Its both a quagmire and a money pit:

Iraq reconstruction running low on funds

By James Glanz The New York Times

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2005

As the money runs out on the $30 billion American-financed reconstruction of Iraq, the officials in charge cannot say how many planned projects they will complete, and there is no clear source for hundreds of millions of dollars a year needed to operate the projects that have been finished, according to a report to Congress released on Sunday.

The report, by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, describes an array of projects that went awry, sometimes astonishingly, like electrical substations that were built at great cost but never connected to the country's electrical grid.

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