Time To Declare Reconstruction And Leave...

We're out:

The Bush administration does not intend to seek any new funds for Iraq reconstruction in the budget request going before Congress in February, officials say. The decision signals the winding down of an $18.4 billion U.S. rebuilding effort in which roughly half of the money was eaten away by the insurgency, a buildup of Iraq's criminal justice system and the investigation and trial of Saddam Hussein.

Just under 20 percent of the reconstruction package remains unallocated. When the last of the $18.4 billion is spent, U.S. officials in Baghdad have made clear, other foreign donors and the fledgling Iraqi government will have to take up what authorities say is tens of billions of dollars of work yet to be done merely to bring reliable electricity, water and other services to Iraq's 26 million people.

"The U.S. never intended to completely rebuild Iraq," Brig. Gen. William McCoy, the Army Corps of Engineers commander overseeing the work, told reporters at a recent news conference. In an interview this past week, McCoy said: "This was just supposed to be a jump-start."

Make no mistake, this isn't just the beginning of the end of the American reconstruction of Iraq, this is also the beginning of the end of the occupation itself. Just as the plan is to declare that the Iraqis are now capable of providing their own security and pull out our own troops, so too is the plan to declare that the Iraqis and "foreign donors" are now capable of finishing the job of fixing what we blew up.

Of course, they're not really capable of either, but the fact of our withdrawal from both enterprises, and the Iraqis' assumption of them by default, will be trumpeted as unassailable proof that the glorious fledgling Iraqi democracy is at last ready to stand on its own two feet; Mission Accomplished.

Of course, the image that comes to my mind is the moment when the cheesy faith healer knocks a cripple's crutches away, and everyone basks in the glow of the Holy Ghost Power for that thrilling half-second before the cripple collapses in an undignified heap, worse off than they were before. Hallefallujah.