Blow It Up, Blow the Money, Go Home

If you need any further evidence of the complete bankruptcy of the Bushwar in Iraq, there is this from the Washington Post: [my interpolations in blue]

The Bush administration does not intend to seek any new funds for Iraq reconstruction in the budget request going before Congress in February, officials say. The decision signals the winding down of an $18.4 billion U.S. rebuilding effort in which roughly half of the money was eaten away by the insurgency, a buildup of Iraq's criminal justice system and the investigation and trial of Saddam Hussein.

Of course, this doesn't count the billions in bribes, kickbacks, fraud and excessive profits by Halliburton and other Bushcorpse pals. Iraq still doesn't have reliable electricity, water or sewage; except for the right to get purple on your finger every few months, Iraqi daily life is worse off than it was under Saddam, apart from thousands of violent deaths.

As for Saddam's trial, the evidence of his torturing people is at this point a highly embarrassing reminder of Bushcorpse torturing people, and not just in Iraq as Saddam did, but in secret prisons throughout Europe and Asia, and at Guantanamo.

AND Iraqis are still be tortured by their government, or rogue elements of it. A month or so ago we had the extraordinary complaint of the country's president that the police or militias or the army (who knows which is which?) were torturing lots of people. Just like the good old days.

Just under 20 percent of the reconstruction package remains unallocated. When the last of the $18.4 billion is spent, U.S. officials in Baghdad have made clear, other foreign donors and the fledgling Iraqi government will have to take up what authorities say is tens of billions of dollars of work yet to be done merely to bring reliable electricity, water and other services to Iraq's 26 million people.

"The U.S. never intended to completely rebuild Iraq," Brig. Gen. William McCoy, the Army Corps of Engineers commander overseeing the work, told reporters at a recent news conference. In an interview this past week, McCoy said: "This was just supposed to be a jump-start."

When the U.S. began the "reconstruction," they employed big U.S. firms, all Bushcorpse pals, instead of contracting with Iraqis who had built the infrastructure in the first place. These companies brought in cheap foreign labor to increase their profits, and Iraqi men had something like a 50% unemployment rate. That act of stupidity, corruption and paternalism led to complete failure, and now that the place is in utter chaos, Bushcorpse decides to leave it to the people they should have financed in the beginning.