Results mixed on repairing what we broke over there . . .
Riverbend's blog has occasionally reported on how day to day life in Baghdad has been for herself and her family. Sometimes they have electricity, sometimes not. Water can be limited. I'm not sure how the flow of oil from the Iraqi wells impacts on those folks. We can assume that, at the very least, lack of oil production impacts on their emerging nation's budget.
A quote from a Washington Post story, "Security costs slow Iraq Reconstruction," points to limited success:
"Despite $5.7 billion committed to restoring electricity service in Iraq, power generation was still at lower levels as of May than it had been before the U.S. invasion in 2003. In one case, the GAO reported, the United States led an overhaul of an Iraqi power plant but then did not adequately train the Iraqis how to operate it. A widespread power outage resulted.
Crude oil production has also dropped in the past two years, even with more than $5 billion in U.S. and Iraqi funds available for rebuilding. Oil export revenue is needed to fund more than 90 percent of the nascent Iraqi government's 2005 budget, the State Department has said."
It is so very difficult to sort out my ambivalent feelings about this dilemma. On the one hand, I want life to be so much better for River and others like her in "post-war" Iraq. I feel almost like I know her through reading her blog for many months. I care about her safety and well-being.
On the other hand, my "social-worker self" also cares deeply about the safety and well-being of our own most vulnerable citizens. This is budget and appropriations time for the U.S. Congress, and some of our domestic programs have been cut to fulfill the obligations to the military effort in Iraq.
What I don't care so much about at all is the huge financial windfall to U.S. contracters doing reconstruction over there. It feels like not enough help filters down to the most vulnerable of either U.S. or Iraqi citizens.
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