Iraq reconstruction called $100B failure

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 (UPI) -- U.S. efforts to rebuild Iraq have been a $100 billion failure, hampered by poor pre-invasion planning and ongoing turf wars, a federal report says.

"Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience," compiled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, says no single U.S. agency has ever been in charge of reconstruction efforts in Iraq, which, combined with unrealistic pre-war planning by the Bush administration, has led to the waste of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars, The New York Times reported Sunday.

Authored by Republican lawyer Stuart Bowen Jr., the report is based on approximately 500 new interviews, as well as more than 600 audits, inspections and investigations, the newspaper said. In it, Bowen says the Pentagon's "blinkered and disjointed prewar planning for Iraq's reconstruction," later coupled with botched catch-up efforts to quickly expand reconstruction efforts, made for lackluster results.

Five years after the invasion of Iraq, the report contends, rather than helping to build the country into a modern democracy, the reconstruction program has never been successful at more than restoring some of the infrastructure destroyed in the 2003 invasion and the looting that followed, the Times said.