Iraq rebuilding woes due to poor planning

updated 4:33 p.m. ET Dec. 14, 2008

WASHINGTON - A detailed official history of the U.S. effort to reconstruct Iraq after Saddam Hussein's overthrow in 2003 blamed its failings on "blinkered and disjointed" prewar planning, a deadly insurgency and wasteful and ill-managed contracting.

The 500-plus page document also asserts that the Bush administration, in early stages of the war, exaggerated the number of Iraqi forces trained to help American troops provide adequate security.

The study, "Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience," was produced by a special U.S. auditing group that has dug deeply into the multibillion-dollar reconstruction effort since 2004. It is a detailed summation of the findings from many previous audits and reviews by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, led by Stuart Bowen.

Among its central conclusions is that Washington was unprepared and ill-equipped to reconstruct Iraq in the aftermath of an invasion that led to an insurgency, a collapse of government and an economy that "switched off." The document also suggests that this arose from an ill-fitting U.S. national security structure, which it said could produce an equally ineffective reconstruction effort in future conflicts.

Billions spent so far on reconstruction
Thus far the United States has spent about $50 billion on Iraq reconstruction.

To the question posed by Bowen — Did the reconstruction program meet the goals it set for itself? — the document says the answer is generally "no" with regard to rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, but generally "yes" on developing Iraqi security forces, which are now in charge of the majority of Iraqi provinces.

The New York Times and ProPublica, an online investigative journalism project, were first to report on the Bowen document, which is in draft form. Both publications posted the document on their Web sites Sunday.

Bowen spokeswoman Kristine Belisle declined to release the report Sunday. The final version is to be submitted to the first hearing, in February, of the independent Commission on Wartime Contracting, set up this year to look at the systemic problems in the federal government's contracting for logistical support, security and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pentagon and State Department spokesmen declined to comment on the document, saying they had not seen the draft.

Virtually all of the significant conclusions in the document have been stated before, including the problem of a lack of security, turbulence caused by civilian personnel turnover in Baghdad, waste stemming from inadequate contracting and contract management, and poor integration of U.S. interagency efforts.

The study, the most sweeping of its kind, is the fourth in a series of Bowen's "Lessons Learned" reports. The auditors reviewed contracting, the use of personnel and the management of projects to reach conclusions about shortcomings and to recommend ways of avoiding them.

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