Summary: Former Secretary of State Colin Powell dismissed as “cheap shots” the criticism leveled at him and others in former Vice President Dick Cheney’s book, “In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir.” … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on August 29, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that the U.S., as it began to withdraw from Iraq, was leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects. More than $5 billion in American taxpayer funds had been wasted — more than 10 percent of the approximately $50 billion the U.S. spent on reconstruction in Iraq, according to audits by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.