Hard Lessons

Hard Lessons
Author: United States. Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction
Publisher: Government Printing Office
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN:

Product Description: The billions of dollars expended in Iraq constitute the largest relief and reconstruction exercise in American history. SIGIR's lessons learned capping report characterizes this effort in four phases (pre-war to ORHA, CPA, post-CPA/Negroponte era, and Khalilzad, Crocker, and the Surge). From this history, SIGIR forwards a series of conclusions and recommendations for Congress to consider when organizing for the next post-conflict reconstruction situation. Over the past five years, the United States has provided nearly fifty billion dollars for the relief and reconstruction of Iraq. This unprecedented rebuilding program, implemented after the March 2003 invasion, was developed to restore Iraq's essential services, build Iraq's security forces, create a market-based economy, and establish a democratic government--all in pursuit of U.S. interests in a stable and free Iraq. Did the U.S. rebuilding program achieve its objectives? Was the money provided well-spent or wasted? What lessons have we learned from the experience? Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience, a report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), answers these and other important questions by presenting a comprehensive history of the U.S. program, chiefly derived from SIGIR's body of extensive oversight work in Iraq, hundreds of interviews with key figures involved with the reconstruction program, and thousands of documents evidencing the reconstruction work that was - or was not - done. The report examines the limited pre-war planning for reconstruction, the shift from a large infrastructure program to a more community-based one, and the success of the Surge in 2007 and beyond. Hard Lessons concludes that the U.S. government did not have the structure or resources in place to execute the mammoth relief and reconstruction plan it took on in 2003. The lessons learned from this experience create a basis for reviewing and reforming the U.S. approach to contingency relief and reconstruction operations.

The Occupation of Iraq: Volume 2

The Occupation of Iraq: Volume 2
Author: Stefan Talmon
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 2025
Release: 2014-07-18
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1782250182

The invasion and occupation of Iraq rank among the most controversial and complex issues in international law in recent history. This volume of documents covers the occupation of Iraq from the planning stages of the invasion of Iraq in early 2002 to the transfer of governing authority to the Iraqi Interim Government on 28 June 2004. The book presents 595 selected documents including the first complete set of all Regulations, Orders, Memoranda and Public Notices issued by the US-led occupation administration of Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), several of which were never published on the CPA`s website or promulgated in Alwaqai Aliraqiya, the Official Gazette of Iraq. Some of these legal acts have shaped the economic and political system of present day Iraq and will be part of the country`s legal order for years to come. The book also includes some 120 other CPA and CPA-related documents selected from more than 5000 unclassified CPA documents and received under freedom of information requests lodged in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Switzerland. These documents include instructions and proclamations to the Iraqi people in the early stages of the occupation, organizational charts, internal legal opinions, diplomatic notes, international agreements concluded by the CPA with other States, and numerous internal memoranda for the head of the CPA, Ambassador Paul L Bremer, on legal, diplomatic and political issues. The book also presents for the first time all 235 resolutions passed by the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) between July 2003 and June 2004. The resolutions as well as many of the 25 other important IGC documents (including various political statements, press releases and decrees of the Council`s Higher National De-Ba`athification Commission) have been translated from Arabic and are presented here for the first time in English. These documents are complemented by the relevant United Nations documents on the occupation of Iraq as well as some 50 policy documents of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Iraqi opposition movement as well as all relevant fatwas (religious rulings) of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani which shaped the internal Iraqi political process during the occupation. This collection archives these important documents for future use and makes them easily accessible to researchers and professionals. Considering that the main source of information for the occupying powers in Iraq were the precedents set during the First and Second World Wars, the occupation of Iraq will serve as a modern precedent for future administrations of occupied territory. The documents are made easily accessible by a comprehensive table of documents, a list of abbreviations, more than 1100 explanatory notes and cross-references and a substantive subject index. This volume is the second on The Occupation of Iraq. It is complemented by a monograph by the same author which, on the basis of the documents collection, presents a comprehensive analysis of The Governance of Occupied Territory in Contemporary International Law.

Iraq and the United States

Iraq and the United States
Author: Anthony H. Cordesman
Publisher: CSIS
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 0892065958

If Iraq and the United States are to win the war in any meaningful and lasting sense, they must translate the Strategic Agreement they signed in November 2008 into a lasting and functional strategic partnership. In the process, the United States must put Iraq firmly in the lead, but sustain the kind of aid and advice that will help Iraq make further progress in political accommodation, the quality of governance, economic development, and security. The CSIS Burke Chair in Strategy conducted a detailed analysis of the current situation in Iraq, the challenges Iraq faces, and the actions the United States needs to take to help Iraq meet those challenges. Its report provides a detailed risk assessment of current and potential levels of violence in Iraq. It addresses the levels of political accommodation and stability and the problems Iraq still faces in the aftermath of the national election. It also addresses the opportunities and problems in developing Iraq's petroleum sector; investment and development issues in other sectors, the problems in the Iraqi budget forecasts, and progress in Iraqi reconstruction. It evaluates the need for continued economic aid and advice and describes U.S. options for extending such assistance. The concluding section examines progress in creating Iraqi military and police forces. It examines the role the United States can play in helping Iraq further develop such forces and analyzes what a strategic partnership, based on the Strategic Agreement, should mean.

Hard Lessons: the Iraq Reconstruction Experience

Hard Lessons: the Iraq Reconstruction Experience
Author: Stuart W. Bowen
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
Total Pages: 508
Release: 2009-05
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1437912745

A combination of poor planning, weak oversight and greed cheated U.S. taxpayers and undermined American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. taxpayers have paid nearly $51 billion for projects in Iraq, including training the Iraqi army and police and rebuilding Iraq's oil, electric, justice, health and transportation sectors. Many of the projects did not succeed, partly because of violence in Iraq and friction between U.S. officials in Washington and Iraqi officials in Baghdad. The U.S. gov¿t. "was neither prepared for nor able to respond quickly to the ever-changing demands" of stabilizing Iraq and then rebuilding it. This report reviews the problems in the war effort, which the Bush admin. claimed would cost $2.4 billion. Charts and tables.

Ending the U.S. War in Iraq

Ending the U.S. War in Iraq
Author: Richard R. Jr. Brennan
Publisher: Rand Corporation
Total Pages: 607
Release: 2013-11-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0833080504

Ending the U.S. war in Iraq required redeploying 100,000 military and civilian personnel; handing off responsibility for 431 activities to the Iraqi government, U.S. embassy, USCENTCOM, or other U.S. government entities; and moving or transferring ownership of over a million pieces of property in accordance with U.S. and Iraqi laws, national policy, and DoD requirements. This book examines the planning and execution of this transition.

The Tail Wags the Dog

The Tail Wags the Dog
Author: Efraim Karsh
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2015-08-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1632861194

The continuing crisis in Syria has raised questions over the common perception of Middle Eastern affairs as an offshoot of global power politics. To Western intellectuals, foreign policy experts, and politicians, “empire” and “imperialism” are categories that apply exclusively to Europe and more recently to the United States of America. As they see it, Middle Eastern history is the product of its unhappy interaction with these powers. Forming the basis of President Obama's much ballyhooed “new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world,” this outlook is continuing to shape crucial foreign policy among Western governments, but in these pages, Efraim Karsh propounds a radically different interpretation of Middle Eastern experience. He argues that the Western view of Muslims and Arabs as hapless victims is absurd. On the contrary, modern Middle Eastern history has been the culmination of long-existing indigenous trends. Great power influences, however potent, have played a secondary role constituting neither the primary force behind the region's political development nor the main cause of its notorious volatility. Karsh argues it is only when Middle Eastern people disown their victimization mentality and take responsibility for their actions and their Western champions drop their condescending approach to Arabs and Muslims, that the region can at long last look forward to a real “spring.”

The Struggle for Iraq's Future

The Struggle for Iraq's Future
Author: Zaid Al-Ali
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2014-02-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0300187262

An unbarred account of life in post-occupation Iraq and an assessment of the nation's prospects for the future