Bush Has Audacious Plan to Rebuild Iraq Within Year

The Bush administration's audacious plan to rebuild Iraq envisions a sweeping overhaul of Iraqi society within a year of a war's end, but leaves much of the work to private U.S. companies, Monday's Wall Street Journal reported.

The Bush plan, as detailed in more than 100 pages of confidential contract documents, would sideline United Nations development agencies and other multilateral organizations that have long directed reconstruction efforts in places such as Afghanistan and Kosovo. The plan also would leave big nongovernmental organizations largely in the lurch: With more than $1.5 billion in Iraq work being offered to private U.S. companies under the plan, just $50 million is so far earmarked for a small number of groups such as CARE and Save the Children.

--Dow Jones Business News, via Yahoo News

It's almost as if he's doing this just to piss us off, isn't it? It's as if he looked at the list of what his critics want -- long-term thinking, significant UN involvement, significant NGO involvement, avoidance of the appearance that the war is being fought to create business opportunities for his pals -- and said, "Whatever it is they want, I'm against it."