The Foreign Service Journal, March 2006

completed projects and related assets are handed over to the new Iraqi gov- ernment. It is expected that the last 20 percent of the $18.4 billion recon- struction budget will be allocated by the end of the year, and the Bush administration has not included new funding in its 2007 budget request. SIGIR has announced an audit to review overall transition planning; the agency wants to make sure that the U.S. has effectively planned to sustain what it has built. Among the continuing challenges identified is one that Inspector General Bowen calls the “reconstruc- tion gap” — the difference between project plans and expectations and actual outcomes. Covered in the quar- terly report, this topic is also docu- mented in a separate report ( http:// www.sigir.mil/reports/pdf/audits/ 05-029_Final_SIGIR_Audit_ Report_-_Challenges_Faced_-_ IRRF.pdf ). SIGIR auditors attribute the gap to funding reallocations made in late 2004, prompted by the unanticipated persistence of the insurgency and the need for high-impact programs that would show immediate results in terms of employment and living condi- tions. In the areas of electricity and water resources, for example, funding was cut by 23 percent and 50 percent, respectively, and shifted to security and justice and to private-sector devel- opment. Further, auditors found that on any given project security costs eat up from 10 to 25 percent of the bud- get, noting that since the Iraq War began in March 2003, 467 private con- tractors have been killed there. The SIGIR, whose mandate was extended by Congress in November to 10 months after 80 percent of the IRRF funds have been expended, also broke a significant bribery and kick- back scheme involving millions of dol- lars and prosecuted four Americans involved. Besides fighting corruption, the office investigates the sustainabili- ty of the projects undertaken and the validity of their cost-to-complete esti- mates, and has initiated a “Lessons Learned” series of reports evaluating the management processes for Iraq reconstruction. — Susan Maitra Anti-America Card Trumped in Canadian Election “I understand political expediency,” U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins said in a speech to the Canadian Club in Ottawa Dec. 13. “But the last time I looked, the United States was not on the ballot.” The remarks were aimed at former Prime Minister Paul Martin, who tried to tip the balance in the run-up to Canada’s Jan. 23 federal election by playing the anti-America card. Martin, whose two-year-old gov- ernment was toppled in November in a no-confidence motion over a finan- cial scandal, adopted America-bashing at the outset of his campaign. In late December, he turned up the volume with pointed criticism of the U.S. posi- tion on softwood lumber duties and failure to ratify the Kyoto accord. He also began issuing attack ads accusing his Conservative Party opponent, Stephen Harper, of being too close to the U.S. Harper is “Bush’s new best friend,” proclaimed one ad. “Mr. Harper, the United States is our neigh- bor, not our nation,” warned another — the kind of accusations that had sunk Harper’s candidacy in 2004. In the event, it was Martin’s Liberal Party that lost out, ending its 12-year reign on Jan. 23 when voters gave the M A R C H 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 11 50 Years Ago... The most important thing the American people can do to improve the effectiveness of our representation abroad is to put aside evocative phrases which have been confused with foreign policy. They should develop a practical, specific and comprehensive view of the political world, of America’s position in the world, and a dispassionate logic for determining where the interest of the United States lies. — Norman B. Hannah, “American People: Foreign Policy and the Foreign Service,” FSJ , March 1956. C YBERNOTES