Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?
Or a few billion dollars...
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Billions of dollars short, U.S. must scale back Iraq reconstruction
By Seth Borenstein
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Posted on Tue, Oct. 18, 2005
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration cannot fulfill all its grand promises to rebuild Iraq because soaring security costs, mismanagement and poor planning have cost billons of dollars, federal auditors said Tuesday.
Some projects - including those to provide clean water for Iraqis - have been cancelled as a result.
In one case, security costs for a U.S. Agency for International Development program on economic reform increased from $894,000 to $37 million, an auditor told Congress. And hundreds of millions of dollars is being diverted to pay for training for Iraqis and for the maintenance of new facilities - expenses overlooked in the initial U.S. planning for the reconstruction, auditors said.
