State, Pentagon split on Iraq aid

WASHINGTON, May 16 (UPI) -- The Pentagon and the State Department remain deadlocked over how to administer U.S. aid to Iraq, a military expert warned Wednesday.

"The situation is made still worse, at least in Iraq, by serious differences in the field between the Department of Defense and State and military and civilians, as to how to handle almost every aspect of aid," Anthony H. Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said in a statement Wednesday.

"Other departments have many experts in terms of U.S. needs and experience, but few with direct skill sets that can be immediately transferred to Iraq," Cordesman said.

"Moreover, getting effective aid programs generally requires 18-24 month deployments -- not short-term presence -- and career civilians are grossly underpaid relative to contractors, many of which ruthlessly game their government supervisors to maximize profits at the expense of effectiveness," he said.

Cordesman's warning follows recent reports that U.S. military officials are complaining that State Department officials in Iraq, especially in the Green Zone in Baghdad, are not responding to their concerns and cooperating effectively.

Relations between the two huge U.S. federal bureaucracies of Defense and State in Iraq have been bad ever since former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, during his six years running the Defense Department, effectively froze State out of the interagency consultative process on Iraq issues.