Time and money are running out on the US-directed reconstruction effort in Iraq.
The main conduit for American rebuilding aid - the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund (IRRF) - is scheduled to close at the end of this year.
Almost all the cash Congress has allocated for the fund, some $20 billion in all, has been spent, or will be, in coming months.
Yet many important efforts remain unfinished, for reasons ranging from insurgent attacks to incompetence and contractor corruption. More than 75 percent of oil and gas restoration projects are incomplete, as are 50 percent of electrical and 40 percent of water and sanitation projects, according to the April report of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
The aid effort so far has been largely a fiasco. But that doesn't mean we should just give up and wash our hands of it. That'd be the wrong move strategically--and morally.
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