Experts say Iraq reconstruction funds running low

A study group of independent experts that visited Iraq in late June and early July today told the House Armed Services Committee the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad is in critical need of funds requested in the president's $87 billion fiscal 2004 supplemental spending package.

The team, led by Center for Strategic and International Studies President John Hamre, also concluded that without dramatic improvements in the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the overall effort to rebuild the country would be substantially impeded. Hamre and members of his team testified before the committee as it reviewed the Bush administration's effort to rebuild postwar Iraq with President Bush's requested supplemental appropriations bill.

Since the Hamre team's visit, the administration has launched new efforts to give more control to the Iraqi Army, law enforcement and a new civilian defense force governed by the Iraq Interior Ministry. Peter Rodman, the Pentagon's assistant Defense secretary for international security affairs, told the committee today that turning Iraqi affairs over to Iraqis is a "good definition of the mission we have set for ourselves."

David Oliver, a former Pentagon acquisition official in the Clinton administration and now the Coalition Provisional Authority's chief financial officer in Iraq, also appeared before the committee and said the administration had a "time frame" for handing more direct authority over to local governments in Iraq to distribute funds and provide more immediate response to their needs.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., commended the administration for heeding Hamre's advice. "To its credit, the department both asked for, and quickly embraced, the results of Dr. Hamre's study," Hunter said in his opening statement. "The administration has thus clearly demonstrated a willingness to heed outside advice, when that advice is thoughtfully given."

But Hamre's overall response to the administration's strategic handling of the postwar effort was lukewarm, and he criticized the White House for failing to send a strong message to Americans that the U.S. investment in Iraq is both necessary and well designed.

Hamre, who served at the Pentagon during the Clinton administration as comptroller and later deputy Defense secretary, said the administration's accounting of how funds are being spent is less than satisfactory. And he faulted the Pentagon's handling of the reconstruction effort, adding that while he agrees in theory with the notion that the Defense Department should field the assets required for reconstruction and, therefore, be given authority to undertake such a task, in practice it has not worked.

"The patterns of cooperation inside the government broke down during the past year," Hamre said. "DoD found itself having to manage tasks for which it has no background or competence, and it has not been effective in inviting the support of others in the government who have that background and competence," he added.

However, Hamre praised President Bush's decision to name White House National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to lead a broader interagency effort in Iraq as a step in the right direction. Rodman played down recent media reports that suggest control over Iraq reconstruction has been wrested from the Pentagon, and said the effort has involved interagency cooperation from the start.