Reconstruction Deceit

[Truth Seeker]

The whole Iraq affair has been littered with lies from the coalition and all parties interested in the strategic capability of Iraq. We have seen the pre war intelligence deceit, motives for war deceit, the Al Qaeda deceit, the sovereignty deceit and now we are seeing the reconstruction deceit.

 

The American Government has promised at $18.4 billion for reconstruction in Iraq but the reality has been that the majority of it has yet to be spent. In addition to these funds are the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI) – a fund established by the UN in May 2003 to collect Iraq's oil revenues. It had a total cash inflow, as of June 18, 2004, of over $20 billion, with almost $9 billion available for spending.

 

The finance has clearly been available for reconstruction to begin in full earnest yet the following statistics attest to the fact that reconstruction has been neglected.

 

 Only $3.2bn of the $18.4bn reconstruction budget has been spent.

 

 Only $2.5bn has been used from the DFI. This was money that was supposed to be covered by the reconstruction budget.

 

 Only $13.7 billion of the $58 billion pledged and allocated world-wide to rebuild Iraq has been spent. The biggest chunk of that money has been used to run Iraq's ministry operations.

 

Taking this into account shows that very little has been spent at all. When we further look into how the few monies that are spent are being spent highlight the deceit that the whole reconstruction rhetoric actually is.

 

 According to Charles Adwan of Transparency International, quoted on US National Public Radio's Marketplace programme, "at least 20% of US spending in Iraq is lost to corruption".

 

 Marie DeYoung audited accounts for Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR (responsible for some of the biggest reconstruction contracts). She claims there was no effort to hold down costs, she repeatedly complained to superiors of waste and fraud. The company's response, according to DeYoung was: "We can be as dumb and ****** as we want in the first year of a war, nobody’s going to care."

 

 DeYoung produced documents detailing alleged waste even on routine services: $50,000 a month for soda, at $45 a case; $1 million a month to clean clothes — or $100 for each 15-pound bag of laundry.

 

 The Coalition Provisional Authority’s inspector general issued three reports that highlighted serious management difficulties at the CPA. The reports found that the CPA wasted millions of dollars at a Hilton resort hotel in Kuwait because it didn't have guidelines for who could stay there, lost track of how many employees it had in Iraq and didn't track reconstruction projects funded by international donors to ensure they didn't duplicate U.S. projects.

 

 Billions of dollars from the Iraqi oil revenues have been diverted to “a host of poorly planned projects,” according to Iraq Revenue Watch, a program of George Soros’s Open Society Institute. “The lack of planning and the huge funds on tap for cash give-aways and other highly discretionary programs have paved the way for corruption and waste,” the organisation wrote in June.

 

The consequences of such deceit are immeasurable for the Muslims of Iraq where many of them are much worse now than prior to the war. According to calculations in the General Accounting Office report it offers a bleak assessment of Iraq after 14 months of U.S. military occupation. Among its findings and other reports:

 

 In 13 of Iraq's 18 provinces, electricity was available fewer hours per day on average last month than before the war. Nearly 20 million of Iraq's 26 million people live in those provinces.

 

 The country's court system is more clogged than before the war, and judges are frequent targets of assassination attempts.

 

 The new Iraqi civil defence, police and overall security units are suffering from mass desertions, are poorly trained and ill-equipped.

 

 Iraqi children perish for want of medicines and equipment in Iraq’s under-funded hospitals while U.S. Treasury officials have billions of dollars of Iraqi oil revenues stashed away in secondary “slush funds” and U.S. Treasury bills.

 

 The Associated Press reported on June 4: “At Baghdad’s General Teaching Hospital for Children, children die each week from diarrhoea because of poor sanitation, shortages of medical equipment and poorly trained staff . . .. Even though improved medical care is a stated priority of U.S. occupation authorities, medicine is still costly and in short supply.”

 

 The hospital’s sewage system has largely collapsed and is working at 10 to 20 percent of capacity. The hospital also lacks air conditioning.

 

 Most hospital deaths—between 15 and 20 a month—are from secondary infection, mainly because of the unsanitary hospital conditions.

 

It is also alleged that Iraq’s oil revenues have been mismanaged and that untold millions have been siphoned off into unregulated “slush funds.” This should not be surprising considering that reconstruction of Iraq is being handled by capitalist nations whose sole motivator are there own interests irrespective of the cost to humanity. What is clearly being seen in Iraq is mass corruption, misappropriation of wealth whilst the Muslims of Iraq are lying in a pitiful state.

 

It is only when the Muslims of Iraq are able to decide their own political destiny without the presence of its occupiers and imposed puppet Government will the Muslims of Iraq be able to once again realise its glorious history of being the centre of the Islamic world when the seat of the Islamic Khilafah was in Baghdad.

 

It was only then were the Muslims able to have their basic needs fully provided for, by rulers that understood the obligations it had to its citizens. It was in this very setting was found one of the greatest centres of learning and gave rise to the first hospitals and advances in all aspects of science and technology.