PressEthic

Tom Waits wrote a song by that title around 1980, the chorus of which goes, "I'll stay with you baby, 'til the money runs out."

I thought of that song yesterday when I read this Times article by James Glanz about a report issued by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction (SIGIR) on the state of US rebuilding in Iraq.

For those with lots and lots of time on their hands, you can download the report from the SIGIR website.

It outlines the state of rebuilding (or just plain building, as the case may be) as the $30 billion reconstruction well dries up. According to the report and the Times article, over 93 percent of American cash is now earmarked for specific projects.

The clock is clearly ticking, loudly, on how much more the US is willing to give in Iraq - whether in blood or capital (political or monetary.) While there have been innumerable articles on the state of security and transfer of those responsibilities to the Iraqis, the SIGIR report finally gives some idea of the outlook for infrastructure.

And to the surprise of very few, that outlook is as jumbled and uncertain as the security situation has always been.

The crowning sound-byte from the report in the Times article was the $28.8 million spent on five electrical substations, all of which were "well planned, well designed and well constructed" according to the SIGIR report.

The only thing missing was the ability to distribute power from the stations. (I hate it when I mess up some mundane detail like that.) The report had no date for the installation of a distribution system.

Overall, the report apparently outlines some progress - 1,887 out of 2,784 projects completed. Unfortunately, the fact that the above electrical power stations fall under "completed" projects tends to give one pause.

Before I became one of NYU journalism's rising stars, I worked for a while as a builder. One thing I learned is that on every project, everything is great at the beginning, when there is all the money to spend.

Heated floors in the bathrooms? Of course! $4000 for a fridge? I'm surprised you even asked - what are we supposed to do, put the food out in the snow?

Then the money runs out and you often have a house built on matchsticks, so to speak (we never actually built a house on matchsticks.)

The point being that the SIGIR report illustrates again the house-of-mirrors aspect to gauging progress in Iraq, and lends weight to the nagging thought that the walls on the United States' Iraq house may be paper-thin. A top-notch power station may seem like real progress, until you find out it's not plugged in.

It's something to consider before the US says, to quote Waits again from the same song, "Bye bye baby, baby bye bye."

(Hey, I didn't even mention "splashin' Baghdad on the Hudson" from the second line - whatever that means.)