Today, Dartmouth welcomes John F. Burns as a Montgomery Fellow.  He will present a lecture this afternoon, "Five Years in Iraq: Which Way Home?"  He is currently the London bureau chief for The New York Times, but had previously worked five years as a journalist in Iraq. I tip my hat to reporters who have gone into the field to provide the direct accounts and cogent analyses of what has been happening in the Middle East.

From the similarity of the titles and a preview of the talk I got this morning in an informal breakfast with faculty, I think this article on the fifth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq is a good description of what he's learned from his experiences.  An excerpt that I liked:

From Nate Fick's segment on "All Things Considered" on Thursday, arguing that there are only limited opportunities to apply what has been learned in Iraq to new operations in Afghanistan.

It's not anti-Bush sniping to ask where $15 b. of Iraq reconstruction money went.  There is quite a double standard in Washington when it comes to Pentagon spending.  I have a formerly homeless friend, who suffers from seizures and can't work.  When he moved to a better apartment almost two years ago, his Food Stamps were cut off for a month, and he had to reapply.  Two social workers checked him out before he was were reinstated.  This is standard procedure for the Food Stamp program.  However, if you dole out money and equipment for Uncle Sam in Baghdad's Green Zone, no one is checking out where it goes, even if it's munitions that may ultimately end up killing young Americans there.

Several of my friends have served in Baghdad trying to perform Treasury functions.  They all came back discouraged by what they saw and over how Bush Administration policies prevented them from restoring order and operating effectively. 

Discussions about the federal budget like the ones we often engage in here at CG&G, typically focus on "formulation," that is, on the process and politics of putting the budget together and getting it enacted.  That's the part we all generally agree is broken, not working properly, overly politicized, and...well...you get the picture.

But this story from Friday's Washington Post, which talks about $15 billion in spending on Iraq that can't be accounted for properly, or in some cases at all, shows that the other stage of federal budgeting -- implementation -- is similarly broken, not working properly, and...well...you certainly get this picture as well.

In fact, it appears as if virtually every procedure and law designed to prevent just this type of malfeasance was circumvented.

This spending was done in the midst of a national emergency and some of the usual safeguards couldn't be followed in the interest of national security and getting the job done quickly, right?

The front page, right column, above the fold story in today's New York Times confirms that before it leaves office, the Bush administration will likely not reduce troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan much below current levels. That means that all of the budget projections for military spending for fiscal 2009 and at least 2010 are way below what the actual number will be. Even assuming no escalation, 2010 military spending and, therefore, the deficit, could be more than $150 billion higher than current estimates.