skunk
Aug 6, 2004, 06:25 PM
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/9339578.htm
Deepening anti-U.S. rage casts doubt on Iraq leaders' ability to restore order
BY TOM LASSETER
BAGHDAD, Iraq - (KRT) - After the past two days of fighting in southern and central Iraq, the difference between firebrand cleric Muqtada al Sadr and Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi couldn't be any more clear: Al Sadr has an army, and Allawi does not.
In Iraq, security is politics. When Allawi took office, the self-styled strongman lost little time before declaring that his government wouldn't tolerate the insurgency that's swept the country.
But as in previous battles, when al Sadr's Mahdi Army militia began to overrun Najaf and several neighborhoods from Baghdad to Basra, the Iraqi police force and national guard fought for a little while, then ran.
And as in previous battles, Iraq's Achilles' heel was revealed: To defend their country, Allawi and the interim government must go to the American military, an institution that's widely reviled by many Iraqis as an occupational force run amok.
Allawi's Cabinet has approved an emergency provision that would allow for something like a state of emergency to be declared, and he's expected to announce at least a partial state of emergency at a news briefing scheduled for Saturday.
But even if such a measure were imposed, it's not clear that Iraqi forces have the training or equipment to enforce it outside Baghdad, a capital that's looking increasingly besieged.
As Marine Col. Anthony Haslam put it Friday in Najaf: "We are trying to train them and equip them as best we can, but they just have AK-47s and they need some heavy machine guns and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades), because that's what's out on the street."
Al Sadr's men certainly didn't seem worried about the Iraqi government or its security apparatus Friday.
Speaking at the Imam al Khadim shrine and mosque in one of Baghdad's predominantly Shiite Muslim neighborhoods, al Sadr cleric Hazim al Arajie took the Iraqi interior minister to task for saying that those who were battling American forces in Najaf and elsewhere were gangsters who would be run out of Iraq.
"We're warning you that if you're going to say these words again, we'll take you from your house and send you to hell," al Arajie said in remarks directed toward the minister, Falah Hassan al Naqib.
Many in Iraq take al Sadr's popularity as a sign of the U.S. failure to provide an alternative. The militia, it seems, may not be as much a coordinated fighting force as an expression of Iraqi rage at the American presence.
"The Iraqis are frustrated by the heat, the lack of water and the lack of electricity," said Sadoun al Dulame, the head of an independent research center in Baghdad. "All that we have gotten is talk and promises, but nothing has actually been done."
In Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood, there are long gas lines, a near-epidemic of typhoid and hepatitis due to poor-quality water, and an electrical grid that provides only six hours of power daily for many residents.
Adel Hamid, a vegetable merchant in Sadr City, which was named for al Sadr's late father, said that over the course of about 15 months of suffering through a lack of basic services, he'd come to see the Americans as the enemy.
"The fight will continue and (Allah willing) we will be victorious," Hamid said. "I will sacrifice my three boys for the Sadr movement; they are in the Mahdi Army now to protect the city."
It just doesn't get any better, does it? Why has so little been spent on infrastructure? What has the US done with the money?
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5360442/
Sorry, I posted this before, but it needs revisiting when you read reports like the above.
Iraq, not U.S., cash spent on rebuilding
Only 2 percent of $18.4 billion U.S. aid package has been used to rebuild infrastructure, restore services
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Updated: 11:11 p.m.*ET July*03, 2004
BAGHDAD, July 3 - The U.S. government has spent 2 percent of an $18.4 billion aid package that Congress approved last year after the Bush administration called for a quick infusion of cash into Iraq to finance reconstruction, according to figures released Friday by the White House.
The U.S.-led occupation authorities were much quicker to channel Iraq's own money, expending or earmarking nearly all of $20 billion in a special development fund fed by the country's oil sales, a congressional investigator said.
Only $366 million of the $18.4 billion U.S. aid package had been spent as of June 22, the White House budget office told Congress in a report that offers the first detailed accounting of the massive reconstruction package.
Thus far, according to the report, nothing from the package has been spent on construction, health care, sanitation and water projects. More money has been spent on administration than all projects related to education, human rights, democracy and governance.
Of $3.2 billion earmarked for security and law enforcement, a key U.S. goal in Iraq, only $194 million has been spent. Another central objective of the aid program was to reduce the 30 percent unemployment rate, but money has been spent to hire only about 15,000 Iraqis, despite U.S. promises that 250,000 jobs would be created by now, U.S. officials familiar with the aid program said.
U.S. officials involved in the reconstruction blame security concerns and bureaucratic infighting between the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House for delays in the allocation of funds. By the time the Pentagon's contracting office in Baghdad began awarding contracts, the risk of kidnapping and other attacks aimed at foreign workers was so dire that many projects never began. Several Western firms that won contacts have summarily withdrawn their employees from Iraq.
Fewer than 140 of the 2,300 reconstruction projects that were to be funded with the U.S. aid package are underway, the officials said.
Spending patterns
Officials with the contracting office contend the amount of money actually spent does not reflect the full scope of work being performed. A more accurate figure, they said, is the amount of money allocated for reconstruction work. Just over $5.2 billion had been allocated as of June 22, according to the White House budget report.
"The money that is disbursed is typically not disbursed until the work is completed, so it doesn't give the best picture of what's going on," said John Proctor, a spokesman for the contracting office. "Some of our projects take months, or even years, to complete."
Proctor said actual spending had increased to $400 million since the figures were provided to the White House on June 22.
Spending patterns have been different with the Iraqi money. The Coalition Provisional Authority, the now-dissolved U.S.-led occupation administration, spent or locked in for future programs more than $19 billion from the $20 billion Development Fund for Iraq, which was established by the U.N. Security Council to manage Iraq's oil revenue, said Joseph A. Christoff, director of international affairs and trade at the General Accounting Office, the watchdog arm of Congress.
Christoff said in a telephone interview on Saturday that all but $900 million of the fund had been spent or allocated by the time the United States transferred political authority to an interim Iraqi government last Monday.
Some Iraqi officials have criticized the contrasting spending practices. The occupation authorities "came here and spent a lot of our money but very little of theirs," said a senior Iraqi official, who spoke on condition of anonymity on the ground that criticism could affect his relationship with the new U.S. Embassy here.
The official did not contest the CPA's decision to use the development fund money to pay the expenses of running Iraq's government during the occupation, but he condemned spending on what he called "less essential projects that should have been left up to the Iraqis to decide."
"They wanted to do things their way before they left," the official said.
Input from the Iraqis
The CPA appears to have earmarked more than $6 billion of the Iraqi funds over the past two months alone, as it prepared to hand over political authority -- and control over the development fund -- to the interim Iraqi government. As of May 6, the CPA had earmarked only $13 billion from the fund, according to a GAO report released this week.
Allocations and disbursements from the development fund were made by the 12-member Program Review Board, a committee composed of Americans representing the CPA, Iraqis from the U.S.-appointed government and officials from the governments of Britain and Australia. Most of the voting members were non-Iraqis.
"It was a CPA-run thing," the senior Iraqi official said. "There was lots of talk about taking input from the Iraqis, but in the end, they made all the decisions."
At a meeting on May 15, the board allocated $2 billion, according to minutes of the session posted on the CPA's Web site. Among the commitments were $500 million for Iraqi security forces, $315 million for electricity repairs, $460 million to rehabilitate the oil industry and $180 million to fund a property-claims commission.
It was not clear what specific projects would be funded in the security, electricity and oil sectors. The CPA had already earmarked $3.2 billion for security, $5.5 billion for electricity and $1.7 billion for the oil industry from the $18.4 billion aid package, although little of that money has been spent.
WTF? :confused:
Deepening anti-U.S. rage casts doubt on Iraq leaders' ability to restore order
BY TOM LASSETER
BAGHDAD, Iraq - (KRT) - After the past two days of fighting in southern and central Iraq, the difference between firebrand cleric Muqtada al Sadr and Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi couldn't be any more clear: Al Sadr has an army, and Allawi does not.
In Iraq, security is politics. When Allawi took office, the self-styled strongman lost little time before declaring that his government wouldn't tolerate the insurgency that's swept the country.
But as in previous battles, when al Sadr's Mahdi Army militia began to overrun Najaf and several neighborhoods from Baghdad to Basra, the Iraqi police force and national guard fought for a little while, then ran.
And as in previous battles, Iraq's Achilles' heel was revealed: To defend their country, Allawi and the interim government must go to the American military, an institution that's widely reviled by many Iraqis as an occupational force run amok.
Allawi's Cabinet has approved an emergency provision that would allow for something like a state of emergency to be declared, and he's expected to announce at least a partial state of emergency at a news briefing scheduled for Saturday.
But even if such a measure were imposed, it's not clear that Iraqi forces have the training or equipment to enforce it outside Baghdad, a capital that's looking increasingly besieged.
As Marine Col. Anthony Haslam put it Friday in Najaf: "We are trying to train them and equip them as best we can, but they just have AK-47s and they need some heavy machine guns and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades), because that's what's out on the street."
Al Sadr's men certainly didn't seem worried about the Iraqi government or its security apparatus Friday.
Speaking at the Imam al Khadim shrine and mosque in one of Baghdad's predominantly Shiite Muslim neighborhoods, al Sadr cleric Hazim al Arajie took the Iraqi interior minister to task for saying that those who were battling American forces in Najaf and elsewhere were gangsters who would be run out of Iraq.
"We're warning you that if you're going to say these words again, we'll take you from your house and send you to hell," al Arajie said in remarks directed toward the minister, Falah Hassan al Naqib.
Many in Iraq take al Sadr's popularity as a sign of the U.S. failure to provide an alternative. The militia, it seems, may not be as much a coordinated fighting force as an expression of Iraqi rage at the American presence.
"The Iraqis are frustrated by the heat, the lack of water and the lack of electricity," said Sadoun al Dulame, the head of an independent research center in Baghdad. "All that we have gotten is talk and promises, but nothing has actually been done."
In Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood, there are long gas lines, a near-epidemic of typhoid and hepatitis due to poor-quality water, and an electrical grid that provides only six hours of power daily for many residents.
Adel Hamid, a vegetable merchant in Sadr City, which was named for al Sadr's late father, said that over the course of about 15 months of suffering through a lack of basic services, he'd come to see the Americans as the enemy.
"The fight will continue and (Allah willing) we will be victorious," Hamid said. "I will sacrifice my three boys for the Sadr movement; they are in the Mahdi Army now to protect the city."
It just doesn't get any better, does it? Why has so little been spent on infrastructure? What has the US done with the money?
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5360442/
Sorry, I posted this before, but it needs revisiting when you read reports like the above.
Iraq, not U.S., cash spent on rebuilding
Only 2 percent of $18.4 billion U.S. aid package has been used to rebuild infrastructure, restore services
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Updated: 11:11 p.m.*ET July*03, 2004
BAGHDAD, July 3 - The U.S. government has spent 2 percent of an $18.4 billion aid package that Congress approved last year after the Bush administration called for a quick infusion of cash into Iraq to finance reconstruction, according to figures released Friday by the White House.
The U.S.-led occupation authorities were much quicker to channel Iraq's own money, expending or earmarking nearly all of $20 billion in a special development fund fed by the country's oil sales, a congressional investigator said.
Only $366 million of the $18.4 billion U.S. aid package had been spent as of June 22, the White House budget office told Congress in a report that offers the first detailed accounting of the massive reconstruction package.
Thus far, according to the report, nothing from the package has been spent on construction, health care, sanitation and water projects. More money has been spent on administration than all projects related to education, human rights, democracy and governance.
Of $3.2 billion earmarked for security and law enforcement, a key U.S. goal in Iraq, only $194 million has been spent. Another central objective of the aid program was to reduce the 30 percent unemployment rate, but money has been spent to hire only about 15,000 Iraqis, despite U.S. promises that 250,000 jobs would be created by now, U.S. officials familiar with the aid program said.
U.S. officials involved in the reconstruction blame security concerns and bureaucratic infighting between the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House for delays in the allocation of funds. By the time the Pentagon's contracting office in Baghdad began awarding contracts, the risk of kidnapping and other attacks aimed at foreign workers was so dire that many projects never began. Several Western firms that won contacts have summarily withdrawn their employees from Iraq.
Fewer than 140 of the 2,300 reconstruction projects that were to be funded with the U.S. aid package are underway, the officials said.
Spending patterns
Officials with the contracting office contend the amount of money actually spent does not reflect the full scope of work being performed. A more accurate figure, they said, is the amount of money allocated for reconstruction work. Just over $5.2 billion had been allocated as of June 22, according to the White House budget report.
"The money that is disbursed is typically not disbursed until the work is completed, so it doesn't give the best picture of what's going on," said John Proctor, a spokesman for the contracting office. "Some of our projects take months, or even years, to complete."
Proctor said actual spending had increased to $400 million since the figures were provided to the White House on June 22.
Spending patterns have been different with the Iraqi money. The Coalition Provisional Authority, the now-dissolved U.S.-led occupation administration, spent or locked in for future programs more than $19 billion from the $20 billion Development Fund for Iraq, which was established by the U.N. Security Council to manage Iraq's oil revenue, said Joseph A. Christoff, director of international affairs and trade at the General Accounting Office, the watchdog arm of Congress.
Christoff said in a telephone interview on Saturday that all but $900 million of the fund had been spent or allocated by the time the United States transferred political authority to an interim Iraqi government last Monday.
Some Iraqi officials have criticized the contrasting spending practices. The occupation authorities "came here and spent a lot of our money but very little of theirs," said a senior Iraqi official, who spoke on condition of anonymity on the ground that criticism could affect his relationship with the new U.S. Embassy here.
The official did not contest the CPA's decision to use the development fund money to pay the expenses of running Iraq's government during the occupation, but he condemned spending on what he called "less essential projects that should have been left up to the Iraqis to decide."
"They wanted to do things their way before they left," the official said.
Input from the Iraqis
The CPA appears to have earmarked more than $6 billion of the Iraqi funds over the past two months alone, as it prepared to hand over political authority -- and control over the development fund -- to the interim Iraqi government. As of May 6, the CPA had earmarked only $13 billion from the fund, according to a GAO report released this week.
Allocations and disbursements from the development fund were made by the 12-member Program Review Board, a committee composed of Americans representing the CPA, Iraqis from the U.S.-appointed government and officials from the governments of Britain and Australia. Most of the voting members were non-Iraqis.
"It was a CPA-run thing," the senior Iraqi official said. "There was lots of talk about taking input from the Iraqis, but in the end, they made all the decisions."
At a meeting on May 15, the board allocated $2 billion, according to minutes of the session posted on the CPA's Web site. Among the commitments were $500 million for Iraqi security forces, $315 million for electricity repairs, $460 million to rehabilitate the oil industry and $180 million to fund a property-claims commission.
It was not clear what specific projects would be funded in the security, electricity and oil sectors. The CPA had already earmarked $3.2 billion for security, $5.5 billion for electricity and $1.7 billion for the oil industry from the $18.4 billion aid package, although little of that money has been spent.
WTF? :confused:
