U.S. Tells How
Billions of Dollars Would Rebuild Iraq

VERNON LOEB / Washington Post 25sep03

$4 Million for Area Codes, $303 Million for Railroads, $240 Million for Road and Bridge Repairs

The Bush administration yesterday provided extensive detail to congressional committees in support of its $20.3 billion request for rebuilding Iraq, including items as large as $2.9 billion for upgrading power generation and as small as $4 million to create a nationwide system of area codes and telephone numbers.

Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee's foreign operations subcommittee grilled L. Paul Bremer, the diplomat overseeing the U.S. occupation of Iraq, on many specifics, including $400 million for two 4,000-bed maximum security prisons and $800 million for a corps of 1,500 international police trainers.

"I can't believe the Iraqis can't build prisons for less than $50,000 per bed," Rep. David R. Obey (Wis.), the committee's ranking Democrat, said. "They've been doing it for a lot of years."

But beyond the tough questioning by Democrats, the administration's 53-page budget justification underscored the complexities involved in rebuilding a country almost from scratch, describing proposed outlays for traffic police ($50 million) and irrigation culverts on the Euphrates River ($50 million) and training for air traffic controllers ($10 million).

The proposal by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority even includes $15 million to fund an Iraqi human rights office and pay for research into past atrocities, documentation of crimes against Iraqi citizens, forensic training for government officials probing mass graves and counseling for victims' families.

"Iraq has undergone decades of trauma due to the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein," the document states. "We require $15 million to support Iraqis to begin the reconciliation and healing process."

The $20.3 billion request for reconstructing Iraq, part of the administration's $87 billion supplemental request for the coming fiscal year to support the war on terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, is dominated by spending proposals in four broad areas: $5.7 billion to rehabilitate and upgrade Iraq's electric power infrastructure; $4.2 billion to fund and equip the new Iraqi police, military and constabulary forces; $3.7 billion to upgrade water and sewer systems; and $2.1 billion to upgrade Iraq's oil industry, the economic engine that must eventually support the new government.

In an indication that some of these numbers may underestimate the task ahead, Iraq's public works minister told reporters at the Pentagon yesterday that only half the Iraqi population had access to safe drinking water and that as much as $8 billion is needed to fix the problem. "The task is huge because we have inherited 35 years of neglect to public services," said Nesreen Barwari, who was in Washington to lobby Congress for more help. "It won't be achieved in the coming months."

The document breaks down improvements in all four areas into dozens of individual building blocks.

Funds to upgrade the oil industry, for example, include $55 million for a rapid pipeline repair team to counteract sabotage and $8 million for the personal security of the Iraqi oil minister and his director generals, as requested by Gen. John Abizaid, head of the Central Command and the U.S. military's top commander in Iraq.

A $2 billion proposal for a new 40,000-member Iraqi Army includes everything from $137.2 million for helicopter and medium airlift plans to $6 million to send promising Iraqi officers to overseas academies.

Beyond these four dominant development thrusts involving national security, electric power, water resources and oil infrastructure, the request includes hundreds of relatively large expenditures on programs often taken for granted but necessary for functioning society. The plan includes $150 million for a nationwide 911 system, $200 million to secure judges and courthouses from terrorist attacks and $100 million for a witness protection program.

It includes $303 million to restart Iraq's railroads, $165 million to upgrade airports and $240 million to fix roads and bridges.

When Obey questioned building prisons that cost $50,000 per bed, Bremer responded that costs are being driven partly by the lack of a prosaic building material, cement. Building prisons in Iraq, Bremer said, requires imported cement.

Although most of the fireworks came from the Democratic side of the subcommittee, the administration's spending plan raised a few Republican eyebrows, as well.

Rep. Mark S. Kirk (R-Ill.) asked why the southern city of Basra needed a new $150 million, state-of-the-art children's hospital, when the administration was proposing spending only $393 million to refurbish 200 of Iraq's remaining 240 hospitals, with a goal of reducing infant mortality by 50 percent.