Accounting and Accountability: "Last month we learned that the United States, while it has spent vast sums on the war in Iraq, has so far provided almost no aid. Of $18.4 billion in reconstruction funds approved by Congress, only $400 million has been disbursed.
Almost all of the money spent by the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq until late June, came from Iraqi sources, mainly oil revenues. This revelation helps explain one puzzle: the sluggish pace of reconstruction, which has yet to restore many essential services to prewar levels.
... the [Iraq] war, fed by the failure of reconstruction, goes on. The transfer doesn't seem to have made any difference: more American soldiers were killed in the first three weeks of July than in all of June, even though Knight-Ridder reports that the U.S. military has stopped patrolling in much of Anbar Province, the heart of the insurgency.
And while the U.S. has yet to disburse any significant amount of aid, the Government Accountability Office says that war costs for this fiscal year alone will run $12.3 billion above Pentagon projections.
Will anyone be held accountable? "
- posted by geoff @ #