Posted on 11/21/2009 1:13:45 PM PST by Lorianne
BAGHDAD — In its largest reconstruction effort since the Marshall Plan, the United States government has spent $53 billion for relief and reconstruction in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, building tens of thousands of hospitals, water treatment plants, electricity substations, schools and bridges.
But there are growing concerns among American officials that Iraq will not be able to adequately maintain the facilities once the Americans have left, potentially wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and jeopardizing Iraq’s ability to provide basic services to its people.
The projects run the gamut — from a cutting-edge, $270 million water treatment plant in Nasiriya that works at a fraction of its intended capacity because it is too sophisticated for Iraqi workers to operate, to a farmers’ market that farmers cannot decide how to share, to a large American hospital closed immediately after it was handed over to Iraq because the government was unable to supply it with equipment, a medical staff or electricity.
American forces are scheduled to begin withdrawing in large numbers next year.
In hundreds of cases during the past two years, the Iraqi government has refused or delayed the transfer of American-built projects because it cannot staff or maintain them, Iraqi and American government officials say.
Other facilities, including hospitals, schools and prisons built with American funds, have remained empty long after they were completed because there were not enough Iraqis trained to operate them.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Well hey, at least we tried.
A single named source for any of these fears or are we just supposed to take the Jason Blair Times word they exist?
Big Government genius at work.
If we are gonna waste money, at leasst make sure it’s on America.
It always amazes me that no matter how often the Junk Media is caught publishing fraudulent, misleading propaganda, Conservatives still take the Junk Media's every word at face value.
Is that not enough? Propaganda works both ways. Perhaps, we can spend more money on the failed culture of Babylon.
building tens of thousands of hospitals
I agree, MNJohnnie. The NYT is hardly a reliable source of information on Iraq.
If anything, this article is designed to undermine America’s efforts pre-Obama. It’s just another blame Bush screed to give the HopeyChangey boy cover if things go south on his watch.
Basically the Slims is saying, and you all are agreeing with, the notion that “Oh those poor dumb Iraqis are too stupid and slothful to run their own country. We will have to do it for them.”
Amazing the Iraqis managed run a society that build and maintained the world's 4th largest army while fighting an 8 year war with Iran but now are suddenly too stupid and slothful to maintain the same level or civilization they had built for themselves prior to their Liberation.
Rudyard Kipling, The White Man's Burden (1899)
Take up the White Man's burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man's burden—
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit,
And work another’s gain.
Take up the White Man's burden—
The savage wars of peace—
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden—
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper—
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden—
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard—
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:—
“Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?”
Take up the White Man's burden—
Ye dare not stoop to less—
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke (1) your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.
Take up the White Man's burden—
Have done with childish days—
The lightly proferred laurel, (2)
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
My net its like giving things to backwards people, welfare people anywhere. They do not recognize value as it was a gift...they never burst a bead of sweat to get it... thus it will get squandered like any other lottery.
What will happen is something will fail, then they will loot it for scrap metal and construction materials.
That was Bush's 'Big Government' policy called "Nation Building". Everything has it's 'limits'.
George W. Bush gave you bastards a chance at freedom, and just like our own Democrat domestic plague, you sat back and waited for the real men to do your job for you, all the while complaining they weren't doing it fast enough.
Well now, we've got one of yours running our country.
If it's any consolation, we aren't going to have any functioning hospitals, schools, or businesses pretty soon either.
Just exactly what in the history of the region would give any thinking person reason to believe that the locals could, in fact, keep up ANY of the new infrastructure that our BILLIONS of tax dollars have provided?
Sand down a rat hole, IMO, and we didn’t even demand they pay for it; say, with some of that crude oil, maybe...
It’s time to take back the country.
Reminiscent of what happened immediatley after our pullout from Vietnam.
“...Sand down a rat hole, IMO”
What does PubliusMM have against you? lol
Rat droppings in his Raisin Bran? LOL
They have billions in oil revenues, if they can spend it on the people and not have it disappear into corrupt officials private bank accounts or sent to terrorist organizations.
I figure it will only take 6 months to install another tyrant and go back to their old ways. Maybe a Saddam or a tyrannical bunch of mullahs is what they need to keep them halfway straight!
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