Internal government report shows Iraq reconstruction a fiasco

[BrainGlutton]

The NYT got hold of the report.

BAGHDAD — An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the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 history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts 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.

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.’ ”

<snip>

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 United States 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.

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.

By mid-2008, the history says, $117 billion had been spent on the reconstruction of Iraq, including some $50 billion in United States taxpayer money.

The history contains a catalog of revelations that show the chaotic and often poisonous atmosphere prevailing in the reconstruction effort.

The significant thing is not that this report tells us much we didn’t know, but that it makes clear the government knew all along while telling us otherwise. But I guess we knew that too.

[RTFirefly]

We do know most of this - the deliberate deceit, the ignorance about Iraq - but the anecdotes are still telling. Yesterday, Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings highlighted this excerpt of a conversation a month before the invasion:

Ambassador George Ward, head of ORHA’s humanitarian pillar, asked, “How am I going to protect humanitarian convoys, humanitarian staging areas, humanitarian distribution points?” A flag officer who had flown in from CENTCOM said, “Hire war lords.” “Wait a minute,” Ward thought, “folks don’t understand this. There are warlords in Afghanistan, not in Iraq. There were no warlords to rent.” “At that point,” Ward says, “I thought this was going to fail because no one is paying serious attention to civilian security.”

Yeah. Warlords in Saddam-controlled Iraq.

The mind boggles.

[Jack_Batty]

Makes you want to throw a shoe, doesn’t it?

[elucidator]

Well, of course there weren’t any warlords in Iraq, that development was stymied by the centralized economy of Saddam. But once Saddam was removed, we could rely on the magic of the Free Market and vigorous entrepreneurship to spring up! Neighborhood patrols filled the gap quickly, kind of like your own local neighborhood watch programs, but much more heavily armed.

In predominately Shia neighborhoods, Sunni residents were encouraged to relocate, or die, according to their personal preference. Under the first option, they would then place themselves under the protection of a “warlord” more in llne with their religious community.

And to top it off, we supplied them with a sterling example of entreprenuerial “warlords”, with our very own Blackwater (ah! such poetry in the naming, don’t you think?..). With such a splendid example before them, how could they fail? Now, of course, here and there, you could point out where policy differences were discussed with rather more acrimony than we would prefer. But isn’t that just another cultural bias on our part? Why should we insist that a free exchange of ideas is somehow inherently better than a free exchange of gunfire?

After all, issues are clearly settled, and with none of this “recount” nonsense!

[BrainGlutton]

@elucidator

Why should we insist that a free exchange of ideas is somehow inherently better than a free exchange of gunfire?

Or that there’s any need to choose between the two?

[LouisB]

If we make an ass of you and me for just a moment and conclude that there was any valid reason at all for invading Iraq in the first place, have we done anything right since that time? I question whether snuffing Saddam, his kids, and one grandchild have accomplished any thing at all and certainly nothing worth the cost, suffering and loss of infrastructure we have inflicted on the Iraqi people. IMHO, we should have stayed the hell out of there; failing that, we should have left on the first available means of transportation. I hate, loathe, and despise the current administration of our country and wish them all the very worst of fates after they are out of office. Unfortunately, I know damn well that life doesn’t work that way.

[BrainGlutton]

@LouisB

I hate, loathe, and despise the current administration of our country and wish them all the very worst of fates after they are out of office. Unfortunately, I know damn well that life doesn’t work that way.

Ambrose Bierce once wrote a story about a country where the elected chief executive serves for ten years and then is executed, on the grounds that anyone who has held supreme power for that long must have committed enough crimes to warrant death even if none can be specifically proved.

That’s Bierce. In the same collection – Lands Beyond the Blow – he wrote of a country where, at the conclusion of a war, the soldiers are publicly thanked and honored, then deprived of their sight with hot irons, issued a sledgehammer each and sealed in a chamber. The chamber is opened a week later; if any of the soldiers proves to have an unbroken bone the survivors are boiled in wine; if not, smothered in butter. (Lots of people of his day, I imagine, harbored a certain resentment for the preening G.A.R.; I know Mark Twain did.)

[woodstockbirdybird]

@BrainGlutton

That’s Bierce. In the same collection – Lands Beyond the Blow – he wrote of a country where, at the conclusion of a war, the soldiers are publicly thanked and honored, then deprived of their sight with hot irons, issued a sledgehammer each and sealed in a chamber. The chamber is opened a week later; if any of the soldiers proves to have an unbroken bone the survivors are boiled in wine; if not, smothered in butter. (Lots of people of his day, I imagine, harbored a certain resentment for the preening G.A.R.; I know Mark Twain did.)

Hijack:
I have to say: I don’t get the point of this story. Why the sledgehammers, why the difference in punishment for broken/unbroken bones, etc? Why not just thank them and kill them right away, without the torture?

[BrainGlutton]

@woodstockbirdybird

Hijack:
I have to say: I don’t get the point of this story. Why the sledgehammers, why the difference in punishment for broken/unbroken bones, etc? Why not just thank them and kill them right away, without the torture?

I think Bierce really, really resented the G.A.R.; otherwise, I chalk it up to his acerbic and cynical whimsey (he was a humorist, remember). (The difference in punishment would be to give the soldiers an incentive to swing at each other really hard.) But the main point of the story was the value and/or the danger of a “standing army” in peacetime, a very controversial issue in Bierce’s day. In another story, the narrator visits a country where there is organized labor fiercely opposed to a standing army. “In our country,” the ruler tells the narrator, “we have what is called industrial unrest.” “I see,” says the narrator. “And the labor leaders fear a standing army would suppress such unrest?” This stops the ruler short. “No, I don’t think that is their objection . . .” Shortly thereafter the narrator visits the ruler again, passing a number of fleeing men who have had their ears cut off. Apparently all labor leaders have been summoned to answer the question, tacked up on the wall of the throne room, “What ought to be done, that a standing army might prevent?” Any labor leader who cannot satisfactorily answer (that is to say, all of them) loses his ears on the spot.

That’s Bierce. Politically he wasn’t for anything, only very much against. And that included anarchy. (Anarchism was also a big deal in his day.)

[Biggirl]

We fucked everything up over there? Yeah, that’s right. So what?"

Bush: . . . One of the major theaters against al Qaeda turns out to have been Iraq. This is where al Qaeda said they were going to take their stand. This is where al Qaeda was hoping to take …
Raddatz: But not until after the U.S. invaded.
Bush: Yeah, that’s right. So what?

[MOIDALIZE]

The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts 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.

Not that the Vietnam War has that much in common with Iraq, but career bureaucrats engaged in all kinds of butt-covering during that war, and nothing appears to have changed.

[scabpicker]

@elucidator

with our very own Blackwater (ah! such poetry in the naming, don’t you think?..).

My favorite mercenary group name is Custer Battles. Real skilled folks. The pentagon actually barred them from contracts in 2004. NPR had a nice account of them getting into a pitched battle with no one. It’s name is formed from the last names of the founders. You can’t make this stuff up and have it be so poetic.

[BrainGlutton]

@scabpicker

My favorite mercenary group name is Custer Battles. Real skilled folks. The pentagon actually barred them from contracts in 2004. NPR had a nice account of them getting into a pitched battle with no one. It’s name is formed from the last names of the founders. You can’t make this stuff up and have it be so poetic.

Ah, yes, ol’ Custer Battles . . .

[BrainGlutton]

Ah, I found that Bierce story:

In conversation with the King’s Prime Minister, the famous Grumsquutzy, I asked him how it was that Ug, being a great military power, was apparently without soldiers.

“Sir,” he replied, courteously shaking his fist under my nose in sign of amity, “know that when Ug needs soldiers she enlists them. At the end of the war they are put to death.”

“Visible embodiment of a great nation’s wisdom,” I said, “far be it from me to doubt the expediency of that military method; but merely as a matter of economy would it not be better to keep an army in time of peace than to be compelled to create one in time of war?”

“Ug is rich,” he replied; “we do not have to consider matters of economy. There is among our people a strong and instinctive distrust of a standing army.”

“What are they afraid of,” I asked–“what do they fear that it will do?”

“It is not what the army may do,” answered the great man, “but what it may prevent others from doing. You must know that we have in this land a thing known as Industrial Discontent.”

“Ah, I see,” I exclaimed, interrupting–“the industrial classes fear that the army may destroy, or at least subdue, their discontent.”

The Prime Minister reflected profoundly, standing the while, in order that he might assist his faculties by scratching himself, even as we, when thinking, scratch our heads.

“No,” he said presently; “I don’t think that is quite what they apprehend–they and the writers and statesmen who speak for them. As I said before, what is feared in a case of industrial discontent is the army’s preventive power. But I am myself uncertain what it is that these good souls dislike to have the army prevent. I shall take the customary means to learn.”

Having occasion on the next day to enter the great audience hall of the palace I observed in gigantic letters running across the entire side opposite the entrance this surprising inscription:

“In a strike, what do you fear that the army will prevent which ought to be done?”

Facing the entrance sat Grumsquutzy, in his robes of office and surrounded by an armed guard. At a little distance stood two great black slaves, each bearing a scourge of thongs. All about them the floor was slippery with blood. While I wondered at all this two policemen entered, having between them one whom I recognized as a professional Friend of the People, a great orator, keenly concerned for the interests of Labor. Shown the inscription and unable or unwilling to answer, he was given over to the two blacks and, being stripped to the skin, was beaten with the whips until he bled copiously and his cries resounded through the palace. His ears were then shorn away and he was thrown into the street. Another Friend of the People was brought in, and treated in the same way; and the inquiry was continued, day after day, until all had been interrogated. But Grumsquutzy got no answer.

A most extraordinary and interesting custom of the Uggards is called the Naganag and has existed, I was told, for centuries. Immediately after every war, and before the returned army is put to death, the chieftains who have held high command and their official head, the Minister of National Displeasure, are conducted with much pomp to the public square of Nabootka, the capital. Here all are stripped naked, deprived of their sight with a hot iron and armed with a club each. They are then locked in the square, which has an inclosing wall thirty clowgebs high. A signal is given and they begin to fight. At the end of three days the place is entered and searched. If any of the dead bodies has an unbroken bone in it the survivors are boiled in wine; if not they are smothered in butter.

Upon the advantages of this custom–which surely has not its like in the whole world–I could get little light. One public official told me its purpose was “peace among the victorious”; another said it was “for gratification of the military instinct in high places,” though if that is so one is disposed to ask “What was the war for?” The Prime Minister, profoundly learned in all things else, could not enlighten me, and the commander-in-chief in the Wuggard war could only tell me, while on his way to the public square, that it was “to vindicate the truth of history.”

[gonzomax]

You are operating under the impression that the aim was to fix Iraqs’ infrastructure. The purpose was to loot the tax payers and steal as much money as possible. It worked very well.

[Equipoise]

Are we ever going to find out what happened to those pallets of cash we sent to Iraq?

[Kobal2]

@gonzomax

You are operating under the impression that the aim was to fix Iraqs’ infrastructure. The purpose was to loot the tax payers and steal as much money as possible. It worked very well.

Loot the tax payers *while *looting the Iraqis ! It’s win-win !
Seriously, you can’t but admire such brazen disregard for… well, for pretty much everything. It fills me with the same jawdropping awe as stories of Hollywood accounting. These guys can’t possibly walk straight with balls that monumental.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Equipoise

Are we ever going to find out what happened to those pallets of cash we sent to Iraq?

No.

Would you like a Mercedes?

[Chessic_Sense]

I’m not really that upset by it. Most of that money went back to Americans anyway.

Disclosure: Part of those billions of dollars = my house down payment.

[Equipoise]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

No.

Would you like a Mercedes?

No thanks. I’ll take a T25 though. First one off the assembly line If that’s a bust, a Smart Car will do. Solid blue, with an mp3 player, if you please.