Free Republic

In his final report, released this month, on how $63 billion of American taxpayers’ money was spent in reconstructing Iraq after the end of the Iraq war, Special Inspector General Stuart Bowen asked two questions: “What happened to the money?” and “What effect did it have?” The next 185 pages of his report reviews where it went, how much was wasted, and what effect it had in restoring Iraq’s infrastructure so that life there could return to some sort of normal. The answer to the first question, “what happened to the money?” is that much of it was wasted. He...

After crisscrossing Fallujah by foot and Humvee in May, I reported on tremendous progress being made to restore “the city we had to destroy to save.” Actually fighting left most of the town unscathed; most damage was from three decades of neglect under Saddam Hussein. And rebuilding began almost immediately. Good news from Iraq rarely gets a single story compared to the many thousands on a war protestor’s stake-out in Texas. Yet it occurs nonetheless. The following is from an e-mail by Navy Lt. Cameron Chen, head of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit of the 8th Engineer Support Battalion at...

WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans and Democrats on Wednesday denounced the Bush administration's slow progress in rebuilding Iraq, saying the risks of failure are great if it doesn't act with greater urgency. "It's beyond pitiful, it's beyond embarrassing, it's now in the zone of dangerous," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., referring to figures showing only about 6 percent of the reconstruction money approved by Congress last year has been spent. Foreign Relations Committee members vented their frustrations at a hearing where the State Department explained its request to divert $3.46 billion in reconstruction funds to security and economic development. The money...

The United States said on Thursday it would be a waste of time to challenge the way it was awarding contracts to rebuild Iraq, after Europe raised deep concerns. "There is a substantial basis for doing it the way we have done and I do not think that it is worth spending one's time challenging it," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. "There is a lot of work to do in Iraq. It is time to get on with that work," he told reporters. Brussels had said there were grounds for concern that companies based in the European Union were...