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Economic reconstruction

Explore the complex landscape of economic reconstruction in Iraq, including issues of waste, fraud, and corporate greed. Learn about the challenges faced, the failures encountered, and the limited successes achieved in rebuilding the country. Discover the factors that hindered Iraq's economic renewal and the impact on the Iraqi people.

johnolsen
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Economic reconstruction

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  1. Economic reconstruction Waste, fraud, and corporate greed

  2. Wolfowitz: • Rebuilding would take only six months. • Coalition partners would kick in money. • Iraq would pay for its own reconstruction (mostly by generating oil revenues).

  3. Reconstruction was going to cost far more than planned for two reasons: • Problems with oil production. • The complexity of the situation on the ground.

  4. Two types of funds for the reconstruction of Iraq: • The Iraqi funds ($12 billion); • US taxpayers money (total: over $300 billion; $30 billion for rebuilding the country);

  5. Not a lot of thought given to: • whether Iraq’s economy could handle such a large infusion of cash: • whether the Iraqis had the training and management abilities to run such a big investment, • or whether the country could support such projects in the future.

  6. The restoration of Iraq • Did not spark an economic renewal • Did not win the trust of Iraqi people and • Has not made Iraq more peaceful.

  7. Successes: • Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi troops have been trained; • Tens of thousands of children vaccinated; • Thousands of schools restored: the US used Bechtel and other contractors to rehab more than 5000 schools – a little more than a third of all schools in Iraq; • Some 47,000 teachers went through training sponsored by USAID; • US funds purchased million of new textbooks for Iraqi children. • Scores of governments buildings, police stations, and border outposts refurbished).

  8. Failures: • Oil production was below prewar levels; • Electricity is also below prewar levels; • As much as 60 percent of the water leaked out of pipes, and 20 percent of the sewage leaked out; • Poor public health conditions. • Infant mortality and death from infectious diseases remain about the same in the spring of 2006 as prior to the war; • Life expectancy went below 60.

  9. Why failures? • The CPA failed to establish any control over the money after it was shipped to Iraq, • $8.8 billion in the Iraqi funds could not be accounted for. • U.S. officials had no way of knowing whether the cash would wind up in enemy hands

  10. The total was spent in the following way: • --34 percent for security and justice. • --23 percent to try to generate and distribute electricity. Still, the report noted, output in the last quarter averaged below pre-war levels. • --12 percent for water. • --12 percent for economic and societal development. • --9 percent for oil and gas. • --4 percent for transportation and communications. • --4 percent for health care.

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