AWFULLY EARLY:

Everyone Wants a Piece of the $18-Billion Man in Iraq: Rebuilding czar from U.S. has little to show for efforts. Better times are coming, he says. (T. Christian Miller, August 23, 2004, LA Times)

The man with $18 billion to spend is taking a beating.

Where's the money to rebuild Iraq? The jobs for broke Iraqis? The promised health clinics and schools, bridges and dams, electricity and clean water?

Retired Rear Adm. David Nash gives the same answer to the skeptics who quiz him on America's long-delayed effort to rebuild Iraq: Better times are coming.

"This country is going to take off," said Nash, 61, the head of the U.S. effort to rebuild a nation devastated by a dozen years of sanctions, three wars and a simmering insurgency.

After long delays and broken deadlines, there are signs that the largest reconstruction effort since World War II's Marshall Plan is poised to get rolling.

New and refurbished power stations are starting up weekly. Private contractors are finishing plans for building thousands of schools, clinics and infrastructure projects. Iraqi jobs in the program have soared from 5,300 daily employees to more than 88,000.

Were Baghdad post-War Berlin the Marshall Plan would still be a year away from even being proposed.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 23, 2004 11:00 PM