How to pay for Iraq jobs proposal?
JOHN DIMSDALE: President Bush reportedly wants an additional billion dollars in so-called microfinance grants and loans for Iraqi entrepreneurs. He’ll also propose expanding the Provincial Reconstruction Teams. Those are groups of U.S. government civilians coordinating job creation programs and training local Iraqi government workers. Rick Barton at the Center for Strategic and International Studies welcomes the Bush administration’s focus on decentralizing economic aid.RICK BARTON: It’s really the right design and what we should have done from the beginning. It may be too little, too late because the violence and the sectarian strife is really so widespread now.The U.S. has already spent between 20 and 35 billion dollars on Iraqi reconstruction projects. But Robert Perito, an adviser to the Iraq Study Group, says there’s little to show for it.ROBERT PERITO: It was all channeled through very large, U.S.-based corporations. That failed because it failed to engage the Iraqis. These inter
