This week the circus came to town. Not Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, but Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, and with it the three rings of a five-plus year war and occupation, politicians in their populist best pitches and the media echo of what’s going on with Iraq’s oil revenue.
Petraeus, the commander of coalition forces in Iraq, and Crocker, the top U.S. diplomat in the country, were obliged to lead what was for this week the greatest political show on Earth: explaining the meaning of the war a year after the “surge” in U.S. troops led to a decrease in violence (aside from the massive uptick over the past two weeks).
The two said Iraq is improving its ability to spend money on reconstruction and most new U.S. spending, outside of security, would be on capacity-building needed to spend the funds.
The five years have meant hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer spending — mostly on military — and Congress is asking now “for what?” And Congress — armed with a failed “benchmark” of passing an oil law, the inclusion of which may have added a fracture in the polarized Baghdad political scene — breathed fire on Iraq’s leadership for how it uses its oil revenue and turned the snake charmer onto Americans and the media.
“U.S. efforts to date have not resulted in key Iraqi ministries having the capacity to effectively govern and assume increasing responsibility for operating, maintaining, and further investing in reconstruction projects,” former chief U.S. auditor David Walker testified before a Senate committee last month.
Anthony Cordesman, Iraq expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, points to a Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction report published in January that between 2003 and 2008, $50.6 billion of Iraq’s money was spent on reconstruction, $47.5 billion was spent in U.S. funds and nearly $16 billion in other donations.
“In short, we used more of their money for reconstruction than ours,” he told United Press International.
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