Rebuilding Aid Unspent, Tapped to Pay Expenses

[RedEarth]

By Jonathan Weisman and Ariana Eunjung Cha, Washington Post Staff Writers

Seven months after Congress approved the largest foreign aid package in history to rebuild Iraq (news - web sites), less than 5 percent of the $18.4 billion has been spent and occupation officials have begun shifting more than $300 million earmarked for reconstruction projects to administrative and security expenses.



Recent reports from the Coalition Provisional Authority, the CPA's inspector general and the U.S. Agency for International Development attest to the growing difficulties of the U.S.-led reconstruction effort. And they have raised concerns in Congress and among international aid experts that the Bush administration's ambitious rebuilding campaign is adrift amid rising violence and unforeseen costs.


Rep. Jim Kolbe (news, bio, voting record) (R-Ariz.), chairman of the House Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee, cited "bureaucratic infighting" and a "loss of central command and control" at a hearing yesterday as he sharply questioned top administration officials: "I have very serious concerns about the pace of assistance in Iraq and the management of those funds."


Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz pointed to successes in rebuilding and blamed contracting snafus for some of the delays. But Richard L. Armitage, the deputy secretary at the State Department, which will take over from the CPA this summer, refused to make what he called "excuses."


"Of course we're not satisfied," he said. "We feel the same sense of urgency that Paul feels to get on with it."


more......
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1802&ncid=1802&e=3&u=/washpost/20040430/ts_washpost/a54692_2004apr29

[achtung_circus]

1. Riiiggghhhttt.

"We feel the same sense of urgency that Paul (Wolfowitz) feels to get on with it."

The same urgency "Paul" feels to count accurately past 10 without taking his shoes and socks off?

If you can transfer $700,000,000 from Afghanisatan ti Iraq then what's a mere $300,000,000?
Second thought added on edit, 2 thoughts in 1 day???

[finecraft]

2. Prison Trainers and Mentors..Hmmmmmm

This is included in the last part of this article:
(snip) "Congress pared back Bush's $400 million request for two new prisons to $100 million; so far, only "the initial scope of work" has been approved. The Defense Department did shift $15 million from judicial security to prisons to fund 107 contractors "as trainers and mentors."

Gee....I wonder if these are the same contractors mentioned in this article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1206725,00.html

(snip)..."Use of private contractors in Iraqi jail interrogations highlighted by inquiry into abuse of prisoners

The scandal has also brought to light the growing and largely unregulated role of private contractors in the interrogation of detainees.

According to lawyers for some of the soldiers, they claimed to be acting in part under the instruction of mercenary interrogators hired by the Pentagon." (end snip)

This whole situation makes me sick.