Quite true, it isn't at all an easy task.

But one way in which the US hurt itself early on was in setting unrealistic expectations about how quickly it could be fixed.

In November of 2003, I attended a briefing (unclassified, this was before I had a DoD job) from a colonel (I think, maybe LTC) who was a reconstruction official in Iraq. He talked in some detail about the electric power sector, and told us it was good as gold that average daily supply would be over 6,000 MW by the summer of 2004 and climbing steadily after that. Indeed, he said "hold us accountable -- power is a good metric for reonstruction overall. If we aren't over 6 GW next summer, something has gone really wrong".

At that time they were bouncing around 3,000 to 3,500 MW available. Production was barely up to 4,000 MW by mid/late 2004, and hit a peak of just over 5 GW in mid 2005. It's back down to 4,000 MW and below now.

That we were hearing such rosy scenarios as late as Thanksgiving of 2003 is partly why the news turned so negative in 2004 -- the Admin did quite a good job of creating unrealistic expectations, and then getting beat up for failing to meet those impossible goals.