Iraqi 'government' refuses to take control of Iraq

All those 'good news' stories out of Iraq in which schools and hospitals have been rebuilt have left out the end results. From the New York Times via TPM:

...of 2,797 completed projects costing $5.8 billion, Iraq’s national government had, by the spring of this year, accepted only 435 projects valued at $501 million.

Of the projects taken over by the Iraqi government, the Iraqi's have not been able to operate many of them.

In one of the most recent cases, a $90 million project to overhaul two giant turbines at the Dora power plant in Baghdad failed after completion because employees at the plant did not know how to operate the turbines properly and the wrong fuel was used. The additional power is critically needed in Baghdad, where residents often have only a few hours of electricity a day. [Snip]

In fact, in the first two quarters of 2007, Mr. Bowen said, his inspectors found significant problems in all but 2 of the 12 projects they examined after the United States declared those projects completed.

This problem is not going to get better.

So far, the United States has declared that $5.8 billion in American taxpayer-financed projects have been completed, but most of the rest of the projects within a $21 billion rebuilding program that Mr. Bowen examined in the report are expected to be finished by the end of this year. Some of that money is also being used to train and equip Iraqi security forces rather than finance construction projects.

This does not indicate any likelihood at all the the U.S. will find it possible to 'win' in Iraq. The current Iraqi 'government' cannot succeed in gaining control of Iraq, and the Republican Administration cannot manage Iraq by itself. Under these conditions there is no possibility of bringing any form of stability to that nation.

In short, American success in Iraq is impossible. That is true no matter how success in Iraq is defined! There is no effective Iraqi government (outside of Iraqi Kurdistan) that Americans can depend on, and for the U.S. to adequately occupy Iraq would require at least half a million troops or more along with a U.S. draft to supply those troops. All of that is true even if the international repercussions of an attempt by the U.S. to actually gain and keep control of Iraq were ignored.

Those conditions are impossible to meet. Knowing that, the Bush administration has not even tried. The only question is when the U.S. troops will leave Iraq.