Condescending and Insulting is how I read it.
Yeah, we gotta show the Iraqis -- a 7,000 year old civilization -- how to build a society.
Talk about your American ARROGANCE!
Maybe we could LEARN SOMETHING from the Iraqis instead -- if we ever gave them a chance.
"Teaching local Iraqis to govern may take years" by Pauline Jelenek/Associated Press October 19, 2007
WASHINGTON - Teaching local officials in Iraq to govern themselves and provide their citizens with basic services will take "years of steady engagement." It also will rely heavily on the US government's ability to recruit skilled civilians, investigators told a House panel yesterday.
[So we will have to STAY LONGER, right? Sigh!]
"Stability operations is not a game for pick-up teams," said Robert Perito, a security specialist at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington.
[Then why was this mismanaged so badly? It's been FIVE YEARS!!!!]
The United States has dispatched various provincial reconstruction teams, known as PRTs, to Iraq and Afghanistan to mentor Iraqis in towns and provinces. Staffed mostly by civilian officials, with the military providing security, the teams show promise but with an effectiveness that is difficult to judge because the needs vary greatly from province to province.
The special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction concluded in a new report yesterday that the teams are making "incremental progress" but require "years of steady engagement."
Stuart W. Bowen Jr., head of the inspector general's reconstruction office, said lessons learned from the teams point to a need for better coordination among the federal agencies:
"If the story of Iraq reconstruction tells anything, teaches any lesson, it is that the US government was not well structured and was not well poised in 2003 to engage in the kind of postconflict relief and reconstruction operations we have faced."
There are more than two dozen of the teams operating in Iraq, and the United States has provided $1.9 billion to support them as of August.
[But YOU don't need that money HERE, Amurkn!]
The report said:
"In many locations, the PRT program in Iraq is making incremental progress in developing the nation's provincial and local government capacity to effectively govern and manage its own reconstruction, despite continuing violence and strife. However, Iraq's complex and overlapping sectarian, political and ethnic conflicts, as well as the difficult security situation continue to hinder progress in promoting economic development, the rule of law and political reconciliation."
[Yeah, how is that "reconstruction" effort going, anyway?]
"Head of Reconstruction Teams in Iraq Reports Little Progress Throughout Country" by JAMES GLANZ
BAGHDAD, Oct. 18 — Attempts by American-led reconstruction teams to forge political reconciliation, foster economic growth and build an effective police force and court system in Iraq have failed to show significant progress in nearly every one of the nation’s provincial regions and in the capital, a federal oversight agency reported on Thursday.
The report, by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, comes as the United States tries to take advantage of a drop in overall violence to create a functioning government here.
The release of the report was linked to testimony on Thursday by the special inspector general, Stuart W. Bowen Jr., before the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee.
There are bright spots in the effort to put together a functioning nation, Mr. Bowen found: economic growth in the Kurdish north; tribal reconciliation in the western desert province of Anbar; and patchy progress in the development of local governments. Beyond that, some of the provinces are showing increasing ability to create plans, write contracts and carry out construction projects to rebuild Iraq’s physical infrastructure, the report says.
A central finding of the report, Mr. Bowen said in his testimony, was that even with 32 of the teams, called provincial reconstruction teams, or P.R.T.’s, now deployed around the country at a cost of $1.9 billion as of August, the program still has not developed concrete methods to measure the effects of the teams on progress in the country.
[Then how do they actually know it's getting better? WTF?
I am so sick of being LIED TO!!!
This is just like Puke-tray-us!
It's getting better in Iraq, even if we don't know or are lying.
OPEN UP, Amurka!]
Mr. Bowen said his office had recommended a year ago that more definite performance measures be put in place.
Mr. Bowen, according to a transcript of his remarks by the Federal News Service:
“I would like to have been able to come today and tell you that those plans have been developed and those metrics are being applied, but they haven’t.”
Still, the report did find that the teams had made “incremental progress” in selected areas “despite continuing political and ethnic conflicts, as well as the difficult security situation.”
[It's a government report, right? Pffffftttt!]
The counselor for public affairs at the United States Embassy in Baghdad, Philip T. Reeker, said, without specifying details, that the embassy had some reservations about the way Mr. Bowen’s office had gauged progress by the P.R.T.’s in Iraq.
But Mr. Reeker added, “We share many of the report’s observations and its assessment that P.R.T.’s have achieved measurable progress in a short period of time under very challenging circumstances.”
[In other words, we like the good stuff, and dispute the bad stuff!
Translation: WE LIE!!!]
The teams were assembled to promote reconciliation, support counterinsurgency operations, foster development and build the capacity of local officials to govern, Mr. Reeker said. “Implementing democratic, transparent governance takes time and requires long-term commitment,” he said.
[Oooooh, so some of the "reconstruction" missions were COUNTER-TERRORISM, huh?
Like the Asymmetrical Warfare Group operating in country.
Or such programs such as Operation Gladio, Operation Northwoods, the Salvador Option, and the Pentagon's "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group."
And what about the British agents who are the stars of the Prop 201 tutorial?
Did I also mention the FRU?
Oh, O.K.
And WE ARE NEVER LEAVING, are we?]
Perhaps the most revealing information in the report emerges not from the grading of the teams themselves, but in the extraordinary geographic reach they provide in observing and assessing the current state of play in the areas of politics, economics, security and the rule of law in Iraq.
The report collected observations from most of the 32 teams, and pieced together an almost encyclopedic view that has been sorely lacking as both the American and Iraqi governments try to gauge how far the country has come in binding its wounds, creating functioning institutions and restoring services.
The picture that emerges is far from confidence-inspiring, and raises the question of whether any Western program, no matter how well founded, can overcome the challenges of putting Iraq back together again.
[Good Lord!!!
So AmeriKa SMASHES the place, and "oh, well."
That's all we ever do, dammit!!!
ASSHOLE BUSH!!!!]
Dividing the country into five regions in order to assess problems and progress, the report gave, at best, mixed grades to all five.
In the northern provinces, the report found, “efforts have failed to significantly influence sectarian and tribal leaders to address the issue of reconciliation.” Uncertainty over the fate of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which at some point must decide whether or not to join the semiautonomous provinces in the far north, “is casting a shadow over the region,” the report found.
In the center, where Baghdad is located, local institutions are taking over functions once carried out by United States officials. But getting Iraqis to take responsibility for maintaining facilities built by the United States, like water treatment plants or office buildings, “remains a significant challenge,” the report found.
In the province of Diyala, just to the east of Baghdad, there have been moves toward reconciliation, “but it will take years to overcome ill will between tribes.”
The provinces just to the south of Baghdad are “economically stagnant” and in the southern provincial capital of Basra, the small- and medium-size businesses that flourished before the 2003 invasion have since withered.
“Efforts to restart them are stymied by a lack of skill or interest,” the report found.
Even in Anbar, where the tribes have joined with the United States to fight militants associated with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is foreign-led, a lack of fuel and reliable electricity is hindering economic development, the report found.
In spite of those challenges, Mr. Reeker of the United States Embassy said, the presence of the teams in the provinces to collect such detailed information in a country still clouded by the fog of war is in itself an advantage for the American effort here.
“Reporting and analysis from the field makes a huge difference — that we have people out in the field to do that,” Mr. Reeker said."
[Hell of a "LIBERATION," huh, readers?]
