Hard Lessons yet to be learned | From Iraq to Afghanistan

Flikr photo by guano of an original Banksy used under a Creative Commons. A troubling article was published in the Washington Post yesterday, after the release of Hard Lessons, a book by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), about the waste of taxpayer dollars in the $50 billion Iraq reconstruction project.  Despite recognition of errors made in Iraq, it seems the same mistakes are being made in Afghanistan. Criticisms associated with Iraq reconstruction – lack of transparency, fraud, corruption, money laundering, and waste – seem to equally characterize the reconstruction process unfolding in Afghanistan.  Unless some concrete actions are taken by the Obama Administration to account for the flow of taxpayer money, an audit of reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan is likely to be just as disappointing as it is in Iraq.