Reconstruction ? Not Going Well.

Whenever we see the President and His (capitalization of the H intentional) people speak of how incredibly well the war in Iraq is going…and no, I’m not speaking of the insurgency being in their last throes…we’re often fed a completely misdirected, black=white, up=down view of the world for us to feed on.

One of the most echoed Republican talking points is of how well the rebuilding is going. That despite the nation we’ve occupied over 2 years now doesn’t have steady power, other significant utilities or the freedom to allow any Western person to walk around on most city streets, there are schools and buildings and businesses springing up everywhere. Iraq is the new SIM city, and the liberal media – you know with its members who compare Bin Laden to Democrats on their cable talk shows – are just ignoring the amazing progress we’re making.

Well, according to the latest report by the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq, the reconstruction effort – the ONLY thing the Administration can tout, other than freedom flowers sprouting all over the Middle East like dandelions isn’t exactly going well.

The “first draft” report, (considered by one authority on the rebuilding to be "gutsy and honest”) describes an almost child-like division among the various groups.

According to the report:

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…”It almost looks like a spoils system between various agencies," said Steve Ellis, a vice president and an authority on the Army corps at Taxpayers for Common Sense, an organization in Washington, who read a copy of the document. "You had various fiefdoms established in the contracting process."

Read on here.