Audit: Iraq rebuilding far behind goals

Iraqis work to rebuild water works damaged during the U.S. invasion two years ago in Baghdad (June 22, 2005).

THE US has slumped well short of its goals in rebuilding Iraq, with production in the critical oil sector still languishing below pre-war levels, a government audit warned today.

Targets have also been missed in expanding water and electricity production and a third of Pentagon projects are still to be completed, the Government Accountability Office said in a new report.

And as violence rages on, the security situation may push reconstruction goals further out of reach, the audit said.

Defence Department officials were partly to blame for delays, after making "assumptions about funding and timeframes that later proved to be unfounded," the report said.

Amid continuing accusations of cronyism in the US rebuilding effort in Iraq, the report said that at times the department "did not take advantage of full and open competition during the initial stages of reconstruction".

Oil production, which Bush administration officials once said would help meet vast costs of rebuilding Iraq was in August still below levels reached under Saddam Hussein.

Crude oil production was reported at about 2.4 million barrels a day, below the 2003 prewar level of 2.6 million bpd and the desired goal of 3.0 million barrels, the report found.

Though peak electricity generation capacity, at 4855 megawatts a day was well above pre-war levels, it was still short of a 6000 megawatt target.

In the water sector, new or restored treatment capacity was at about 1.44 million cubic metres a day, a long way from a US goal of 2.4 million cubic metres.

Read the rest at the Daily Telegraph Australia

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