Editorial: Oversight way past due

Tuesday, May 2, 2006 | 7:28 a.m.

Monday marked the three-year anniversary of President Bush's triumphant - yet premature and foolish - announcement that major military operations in Iraq were over. President Bush claimed Monday that a report from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who recently visited Iraq, found that Iraq's political leaders are "more determined than ever to succeed."

It very well may be the case that the Iraqi leadership has finally stiffened its resolve, but the carnage created by suicide bombings and the sectarian political disputes in Iraq haven't provided most neutral observers with a sense of a dramatic, positive turnaround. Symbolic of the administration's incompetence in handling post-war Iraq has been its failed reconstruction efforts.

Bloomberg News reported Monday that Inspector General Stuart Bowen, who has been reviewing the reconstruction effort in Iraq, said that while progress has been made, the effort is running out of money and that there are hundreds of projects in danger of not getting finished before the year-end deadline to turn over most of the work to the Iraqi government.

In one appalling example of mismanagement, the Associated Press reports that a contractor was supposed to build 150 health clinics in Iraq, but it now only believes it will eventually finish 20. What's more, an audit discovered that even though 75 percent of the $243 million in funds set aside have been spent, only six health clinics have been built so far.

The reconstruction effort has been hampered by mismanagement, corruption, crime and violent attacks, Bowen said. "The U.S. relief and reconstruction effort will accomplish less than originally planned," Bowen said in his report to Congress. Further, with fewer projects being completed, the impact has "the cumulative effect of slowing improvement in the daily lives of Iraqis."

Last week the 23 Democrats on the House's International Relations Committee called for hearings on waste and fraud in Iraq reconstruction efforts, but it's unclear how much traction the proposal will get since Republican leaders have long resisted tough oversight because of their fealty to a Republican president. Voters elect members of Congress to represent them and to tackle the toughest of issues in a public forum, not to march in lockstep with the White House. Lawmakers have a duty to taxpayers to be a watchdog of federal spending.

This shouldn't be a partisan issue, and more than two years ago we called for extensive, ongoing congressional hearings into waste and fraud involving Iraq's reconstruction. Whether it is mismanagement of money or soldiers going to war without proper equipment, Congress needs to hold the administration accountable and help chart a course for U.S. efforts in Iraq. Otherwise, what's the point of checks and balances in our government?