Pets

One thing which has been telling throughout the last few years (Jeebus, it's been *a few years*) is how much the "Iraq War Is Our Only Hope" crowd has been much more enthusiastic about covering up any problems and any culpability of Dear Leader than they have been about, you know, trying to make sure the whole thing was done right. If I had signed on, as much as Chris "I consider myself enlisted in it" Hitchens had in the mostest necessary war ever, then I think doing it right would have been a priority.

But, mostly we've had crickets.

The first official history of the $25 billion American reconstruction effort in Iraq depicts a program hobbled from the outset by gross understaffing, a lack of technical expertise, bureaucratic infighting, secrecy and constantly increasing security costs, according to a preliminary draft copy of the document dated. The document, which begins with the secret prewar planning for reconstruction and touches on nearly every phase of the program through 2005, was assembled by the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction and debated last month in a closed forum by roughly two dozen experts from outside the office.

...

In the document, the paralyzing effect of staffing shortfalls and contracting battles between the State Department and the Pentagon, creating delays of months at a stretch, are described for the first time from inside the program.

The document also recounts concerns about writing contracts for an entity with the "ambiguous legal status" of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the question of whether it was an American entity or a multinational one like NATO.

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. At the time, a retired admiral, David Nash, was in charge of the rebuilding. "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."

All along the 101st Fighting Keyboarders have at best been trying to prove anti-war people wrong and more frequently trying to portray them as traitors. Maybe if they'd fed and cared for their pet a bit more dilligently things would've worked out a bit better.