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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (38509)	8/8/2008 4:55:45 AM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 224748

NYT Ed: One of the Bush administration’s most damaging postinvasion decisions is at the heart of this problem. In its ill-considered dismissal of everybody who had any connection to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, American overseers depleted the ranks of Iraqi bureaucrats who had the skills and experience to run an oil-producing country of about 27 million people. As the Congressional investigators found, Iraq now lacks the trained professionals to prepare and execute budgets and to solicit, award and oversee capital projects. The United States must redouble its efforts to help Iraq build this capacity, including bringing back skilled Iraqis who have fled the country. Congress is finally losing patience with the indefensible image of Americans paying historic high gasoline prices while Iraq pockets huge profits and Americans underwrite Iraq’s rebuilding. Like Democrat Carl Levin and Republican John Warner, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, we question the Pentagon’s decision to spend $33 million from an emergency fund on an economic zone at Baghdad International Airport. Iraq has committed $44.8 million to the project but should pay for the whole thing. It is good — for Iraq and for the world economy — that Iraq is getting back into the oil business. But it still has a long way to go before it fully assumes responsibility for itself and its future. That must include spending its own money for its own enormous and unfulfilled reconstruction needs.