on its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II, the US 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.
Umm, hey, WE need some REBUILDING HERE AT HOME, too!!!!
The bitterest message of all for the reconstruction program may be the way the history ends. The hard figures 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 looting that followed.
It's called WAR LOOTING!!!
By mid-2008, the history says, $117 billion had been spent on the reconstruction of Iraq, including some $50 billion in US taxpayer money....
Has it BEEN WORTH IT, America?
"Hard Lessons" was compiled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, led by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., a Republican lawyer who regularly travels to Iraq and has a staff of engineers and auditors based here. Copies of several drafts were provided to The New York Times and ProPublica by two people outside the inspector general's office who have read the draft but are not authorized to comment publicly....
So much for the political angle.
But look who DOES get taken care of, readers:
"A modern-day Lawrence of Arabia in Iraq" by Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times | December 14, 2008
RAMADI, Iraq - .... Sheik Lawrence - full name, Sheik Lawrence Mutib Hazan - is said to be connected to the Saudi royal family and has key contacts throughout the Persian Gulf and among the provincial government leadership in Ramadi and the Iraqi national government in Baghdad.
Then what does he need our money for?
In partnership with the United States, Sheik Lawrence routed insurgents from his domain in Anbar, centered in the desert village of An Nukhayb. But his deal with the Americans came with a price. The United States is funding the reconstruction of the water wells and power distribution in An Nukhayb.
I'm glad we have money to BUILD THEM UP while OUR NATION is falling apart!
More recently, he has asked for US help in settling the boundary dispute between Anbar and Karbala provinces, a request that the top Marine general in Iraq is trying to fulfill.
WTF?
When the history of the US involvement in Iraq is written, one focus will be the Americans' relationship with the sheiks of Anbar, the province that was the birthplace of the Sunni-led insurgency....
Yeah, see: "Al-CIA-Duhs" Catch-and-Release Program
Within two years, Anbar went from lost cause to success story in the eyes of US officials, even before the buildup of troops in Baghdad.
So the SURGE... ?
Figuring out the pecking order among sheiks has been a challenge for the US military. Some sheiks have great authority; others pretend to. Some are what commanders have come to call "fake sheiks."
Like FALSE-FLAGS?
Sheik Lawrence, in his mid-50s, has passed all the tests of credibility. He stuck with the Americans even when the founder of the Awakening was assassinated. He has called for continued opposition to the insurgency and cooperation with the national government in Baghdad.
--more--"
