News from the people assessing the war's damage in Iraq and trying to fix it...and it ain't looking good (so what else is new?).

Eight Weeks in Baghdad
We're Getting In Our Own Way

By Timothy Carney
Sunday, June 22, 2003; Page B0

(Timothy Carney, a former U.S. ambassador to Haiti and Sudan, just completed 90 days of work on reconstruction in Iraq. His views do not necessarily reflect U.S. policy or analysis.)

I should have had an inkling of the trouble ahead for our reconstruction team in Iraq from the hassle we had just trying to get there. About 20 of us from the Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) showed up at a military airport in Kuwait on April 24 for a flight to Baghdad. But some general's plane had broken down, so he had taken ours. A couple of hours passed before we could get another. Upon arrival in Baghdad, we discovered that the military convoy scheduled to pick us up at the airport had given up and left. We had to wait two more hours before ORHA scrounged another convoy to fetch us.

Those delays were prophetic, signs of the low priority and scarce resources given to the U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq so far. I just finished eight hot, dusty weeks there trying to get the Ministry of Industry and Minerals running again. I offer these vignettes to show how flawed policy and incompetent administration have marred the follow-up to the brilliant military campaign to destroy Saddam Hussein's regime. It will take the determination and imagination of Iraqis themselves to make nation-building there a success...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17934-2003Jun20.html