Saturday, January 28, 2006
Report RhetIraq: Iraq Reconstruction
Who: Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction
Source: The New York Times
Quotes: From article titled, "Iraq Rebuilding Badly Hobbled, U.S. Report Finds"
The first official history of the $25 billion American reconstruction effort in Iraq depicts a program hobbled from the outset by gross understaffing, a lack of technical expertise, bureaucratic infighting, secrecy and constantly increasing security costs, according to a preliminary draft.
The document, which begins with the secret prewar planning for reconstruction and touches on nearly every phase of the program through 2005, was assembled by the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction and debated last month in a closed forum by roughly two dozen experts from outside the office.
A person at the forum provided a copy of the document, dated December 2005, to The New York Times. The inspector general's office, whose agents and auditors have been examining and reporting on various aspects of the rebuilding since early 2004, declined to comment on the report other than to say it was highly preliminary.
"It's incomplete," said a spokesman for the inspector general's office, Jim Mitchell. "It could change significantly before it is finally published."
In the document, the paralyzing effect of staffing shortfalls and contracting battles between the State Department and the Pentagon, creating delays of months at a stretch, are described for the first time from inside the program.
The document also recounts concerns about writing contracts for an entity with the "ambiguous legal status" of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the question of whether it was an American entity or a multinational one like NATO.
Seemingly odd decisions on dividing the responsibility for various sectors of the reconstruction crop up repeatedly in the document. At one point, a planning team made the decision to put all reconstruction activities in Iraq under the Army Corps of Engineers, except anything to do with water, which would go to the Navy. At the time, a retired admiral, David Nash, was in charge of the rebuilding.
Finally, a list of mostly large projects in several infrastructure areas, including oil, electricity, water, health care and security, was settled on. But a bottleneck immediately arose as the contracting process descended into chaos, the document says. One informer for the inspector general said there were "about 20 different organizations undertaking contracting."
"The C.P.A. was contracting, companies were contracting subcontractors, and some people who didn't have authority such as the ministries were also awarding contracts," the informer told the inspector general.
Source: The New York Times
Quotes: From article titled, "Iraq Rebuilding Badly Hobbled, U.S. Report Finds"
The first official history of the $25 billion American reconstruction effort in Iraq depicts a program hobbled from the outset by gross understaffing, a lack of technical expertise, bureaucratic infighting, secrecy and constantly increasing security costs, according to a preliminary draft.
The document, which begins with the secret prewar planning for reconstruction and touches on nearly every phase of the program through 2005, was assembled by the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction and debated last month in a closed forum by roughly two dozen experts from outside the office.
A person at the forum provided a copy of the document, dated December 2005, to The New York Times. The inspector general's office, whose agents and auditors have been examining and reporting on various aspects of the rebuilding since early 2004, declined to comment on the report other than to say it was highly preliminary.
"It's incomplete," said a spokesman for the inspector general's office, Jim Mitchell. "It could change significantly before it is finally published."
In the document, the paralyzing effect of staffing shortfalls and contracting battles between the State Department and the Pentagon, creating delays of months at a stretch, are described for the first time from inside the program.
The document also recounts concerns about writing contracts for an entity with the "ambiguous legal status" of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the question of whether it was an American entity or a multinational one like NATO.
Seemingly odd decisions on dividing the responsibility for various sectors of the reconstruction crop up repeatedly in the document. At one point, a planning team made the decision to put all reconstruction activities in Iraq under the Army Corps of Engineers, except anything to do with water, which would go to the Navy. At the time, a retired admiral, David Nash, was in charge of the rebuilding.
Finally, a list of mostly large projects in several infrastructure areas, including oil, electricity, water, health care and security, was settled on. But a bottleneck immediately arose as the contracting process descended into chaos, the document says. One informer for the inspector general said there were "about 20 different organizations undertaking contracting."
"The C.P.A. was contracting, companies were contracting subcontractors, and some people who didn't have authority such as the ministries were also awarding contracts," the informer told the inspector general.
