Oversight of Teams In Iraq, Afghanistan Faulted in Hill Report

The U.S. effort to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan through local reconstruction teams lacks clear goals, organizational structure and lines of command, according to a new congressional report.

Funding for the Provincial Reconstruction Teams, which President Bush has called the leading edge of stabilization efforts in the two nations, is ad hoc and comes from so many sources that congressional investigators were unable to determine how much has been spent on the joint military-civilian teams, the report by the House Armed Services oversight and investigations subcommittee says.

The subcommittee, which conducted a six-month investigation, recommends that the State and Defense departments develop a "unity of command" for the PRTs, as they are known, along with specific objectives and ways to ascertain whether they have been met. It also urges more intense and streamlined congressional oversight.

The United States has been in Iraq for five years "and in Afghanistan even longer," the subcommittee's chairman, Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Ark.), said yesterday. "If the current [PRT] structure was working well, we should have a smooth operation now. But we don't."

Rep. Todd Akin (Mo.), the subcommittee's ranking Republican, agreed. "The organizational structure is a little goofy," he said, adding that it had been "put together with glue and baling wire."

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