Iraq Deconstructed

[EV_Ares]

By Roger McShane
Posted Sunday, April 29, 2007, at 6:03 AM ET

The New York Times leads with, while the Washington Post stuffs, American inspectors in Iraq finding that in a sampling of eight reconstruction projects officially declared successes by the U.S. government, seven are now "crumbling." The Post leads with a local report on carbon dioxide emissions, but fronts the administration failing to collect most of the aid offered by allies in response to Hurricane Katrina. The Los Angeles Times leads with Republican struggles to raise money and recruit candidates for the 2008 congressional elections due to the president's unpopularity.

Republicans have often sought more coverage of the positive news coming out of Iraq, but the NYT's lead probably isn't what they had in mind. The Times reports that when U.S. government inspectors examined eight "successful" reconstruction projects, ranging from a maternity hospital to an airport power station, they found that seven "were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle." Recommendations to fix some of the problems were dismissed by the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad as an effort to micromanage Iraqi affairs.

The inspections were carried out by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (which Duncan Hunter tried to do away with last year). In a bit of mixed news, the office says its findings aren't a true statistical measure of the reconstruction's (lack of) success because the sample wasn't random. The reason the sample wasn't random: Many projects are in areas too unsafe to visit.

http://www.slate.com/id/2165260/fr/flyout