Yesterday, September 28, 2006, the Government Reform Committee in the House of Representatives held a hearing on Iraq reconstruction.
The full extent of the debacle that is Iraq reconstruction is now becoming widely known
and was summarized by ranking member Henry Waxman, Democrat from California,
and other members. This country spent $75 million to build a police academy in Baghdad that plumbing disasters and structural problems may necessitate tearing down. We have spent over $2 billion in the Iraq oil sector, but oil supply is still below levels before the war. We have spent over $4 billion in the electricity sector, but supply still falls short of stated goals, and Baghdad suffers a power shortage. Among major contractors, Bechtel was removed from a project to build a hospital for children, and Parsons was terminated on a contract for 144 health clinics of which it had built only six.
Dennis Kucinich, Democrat from Ohio, questioned the witness panel sharply about $9 billion of Iraqi funds somehow missing but not tracked down under U.S. occupation. Tom Lantos, Democrat from California, called the reconstruction fiasco either a “Theater of the Absurd” or a “chamber of horrors.” Members from both sides of the aisle complained about cost overruns, incomplete projects, goals not attained, taxpayer funds wasted, and lack of appropriate oversight. And as Elijah Cummings, Democrat from Maryland, pointed out, Halliburton has still not been debarred under the authorization called LOGCAP, even though contractors in Maryland are debarred from doing business with the state for misfeasance much smaller than that of Halliburton or KBR.
Three hints of some sort of time frame were suggested during the hearing.
I. According to the Briefing Memorandum provided by the Committee, funding for reconstruction in Iraq has been provided by IRRF, the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund, created in 2003, which authorized $2.475 billion for the initial phase of Iraq reconstruction. This was followed by IRRF II, the second Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund, established by another Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Iraq and Afghanistan in 2004. It authorized $18.4 billion for reconstruction. About $19.6 billion from the IRRFs has been obligated. The funding authority provided under the IRRFs will expire at the end of September 2006, the end of this month.
II. Several U.S. government entities have worked on Iraq reconstruction, including the Army, the Corps of Engineers, the State Department, and USAID. The USAID witness on the first panel was James A. Bever, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Asia and the Near East. Bever remarked in brief oral comments at the hearing that 97 out of 99 of USAID activities in Iraq have been completed, and the other 2 will be completed in a month.
III. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers witness was J. Joseph Tyler, Acting Deputy Director of Military Programs. Tyler testified orally that the Iraq reconstructors are in the process of consolidating offices, and he stated that the consolidation will be completed next month.
No one mentioned that Congress will be adjourned for fall recess over the date that the funding authorization is set to expire, or that congressional elections will be held on November 7 of this year, or that Congress will hold a lame duck session between the election and the end of the year. But these are also time constraints and must be factors in any thinking about Iraq.
The White House is set on its foreign policy of war crime, a vile and thuggish vector set with tactics of cover up and cabal it relies on its GOP Congress to deliver. The domestic effect of a war in Iraq costing at least $2 billion per week is to undermine the full faith and credit of the American people. An emotionally stunted president with a lifelong case of frattitude is bent on reducing the populace to the condition he obviously thinks FDR should have left them in, a nation of Joads. Yet the Democrats, who could easily attack and expose the ridiculous pretence of a war on terror, are seemingly fooled or intimidated into not doing so.
But on top of the ongoing war disasters, a deadline for new appropriations for an unconstitutional war and for some aid to the Iraqis, shortly before or after fall elections, is a particularly unhappy situation. It will be up to the press and the public to try to see it clearly. Traditional party structure does not seem to be up to the challenge.
Stumble It!