HOW THEY SCREWED UP THE OCCUPATION

From the New York Times courtesy of This Modern World:

Iraq Rebuilding Badly Hobbled, U.S. Report Finds

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.

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.

A person at the forum provided a copy of the document, dated December 2005, to The New York Times. The inspector general's office, whose agents and auditors have been examining and reporting on various aspects of the rebuilding since early 2004, declined to comment on the report other than to say it was highly preliminary.

"It's incomplete," said a spokesman for the inspector general's office, Jim Mitchell. "It could change significantly before it is finally published."

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.

Click here for the rest.

You know, I've been reading some fairly recent interviews with Noam Chomsky, and one theme that keeps coming up is how puzzled he is by how badly US forces did during the aftermath of the Iraq invasion. He, too, thought it was going to be a "cake walk," that Iraq was weak, which is why he pretty much assumes that it was all a case of gross incompetence on a historic level. Turns out that he's absolutely right. If we had all known this before Katrina hit, nobody would have been surprised by the "heckuva job" Brownie did leading FEMA. At this point, I think it's pretty clear that opposition to the White House has nothing to do with ideology or the conservative/liberal dichotomy: Bush and his cronies should be opposed by all Americans because they simply don't know how to do anything in the way of running the nation's business. In short, the White House is occupied by major losers no matter how you look at it.

Is anyone serious about impeachment yet?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$