"Iraqi, Not U.S., Cash Spent on Rebuilding"
Article about the slow rate of spending of money allocated by Congress despite administration claims to its urgency.
Biden's comment at the end is what rings truest to me in all of this. It's unfortunate the Bush administration couldn't have been more organized.
Excerpts:
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. ...
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.
[But] 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. ...
Some Iraqi officials have criticized the contrasting spending practices. ... 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. ...
The CPA appears to have earmarked more than $6 billion of the Iraqi funds over the past two months alone. ...
Two former CPA officials involved in contracting issues said the CPA spent money from the development fund faster because it was not governed by the same rules requiring competitive bidding as the money from Congress was. ... U.S. officials have said that Halliburton was among the firms to receive no-bid contracts from the Program Review Board. ...
"It's unacceptable for this to have taken so long," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. Biden, who recently returned from Iraq, said he "learned from our military commanders that these projects have a direct bearing on their ability to defeat the insurgency."
Biden's comment at the end is what rings truest to me in all of this. It's unfortunate the Bush administration couldn't have been more organized.
Excerpts:
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. ...
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.
[But] 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. ...
Some Iraqi officials have criticized the contrasting spending practices. ... 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. ...
The CPA appears to have earmarked more than $6 billion of the Iraqi funds over the past two months alone. ...
Two former CPA officials involved in contracting issues said the CPA spent money from the development fund faster because it was not governed by the same rules requiring competitive bidding as the money from Congress was. ... U.S. officials have said that Halliburton was among the firms to receive no-bid contracts from the Program Review Board. ...
"It's unacceptable for this to have taken so long," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. Biden, who recently returned from Iraq, said he "learned from our military commanders that these projects have a direct bearing on their ability to defeat the insurgency."
// 7/03/2004 
