THE NATION S NEWSPAPER. Concerns mount about costs, dangers of longterm. By Barbara Slavin USA TODAY

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1 K-12 Case Study THE NATION S NEWSPAPER K-12PS Gears grind as efforts shift Rebuilding Iraq into overdrive By James Cox 8 to start quickly New leader asks U.S. to stay By Steven Komarow and Barbara Slavin 11 Discussion questions 5-7 Concerns mount about costs, dangers of longterm U.S. rule By Barbara Slavin USA TODAY decapitate a government that has struggled to feed more than half of its population while repressing all political opposition. And the long-term goal will be to create some sort of democracy in a country that has never known it. Student extensions Corresponding National Standards NL-ENG.K Reading for an understanding of self and society NL-ENG.K Strategies for comprehension, interpretation, evaluation, and appreciation of texts NL-ENG.K Communicating effectively using spoken, written and visual language NL-ENG.K Strategies for communicating through a variety of writing processes NL-ENG.K Using language to create, critique and discuss print and nonprint texts 5-7 WASHINGTON As U.S. and British forces begin the war in Iraq, the Bush administration is scrambling to put in place the people, the money and the organizational structure to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and to fulfill President Bush's promise to leave Iraqis better off than they are now. "We have no ambition in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people," Bush said from the Oval Office on Wednesday night, after the first strikes on Baghdad. "Helping Iraqis achieve a united, stable and free country will require our sustained commitment." Thousands of U.S. troops poised to drive toward Baghdad will be accompanied by a small group of American aid workers, who will try to deal with the most urgent needs of Iraqi civilians food, clean water, shelter and medical care. There are huge obstacles and little time for those aid workers and for the other Americans who will be in charge of rebuilding postwar Iraq. War will The task Iraq's would-be liberators are contemplating is more daunting than any the United States has attempted since it occupied Germany and Japan after World War II. The United States is unlikely to directly govern Iraq as it did Germany for four years and Japan for seven. But the costs of rebuilding and reforming the country could be comparable to the Marshall Plan, under which the United States provided $13 billion about $90 billion in today's dollars to help 17 Western European nations in the 1940s and '50s. Optimists point out that the administration has much to work with: Iraq is the only country in the Middle East that has ample oil, water and arable land as well as a relatively small population. It has institutions capable of delivering basic services, and its people are far better educated than those in Afghanistan, where the United States is still engaged in nationbuilding following the 2001 war to oust the Taliban. But Iraq has been ground down by decades of war and dictatorship and a

2 AS SEEN IN USA TODAY NEWS SECTION, THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 2003, PAGE 1A U.S. urged to enlist help of U.N.; rebuilding Iraq alone 'doomed to fail' dozen years of economic sanctions. Its population is embittered toward the West. And its oil industry which the United States is counting on to pay much of the bill for postwar reconstruction is dilapidated and could be sabotaged by Saddam Hussein before he dies, flees or is captured. "The bottom line is that we don't know exactly what we're going to inherit, the scale of the humanitarian crisis, the mentality of Iraqi insiders," a senior administration official says. "You can only plan up to a point, and then you have to be incredibly flexible and adaptive." U.S. general will run Iraq What is known: An American general is likely to end up running the country for a considerable time, despite U.S. promises to try to turn things over quickly to an interim Iraqi administration. The funds budgeted so far to feed Iraqis are thought to be woefully inadequate by experienced relief workers. And there is no obvious heir to Saddam, a problem that could hinder nation-building efforts. An Iraqi-American who asked that his name be withheld said he desperately hopes that the Bush administration follows through on its pledges, but wouldn't blame Americans if they didn't want to take on the huge costs and longterm commitment. If he were a nativeborn American, he said, "this is not something I would want my country to do." Among the steps in the U.S. plan: v Short-term humanitarian aid. The first problem will be to alleviate widespread human need in the wake of war. Not only will there be damage and death, but the government institutions that now provide civil authority and food for millions of Iraqis also will be gone or weakened. Pentagon officials say they have "embedded" within the military a 60- person disaster assistance response team to enter liberated areas of Iraq with U.S. forces. The team, from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is now deployed in Kuwait, which has provided a large facility for a humanitarian operations center. Aid officials say the State Department has provided $35 million to the U.N. World Food Program for logistical support and is trying to come up with $57 million more. But relief officials are concerned that the funds are too little and are arriving too late to avert severe hardship for the Iraqi people. It can take four to eight weeks to buy and deliver food, officials say. The U.N. "oil-for-food program," which allows the Iraqi government to use oil revenue to provide food and other assistance to the population, has spent $243 million a month to feed 14 million Iraqis nearly 60% of the nation's 24 million people. On Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan suspended the program and withdrew foreign staff. "The logistical and operational framework is not in place to support a humanitarian response," Sandra Mitchell, vice president of the International Rescue Committee, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week. Relief officials are also concerned about what will happen to people in areas outside U.S. control. As in Afghanistan, aid workers typically go only as far as the military footprint extends. v Civil administration. The next problem will be what to do about the nuts and bolts of daily life, after eliminating the current Iraqi government and purging those most closely connected to Saddam and his Baath Party. At a background briefing in the Pentagon last week, a senior official from a new Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, created at the end of January, said the intention was to use existing Iraqi bureaucracies, including much of the Iraqi army, to run and rebuild the country. The official said the United States was also recruiting about 100 Iraqi exiles with particular specialties to assign to each of Iraq's two dozen ministries. Other officials say American civilians will be assigned as "shadow ministers" to act as liaisons with U.S. forces. Army Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. and allied forces, will be the top authority in Iraq, as Douglas MacArthur was in postwar Japan, but he will focus on security, not on being Iraq's viceroy. Jay Garner, a retired Army general who supervised aid to the Kurds in 1991 after the last Gulf War, will be in charge of civil administration and report to Franks. Widely admired for his interpersonal skills and ingenuity, Garner, 64, has assembled a staff of nearly 200 former military people and diplomats to administer Iraq and supervise a transition to local rule. Most of them deployed over last weekend to Kuwait. Among them is a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine, 54, who will be U.S. coordinator in the central, Sunni Arab region, a controversial appointment given the male-dominated traditions of the Arab world. A 77-year-old Yale classmate of the first President Bush, William Eagleton, who Page 2

3 Rebuilding Iraq Case Study AS SEEN IN USA TODAY NEWS SECTION, THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 2003, PAGE 1A served in Iraq before Saddam came to power and also worked for the United Nations in Bosnia, has been assigned to the northern Kurdish areas. He will have one of the toughest postings, based in the oil-rich and ethnically divided northern city of Kirkuk, Iraq experts say. Sensitive to Arab hostility to a longterm U.S. occupation, the Bush administration will try to pass nominal power quickly to Iraqis. In an interview Friday with the Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the administration hopes to establish an "Iraqi interim authority" composed of exiles, leaders in an autonomous Kurdish area, tribal chieftains and other Iraqis. Previously, the administration has spoken of forming only an "advisory council" of prominent Iraqis to support U.S. officials. But ultimate authority will rest with Franks for months if not years to come. v Paying for the operation. The cost of the entire project is a huge issue and one the administration doesn't appear to want to discuss. Bush ducked a question on this at his news conference March 6, and Secretary of State Colin Powell did the same before a House subcommittee last week. The normally soft-spoken chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar, R-Ind., fumed when key administration officials in charge of planning post-saddam Iraq cancelled testimony last week at a long-scheduled hearing. The no-shows, Lugar said, represented "a missed opportunity for the administration" to explain its post- Saddam policy not just to politicians who will be asked to fund it, "but also to the American people, whose long-term support will be a necessity." Pentagon officials first told the committee that a scheduled witness was having surgery, then changed their story to say he was about to be deployed to the Persian Gulf. When it turned out the official was briefing Pentagon reporters in an off-camera "background" session at the same time he was supposed to be testifying, committee staffers suggested another motive: fear of public embarrassment. The Bush administration has yet to request funds for the war or its aftermath. Outside experts have provided a variety of estimates. A study by the Council on Foreign Relations, a bipartisan think tank, says it will take at least $20 billion a year for several years to deploy 75,000 U.S. troops in Iraq to keep the peace and to pay for initial aid and reconstruction. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki has suggested that several hundred thousand troops will be needed to stabilize postwar Iraq, a comment that infuriated the Pentagon's civilian political leadership. v Enlisting foreign help. As rich and powerful as it is, the United States can't rebuild Iraq without help. "Trying to do this on our own is almost doomed to fail," says Gordon Adams, director of security policy studies at George Washington University. "We don't have the resources." Although the president repeatedly warned that the U.N. Security Council would lose its "relevance" if it did not authorize military action in Iraq, U.S. officials are expecting the United Nations and other foreign institutions to share the burden of postwar reconstruction and peacekeeping. U.N. and European officials say they will almost certainly provide some emergency humanitarian assistance. But it is unclear whether they would provide peacekeepers or long-term development aid. "I am accountable to the European Parliament and member states," said Chris Patten, external affairs commissioner for the European Union. "It's blindingly obvious that the broader the coalition, the more likely it is that we will be able to persuade the representatives of taxpayers to put their hands in their pockets." Some U.N. relief organizations are consulting quietly with the U.S. government. But one U.N. official who asked not to be identified said the Bush administration "wants us to be subordinate to the Pentagon, and that's not going to happen." It's hard to imagine how the U.S. government will stabilize Iraq without the United Nations. More than 1,000 expatriates and Iraqis have worked under U.N. auspices for the past seven years, vetting Iraqi oil contracts, purchasing food and medicine and patching up Iraqi infrastructure. v Organizing a political transition. Probably the single most difficult task is to help Iraqis put in place even a semblance of a representative government. Iraqis are far better educated than Afghans, with a literacy rate of 58% compared with 36% in Afghanistan. But Iraq has never been a democracy and has no local institutions akin to the Afghan loya jirga (grand council) process of rudimentary tribal democracy that could be adapted to confirm new leadership. And no Hamid Karzai-type figure has emerged. Karzai, the Afghan president, lived for years in the United States, comes from Afghanistan's dominant Pashtun ethnic group and has a record of fighting against that country's Soviet occupation. His selection was approved by all of Afghanistan's neighbors at a U.N.-authorized conference in Bonn, Germany, two years ago. Page 3

4 Rebuilding Iraq Case Study AS SEEN IN USA TODAY NEWS SECTION, THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 2003, PAGE 1A Iraqi exiles, like Afghans, have a record of bitter infighting. The Bush administration plans to include some well-known exiles in the "interim authority" that Rice and Bush have spoken about, but it has refused to anoint a government in exile. Administration officials say they want to leave space for Iraqis still within the country to assume leadership roles. A potential Iraq leader Congressional sources say some civilian leaders in the Pentagon and in Vice President Cheney's office are promoting Ahmed Chalabi, a prominent Iraqi exile and the leader of a fractious umbrella group called the Iraqi National Congress, as a potential Iraqi leader. Chalabi is said to be trying to monopolize advisory jobs for his followers. The positions pay $5,000 a month, and Garner's office is signing three-month contracts. Many Iraq experts doubt that Chalabi, a U.S.-educated former banker who has lived in London for decades, will be acceptable to Iraqis who have endured Saddam's brutal rule. Others say he has the determination and political skills to achieve a prominent role. Phebe Marr, author of The Modern History of Iraq and one of the preeminent U.S. experts on Iraq, warns that while it may be easy to find figures from the country's tribal or economic elite, it will be difficult to change ingrained authoritarian attitudes. At the same time, Marr says, Iraqis will not take well to long-term American interference, which will remind many of British colonialism and influence on Iraq's pre- Saddam monarchy. "Iraqis are not competent to build a democracy overnight, but they think they are," Marr told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week. v Keeping Iraqis together and neighbors out. One of the greatest challenges will be restoring territorial integrity to a country that is divided by ethnic groups and whose northernmost region has been autonomous for the past decade. Kurds who have built self-governing institutions under the protection of U.S. and British air patrols over northern Iraq have threatened massive protests if Turkish troops intrude into their region, as the Turks have said they will do to prevent refugees from flooding across their border. Kurds are also insisting that Kurds who have been "ethnically cleansed" from cities just outside the autonomous enclave have the opportunity to return. U.S. forces may find themselves caught between returning Kurds and the Turkish army in Kirkuk. "We want a commitment that there will be an orderly process by which displaced people can go back to their homes," says Barham Salih, who is prime minister of one of two Kurdish autonomous administrations. U.S. officials will also be keeping a wary eye on Iran, which might want to intervene to wipe out the Mujaheddin el- Khalq, an anti-iranian guerrilla group that has been harbored by Saddam. The Iranian government might also seek new influence in the primarily Shiite Muslim southern third of Iraq, where it backs an Iraqi opposition movement. Iraqis may settle old scores "There could be dancing in the streets for a short while (after U.S. forces intervene), but before long Sunnis and Shiites could be settling old scores and life could be miserable for everybody," Lugar warns. Many Iraqis who oppose Saddam say they are ambivalent about the U.S. plans. "If they think they will put an American in every city and province, I don't think it will work," warns Farhad Barzani, Washington representative of the Kurdish Democratic Party, a major Kurdish group. "It will take American engagement at a much more subtle level, and Americans don't do subtlety well," agrees Feisal Istrabadi, an Iraqi-American lawyer from Chicago who has been working with the State Department's "future of Iraq program" to draft new criminal and civil laws for the country. But Hatem Mukhlis, a doctor in Binghamton, N.Y., who comes from Saddam's hometown of Tikrit and who is considering going home to help in the reconstruction, says his biggest concern is that the United States will not stay the course. "The mother of all my fears is that once the weapons of mass destruction are dealt with, the United States will just leave, and we will have another dictator," he says. Contributing: Judy Keen and Kathy Kiely Page 4

5 Topic 1: Short term humanitarian assistance PRE-READING QUESTIONS ACTIVITY EXTENSION 1. What are government concerns for Iraq after the war? 2. How will basic food, water, and medicine reach Iraqis if there is a great deal of destruction? Provide students with graphic organizers for notetaking (fill out "K" before reading). POST-READING QUESTIONS 1. What actions has the U.S. taken to provide for quick humanitarian assistance? Which agencies are involved? Who is ultimately responsible for this assistance? What are the various roles of agencies and programs involved? What is the role of the Pentagon? The State Department? USAID? 2. Do you think that the U.N. will be involved in humanitarian assistance? Why are other international relief officials worried about assistance? Do you agree with what Sandra Mitchell of the International Rescue Committee told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week? Why or why not? What can the U.S. do to address those concerns? Optional extension: 1. Group students according to agencies represented in the graphic organizer (attached). Have students use this case study or use USA TODAY to research the involvement of the agency, and its statements about Iraq. In groups, have students discuss the positions of various agencies, and write a summary of the agency, agency reaction, and possible role in Iraq. Student notes: For more information, log on to Page 5

6 Graphic organizer: K-W-L What do you KNOW about... What do you WANT to learn? What did you LEARN from this article? Iraq's need for assistance? International Organizations? U.S. Government agencies that will assist? For more information, log on to Page 6

7 Topic 2: Political stability PRE-READING QUESTIONS 1. Who will be in charge of Iraq after the war? 2. What are some ideas about how to help Iraqis establish a democratic form of government after the war? ACTIVITY EXTENSION List the considerations involved for short, medium, and long term solutions for Iraq's post war leadership, and/or for various interest groups. 3. What are some lessons that can be learned from U.S. history or other countries who have had to form new governments? POST-READING QUESTIONS 1. What are the short, medium, and long term challenges facing Iraq after the war? What are some of the fears of various regions? 2. What will the role of U.S. leadership be in helping rebuild Iraq? Do you think the U.S. leadership should be in charge? 3. What does the author say about Iraqi exiles and their role in a political transition? 4. What are the primary assets that Iraq has that will ease the rebuilding tasks? What are some of the liabilities? 5. The author compares the task of rebuilding Iraq to post-world War II Germany and Japan, and to Afghanistan's transition after the Taliban. What are the similarities and differences? Student notes: For more information, log on to Page 7

8 AS SEEN IN USA TODAY MONEY SECTION, THURSDAY, JUNE 3, 2004, PAGE 1B Gears grind as efforts shift into overdrive Many Iraqis have lost faith in reconstruction By James Cox USA TODAY The U.S.-funded reconstruction drive in Iraq is entering a make-or-break phase, ramping up to create 1.5 million jobs and set off a building boom despite grave doubts about the sustainability of the occupation. The surge in activity in recent weeks is a costly, dramatic and belated acceleration of the year-old U.S.-led reconstruction. The $18.4 billion allocated for this phase of the campaign represents almost 90% of the Bush administration's $21.2 billion commitment to rebuild Iraq. The shift in gears comes as American occupation authorities hurtle toward a June 30 deadline for a limited transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government that has yet to fully take shape. The frenzy of hiring, construction and other work is playing out against a bloody insurgency that makes much of the country a deadly no-man's land for the private foreign contractors responsible for Iraq's makeover. Coalition planners are working from a rebuilding blueprint that dwarfs U.S.-led efforts to date. Bechtel, Halliburton and other contractors have been in Iraq for more than a year. They've stitched together the country's patchwork electrical grid and restored the flow of oil through Iraq's crumbling network of pipelines and processing facilities. They've reopened airports, schools, clinics, banks and ministries. Nash, the retired U.S. admiral now in charge of Iraqi reconstruction. The new push is intended to turn Iraq from a poor, dusty backwater into a gleaming showcase for the Middle East, part of President Bush's vow to create a democratic, prosperous country once Saddam Hussein was swept from power. Nash will oversee 2,300 projects to be completed over four years: new and repaired bridges, roads, power plants, transmission lines, hospitals, schools, police stations, army bases, airfields, refineries, rail stations, town halls, wells, irrigation canals, water-treatment plants, sewers, prisons, ports and a phone network. To help build goodwill, U.S. military commanders around the country will have their own $500 million kitty to draw on to fund local projects. Until now, the reconstruction has repeatedly faltered. It has been hobbled by bureaucratic infighting and poor planning in Washington; disorganization and missteps by occupation authorities in Baghdad; and rapidly deteriorating security on the ground in Iraq. "We've largely restored Iraqi public services to the level they were at under Saddam. We haven't improved them," says James Dobbins, a former U.S. diplomat who worked on post-conflict rebuilding in Afghanistan, the Balkans, Haiti and Somalia. The Band-Aid repairs have allowed the country to function at a basic level. But they are only a warm-up for something "multiple times bigger," says David The result: Many Iraqis no longer believe the U.S. can deliver on its promises, says Scott Feil, a retired Army colonel and research analyst studying the occupation. These days, Nash is barnstorming the country. His goal is to sell tribal sheiks, religious leaders and local pols on the benefits of the rebuilding bonanza and put the onus for security on them. Page 8

9 Rebuilding Iraq Case Study AS SEEN IN USA TODAY MONEY SECTION, THURSDAY, JUNE 3, 2004, PAGE 1B "I talk about the gift from the people of the United States to the people of Iraq," he says. "I tell them we need the help of the people of Iraq on security. That means making sure that if there is somebody trying to do us harm they turn him in. It doesn't mean being vigilantes." Contractors who were part of last year's first wave know how tough the job can be. They've been the targets of roadside bombs, snipers, ambushes and kidnappings. Their job sites have been vandalized and looted. They've been squeezed for protection money by local thugs. Their Iraqi employees have been accused of collaborating with infidels and, in scores of cases, assassinated. Since the insurgency spread in early April, hundreds of foreign contractors have hunkered down in their hotels in central Baghdad or fled the country to wait out the violence. Others can't or won't travel to job sites without armored vehicles and armed security guards. Still others have confined themselves to the heavily fortified Green Zone, the foursquare-mile area in Baghdad that houses U.S. military and occupation leaders. The violence has kept others at bay, too: World Bank experts encamped in Amman, Jordan, are using video conferencing to train Iraqi technocrats in education reform and health care management. "Insurgents are not being choosy about who they want to target, but emphasis is definitely on all Western personnel," says the latest report by Centurion Risk Assessment Services, a British security firm working in Iraq. "Movement by all foreigners in Baghdad is very risky and not advised unless heavily guarded.... Beyond the Green Zone Most Iraq watchers give Nash zero chance for success unless his team and its contractors break out of their isolation in the Green Zone. "Working from a secure hotel or the Green Zone is inefficient," says Richard Sklar, a former U.S. ambassador who served as point man on Bosnian reconstruction. Feil takes a contrary view. If foreign contractors are penned up, he reasons, Iraqis will have to take charge or risk losing jobs and money for their communities. "The U.S. having a lower profile and not having responsibility for every single tiny little decision will have a positive impact." Nash's team, formed last fall, has been slow in coming together. Only about $4 billion of its $18.4 billion has been contracted out. What concerns many Bush administration critics is that much of the money will be spent protecting contractors rather than on bricks and mortar and projects that benefit Iraqis. Security costs, originally estimated at 10% to 20% of spending, could soar to 25% or higher, says Stuart Bowen, the inspector general monitoring Nash's effort. Security-related spending, contractors' profits, expenses for costly foreign engineers and graft by Iraqi subcontractors will eat up most of Nash's budget, says Frederick Barton, codirector of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. Nash won't put a figure on security costs. Nor will he say how many Iraqis can expect reconstruction jobs. But Paul Bremer, the Coalition Provisional Authority chief and Nash's boss until the June 30 handover, puts the jobs figure at 1.5 million over the next year. That's a staggering number one that might be impossible to attain. The CPA contracting arm headed by Nash employed only about 28,000 Iraqis as of last month. And with the security situation volatile, there have been times when threequarters of the CPA's Iraqi workers were no-shows, Nash has conceded. Iraqi unemployment is around 40%. It's plain that jobs and security go hand in hand, says Howard Lowry, an American who runs a business logistics service and air cargo operation in Baghdad. "The quicker the money gets out there and we get these people employed, the sooner things get settled down," Lowry says. "Admiral Nash has a tremendous hill to climb over the next 30 to 45 days. We're at a critical juncture." Successes and setbacks Contractors and U.S. occupation authorities tout the thousands of "wins" they've racked up over 14 months in Iraq. Rightly so. In the past few weeks, they've finished a $64,000 courthouse renovation in Maysan; completed the $1 million refurbishment of Basra Technical College; handed over 3,000 donated medical textbooks; reopened dual two-lane bridges between Mosul and Irbil; and converted a key power plant from hard-to-get diesel to more plentiful crude oil. Page 9

10 Rebuilding Iraq Case Study AS SEEN IN USA TODAY MONEY SECTION, THURSDAY, JUNE 3, 2004, PAGE 1B "There's about 100 of these sorts of projects that go on every single day. That hasn't stopped," says Dan Senor, lead spokesman for the CPA in Baghdad. Most important, the CPA and U.S. military have restored vibrancy to the Iraqi economy. The coalition introduced a new currency, cut taxes and customs fees, reopened banks and helped the interim government put together its budget. Iraqi bazaars are brimming with imports: satellite dishes, air conditioners, computers, refrigerators and other goods. Authorities say 300,000 new cars have entered the country over the past year. For all its successes, the occupation has suffered setbacks. Iraqis simmered in last summer's killer heat. The experience prompted Bremer to declare that the country would have enough power 6,000 megawatts a day to keep cool and keep the lights on by June 1. But Bechtel and other contractors are struggling to squeeze 4,300 Mw from the system, and even Baghdad still has five or six power cuts a day. Oil production has risen to prewar levels several times, then dropped after sabotage on pipelines and offshore facilities in the Persian Gulf. The coalition's attempt to build an Iraqi TV and radio news network and publish a national newspaper was bungled early on. The Iraqi Media Network, initially set up by Pentagon contractor SAIC, was plagued by staff defections, technical problems and low ratings among viewers who found its TV programming dull and propaganda-filled. The perception that IMN is nothing more than a coalition mouthpiece was fed by the early May resignation of Ismail Zayer, editor of the U.S.-funded Al-Sabah newspaper, and most of Zayer's staff. He complained that occupation authorities "suffocated" the newspaper, which was supposed to operate independently and be a model for the Middle East. Barton, Dobbins and Sklar fault President Bush for choosing the Defense Department, which has little experience in nation building, to lead Iraqi reconstruction. The U.S. would have been smarter to concentrate on smaller missions overseen by Iraqis, rather than massive projects led by expensive foreign contractors, they say. The mistrust between coalition forces and Iraqis is increasingly a problem for the reconstruction. Feil says many Iraqis had unrealistic expectations. When they didn't get jobs or strike it rich in the first months of occupation, "Their attitude was either, 'You didn't do enough,' or 'You needed to be gone yesterday,' " he says. What's critical, Feil says, is that the U.S.-led coalition reach the silent majority of Iraqis who are sitting on the fence. That means delivering on promises to set up a representative government and get the economy moving. "I still think it's possible to win this," Feil says. "I also think it's possible to lose." DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. In what ways does the reconstruction effort in Iraq differ from World War II post-war rebuilding efforts? 2. If you were the person in charge of deciding what needed to be done for the reconstruction effort what would be your priorities and goals? 3. What challenges does the country face in effectively restoring important infrastructure and services? Explain. Senor says Zayer quit after refusing to cooperate with coalition authorities investigating his management of the newspaper's finances. One lingering uncertainty for Nash will be his relationship with Iraqi's interim government. Starting June 30, he will answer to John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. It's unclear what input interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and other ministers will have in the multibillion-dollar rebuilding campaign going on around them. Page 10

11 AS SEEN IN USA TODAY NEWS SECTION, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 2, 2004, PAGE 1A New leader asks U.S. to stay Iraqis win political dispute with U.S., U.N. over key posts By Steven Komarow and Barbara Slavin, USA TODAY BAGHDAD -- Iraq unveiled a caretaker government Tuesday in a first step toward ending the formal U.S. occupation of the country and transferring limited political power to Iraqis by June 30. The naming of the government, chosen to represent Iraq's major Shiite Muslim, Sunni Muslim and Kurdish factions, came after a political struggle in which several Iraqi politicians won appointments over United Nations and U.S.-backed candidates. With no power to make or revoke laws, the interim government will be charged with administering the country and organizing elections by Jan. 31. The struggle over appointments may foreshadow fights over how much authority the new government will wield. Iraqi Governing Council. The 25-member body appointed by the United States last July dissolved itself Tuesday. "The Iraqi people are likely to see this as an appointed body basically staying in office," said Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East expert at the Congressional Research Service in Washington. "They are mostly exiles rolling over their tenure." The Governing Council announced Allawi as its choice Friday, overriding Brahimi's selection of Hussain al- Shahristani, a nuclear chemist and human rights advocate. Last weekend there was tough bargaining over who would serve as president, a largely ceremonial post. In the end, Ghazi al-yawer, 45, a U.S.-educated engineer and tribal leader from the northern city of Mosul, claimed the post over Adnan Pachachi, a former foreign minister. Two deputy presidents also were named: Ibrahim al-jaafari, a leader of the Shiite Dawa Islamic Party, and Rowsch Shaways, parliament speaker in the Kurdish region. The 36 appointments to the Cabinet and executive branch roughly represent Iraq's diverse ethnic and religious population. Yawer urged his fellow citizens to avoid ethnic and religious divisions that some fear could lead to civil war. He said his goal was "a pluralistic, federal and democratic Iraq" that restores Iraq's "civilized face." Slavin reported from Washington Still, the new prime minister was conciliatory, thanking the United States for ousting Saddam Hussein -- and asking to keep 138,000 troops in Iraq. "We will need the partnership of the multinational force to fight the enemies of Iraq," said Iyad Allawi, a Shiite close to the CIA. In the latest violence, a car bomb in Baghdad killed three people and a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. military base 155 miles north of the capital, killing 11 Iraqis and injuring 23. At the White House, President Bush cautioned there could be more violence but called Tuesday "a very hopeful day for the Iraqi people and the American people. It's going to send a clear signal that terrorists can't win." Bush also praised U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi for helping form the government. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. Discuss the pros and cons of having three out of five key posts in the caretaker government awarded to former members of the Iraqi Governing Council. 2. What steps should the new government take to increase personal safety and job availability? 3. What actions might help the new governments ability to govern effectively? However, the new government bears scant resemblance to the roster of non-partisan technocrats Brahimi had promised to appoint. Three of the five top jobs went to members of the Page 11