Bush Administration has decided to stop funding Iraq reconstruction efforts

According to the Washington Post (link above), officials have said The Bush administration does not intend to seek any new funds for Iraq reconstruction in the budget request going before Congress in February:

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.

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."

But the general misses the point that we've failed to even do that, and it's one of the reasons we are losing this war. We've abandoned many of the projects already, and without continued funding, the Iraqi reconstruction effort, for all intents and purposes, will be dead.

When a majority of Iraqis don't have reliable electricity and running water, if any at all, this creates unrest that can and has bread insurgency. Simply put, our failure to bring about much of a sense of normality to the Iraqi people has lead many of them to turn to the very radicals that are now plaguing us.

It also makes you wonder what Republicans are talking about when they say the "liberal" media isn't talking about the great things that are happening in Iraq. While it's true that death, bombings, etc. make for more interesting news, what exactly else would there be to show if most reconstruction projects are quickly vanishing? The answer is "not much" and that's why the focus is on and will continue to be on the assault on our troops and Iraqi civlians that is happening everyday and not the rebuilding of this country which is not.