Shift in priorities for Iraq.

It is hard to believe that it took this much time for the powers to be to realize that security should be the first priority in Iraq. That should have be obvious from the moment the looting started in the first days of the war. What is the sense of repairing and updating the infrastructure when you can't protect it from being destroyed? Unbelievable. It makes you wonder if it is requisite that everyone in this administration have the same mental capacity as Bush

WASHINGTON The new American ambassador in Iraq, concerned about the problems of unemployed Iraqis and by attacks on oil fields, has urged the Bush administration to shift funds away from infrastructure improvements and use it to improve security and job opportunities, Bush administration officials said Monday..
The officials said that under a proposal submitted last week by Ambassador John Negroponte, more than $3.3 billion in aid that had been set aside for improvements in Iraq's utilities - electricity, water and sewage - needed to be spent for other purposes to quickly demonstrate results that could be seen by discontented Iraqis..
The recommended policy shift, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is to be discussed at an interagency meeting as early as this week..
Administration officials said that Negroponte's suggestions also needed to be discussed with budget officials in Congress, which appropriated $18 billion for Iraq's reconstruction last year..
The recommendations are the result of a review that Negroponte did even before he arrived in Baghdad, a State Department official said..
He had reached the conclusion that a lot of the infrastructure improvements that Iraq needs simply cannot go forward unless the security situation is improved..
Of the funds that are proposed to be shifted, $1.8 billion is to help pay for 45,000 new Iraqi police officers, 16,000 new border patrol officers, 99 new border outposts and an additional 20 Iraqi National Guard battalions. A battalion is about 1,000 soldiers..
On top of these expenditures, money is proposed for training and equipment. Another $140 million is proposed for providing assistance for elections that are to be held at the end of this year or the beginning of the next. The United Nations is supposed to be in charge of arranging for the elections, but an administration official said there was a growing feeling the UN may not have the resources to do the job..
At the time of the American handover of power to a newly sovereign government in Iraq in late June, American officials said that one of their greatest disappointments during the occupation was the failure to spend reconstruction funds rapidly enough..
Of the $18 billion appropriated by Congress following the end of major combat, only about $600 million had actually been spent on contracts with companies hired to rebuild Iraq..
As a result, just before the transfer, the occupation shifted $2.5 billion in oil revenues, which were nominally under control of the Iraqi oil and finance ministries, to construction projects that would provide a quick payoff. Iraqis were becoming increasingly skeptical about American intentions. On a visit to Baghdad during the summer, Secretary of State Colin Powell told Americans at the new embassy that he wanted a thorough review of procedures on spending. Aides to Powell said that more specifically, he wanted to know why there had been so many delays..
Administration officials say the delays were a result of many factors, including cumbersome contracting regulations imposed by Congress and a heightened sensitivity over the fact that early in the occupation several contracts were awarded without competitive bidding to Halliburton, the company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney..
When they went into Iraq, many administration development experts approached the aid programs in a traditional way. The idea was that improvement of power generation capacity, electricity lines, water and sewage would lead to larger economic investments down the road. But that view ran into problems with the spread of the anti-American insurgency..
Rebels were attacking oil fields, making it clear that without security, it made little sense to keep spending money to improve oil production equipment..
The New York Times