A Surge Alone

In his January 10 speech announcing the so-called surge in Iraq, Bush noted that a boost in U.S. troops in and of itself would not lead to victory:

A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities....To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs.

Now let's turn to today's New York Times:

In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle.

The United States has previously admitted, sometimes under pressure from federal inspectors, that some of its reconstruction projects have been abandoned, delayed or poorly constructed. But this is the first time inspectors have found that projects officially declared a success--in some cases, as little as six months before the latest inspections--were no longer working properly.

The inspections ranged geographically from northern to southern Iraq and covered projects as varied as a maternity hospital, barracks for an Iraqi special forces unit and a power station for Baghdad International Airport.

At the airport, crucially important for the functioning of the country, inspectors found that while $11.8 million had been spent on new electrical generators, $8.6 million worth were no longer functioning.

At the maternity hospital, a rehabilitation project in the northern city of Erbil, an expensive incinerator for medical waste was padlocked--Iraqis at the hospital could not find the key when inspectors asked to see the equipment--and partly as a result, medical waste including syringes, used bandages and empty drug vials were clogging the sewage system and probably contaminating the water system.

The newly built water purification system was not functioning either.

And these were the successes.

IG officials were not able to examine a statistically significant sampling of projects because it's not safe enough for them to visit many of the projects. Yet the evaluation they conducted does prompt the question: how much of the nearly $30 billion spent by the Bush administration in Iraq on rebuilding has gone down a rathole? (Coming soon: Waxman committee hearings on this?)

The president sold his surge by saying it was part of a comprehensive strategy. In addition to the military effort, he said, there would be reconstruction, national reconciliation, and enhanced training of the Iraqi military. As noted in a post below, there's no enhanced training going on. And this IG report suggests reconstruction is a flop. What's left? The surge--meaning, the surge has become about the surge.

Posted by David Corn at April 30, 2007 12:54 PM