The MSM Hard at Work

Listen to the cynicism from the state parrots. They call having electricity less than 4 hours a day and gasoline that is 10 times the cost it was 4 years ago "lackluster services."

Report raps poor planning for Iraq reconstruction
POSTED: 4:58 a.m. EDT, March 22, 2007

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Planners for Iraq reconstruction did not anticipate conditions after the 2003 invasion, setting the scene for lackluster services that still plague the country, according to a report by the Pentagon's inspector.

The report, released Thursday, made nine recommendations for improvements for future nation-building plans by the United States.

Among the suggestions is for Congress to develop better coordination between the Departments of Defense and State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the primary agencies that work with other governments and international agencies.

"There is fairly wide agreement that pre-war planning for relief and reconstruction should have been better, and one of the challenges we are seeing in reviewing that is the interagency problem," Special Inspector General Stuart Bowen told reporters Wednesday ahead of the report's release.

The efforts of the Defense Department, USAID and the State Department "bumped into each other," causing much of the difficulty, Bowen said.

"There was a lack of clarity of roles and responsibility and a lack of effective joint-ness. By that I mean a unity of command, and that needs to be developed before we go to war," he said.

The initial plan, the new report says, was for an Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) to handle reconstruction efforts. That office's plan, picked up by the Coalition Provisional Authority in April 2003, was for Iraq to "assume complete sovereignty, including full responsibility for relief and reconstruction efforts" within 12 to 18 months of the start of the war.

Read it here.