“I’m glad President Bush finally got things right.”
One of the things that were done right is to provide small injections of funds for locally relevant and handled projects. I worked for 3 years as the administrative secretary for something called Small and Impact Projects at an NGO. These were some 600 projects ranging from $100 to $10,000 around 1965, which were developed by the people themselves and funded by us. This is far different from having major corporations like Halliburton or Bectel come in throwing huge amounts of money around that can so easily disappear into the wrong hands.
Another experience I had back then was when taking an official from a small African country to the Science and Technology Museum. We were going through the 19th Century farming exhibit and he became very excited. He pointed to various nonmechanized farm implements and said “This is what we need in my country. These are things our own blacksmiths could make and our people can easily use and repair.” Of course, this would not make the big farm implement companies happy. I was surprised to see all the huge billboard ads for such companies when I went to Nicaragua in 1964. This, of course, was before the dictator Somoza was overthrown. Incidentally, this was partly because after the terrible earthquake they had in Managua, his monopoly cement company was profiteering like mad on the devastated peoples need to rebuild.
The administration of this has been terribly wrong in Iraq, at least where the US military is handling things. The military folks handling this stuff are soldiers, not contractors, and they evidently get no training in contract administration, etc. Lots of money is being handed out, and I suspect many of those dollars are going into funding the fight against us!
A few examples from what my brother found...
He received a request from a village for a wad-o-dough (your $$$ and mine) to paint their town building(s). My brother said it was a lot of money, and rather than give the cash, he could provide paint and brushes for them to do it (they were sitting around 'unemployed'). "Oh, no, they said...we need cash...we have to hire painters from another village, since we don't know how to paint..." My brother said that he'd show them himself how to paint, but suddenly the need for painting wasn't so urgent!“This is what we need in my country. These are things our own blacksmiths could make and our people can easily use and repair.”
He often received requests for funding on projects that we'd already funded multiple times. The Iraqis were intentionally sabotaging things so they could get the $$$ to do repairs. Rather than maintain something, they benefited more by abusing the infrastructure, since they would get more $$$.
Yes, that's a classic story that's often used as an example. If encountered it myself in some minor volunteer consulting I've done...I once spec'd out some low-maintenance pumps for a water-supply project in Africa, but found that they were replaced by higher-tech ones...nice equipment, but I knew it wouldn't last without trained maintenace folks. Why? Because the latter company was a sponsor of this. And I can't wholly fault the administrators for having to go where they were being given equipment, but it sure isn't the best situation.