Summary: The United States government has spent $53 billion on reconstruction in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, building tens of thousands of hospitals, water treatment plants, electricity substations, schools, and bridges. But there are growing concerns, according to the New York Times, that Iraq will not be able to adequately maintain the facilities once the Americans have left, potentially wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 21, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had stomped on and burned an effigy of President George Bush in the same central Baghdad square where Iraqis beat a toppled statue of Saddam Hussein with their sandals five years earlier. Chanting and waving flags, thousands of Iraqis filled Firdous Square to protest a proposed U.S.-Iraqi security pact that would allow American troops to stay for three more years.

  ::  Read Comments (0)