Billions of dollars short, U.S. must scale back Iraq reconstruction

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/12935546.htm

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration cannot fulfill all its grand promises to rebuild Iraq because soaring security costs, mismanagement and poor planning have cost billons of dollars, federal auditors said Tuesday.

Some projects - including those to provide clean water for Iraqis - have been cancelled as a result.

In one case, security costs for a U.S. Agency for International Development program on economic reform increased from $894,000 to $37 million, an auditor told Congress. And hundreds of millions of dollars is being diverted to pay for training for Iraqis and for the maintenance of new facilities - expenses overlooked in the initial U.S. planning for the reconstruction, auditors said.

Add to that the rising prices for materials, cost overruns and delays, and there's far less money to rebuild Iraq as the Bush administration envisioned, said Stuart Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. He called the shortfall "the reconstruction gap."

and the stuff gets blown up faster than they can build it.

Remember Wolfowitz assuring Americans of that "fact"? :eyes:

Now we can't afford to fix what we fucked up. Surprise, surprise. The Republicans are good at one thing and one thing only. Destruction. Building things isn't one of their strong points.

clean water pops first to mind.

uhm "sarcasm" *S*

go for first? That's rhetorical, of course we all know why. No profit in clean water.

Guess someone should have been kept in place to keep track of all that money that was unloaded from the duffle bags.

How can our clusterfuck of a government not keep a handle on this? Besides whatever our daily cost is to run *'s war, how - how can they not have enough money for rebuilding? Overcharges and fake charges by CheneyBurton? Damned if I really know, but I've got my own damn thoughts on this - FRAUD, FRAUD, and MORE FRAUD!!!

...After all a 3000% increase in Chaney's Halliburton stock has to reflect some type of increased (looting) profits.

This has been the biggest theft of American Taxpayer money in the history of America. The future generations are going to back look at us in bewilderment, wondering :wtf: we were thinking...

Unless we can sue Halliburton to get the money back????