And the Iraqis will shower us with flowers!

For all of the Republican cheerleaders who have continually bleated about our awesome progress in Iraq over the last 5 years, the New York Times has an article about a new report that's circulating in Washington about the tens of billions of U.S. dollars wasted on unmanaged, failed Iraqi infrastructure construction projects.

During the whole Iraq fiasco, I always thought that as long as we could restore and improve the Iraqi infrastructure, we'd have a chance at eventual peace. It seemed like a reasonably simple, though expensive, task. Unfortunately, the Administration totally bungled it and then lied about the results they were getting.

This conversation is very telling:

On the eve of the invasion, as it began to dawn on a few officials that the price for rebuilding Iraq would be vastly greater than they had been told, the degree of miscalculation was illustrated in an encounter between Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, and Jay Garner, a retired lieutenant general who had hastily been named the chief of what would be a short-lived civilian authority called the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.

The history records how Mr. Garner presented Mr. Rumsfeld with several rebuilding plans, including one that would include projects across Iraq.

“What do you think that’ll cost?” Mr. Rumsfeld asked of the more expansive plan.

“I think it’s going to cost billions of dollars,” Mr. Garner said.

“My friend,” Mr. Rumsfeld replied, “if you think we’re going to spend a billion dollars of our money over there, you are sadly mistaken.”

The Administration had their heads way up their butts on this one. They were so wrong about everything, they were approaching Bill Kristol levels of wrongness. And that's saying something.