1 Billion proposed by Bush won't go far in Iraq reconstruction effort.

[Clarkie1]

(01-14) 17:31 PST , (AP) --

The extra billion dollars of reconstruction aid in President Bush's Iraq plan won't go far in a country where electricity output still barely meets half the demand and oil production is falling short by almost a million barrels a day.

And a companion part of the plan, to expand U.S. aid teams scattered across Iraq, may falter because of a shortage of volunteers. Some say the Bush administration may have to start ordering civilian U.S. government employees into the war zone, as was done for Vietnam.

"The fact of the matter is that the State Department has had a hard time filling current manning levels on these teams," said retired Maj. Gen. William Nash, a specialist in postwar reconstruction at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The bulk of U.S. reconstruction aid came in 2003-2005, when almost $22 billion poured into Iraq. As violence spread, some aid was diverted to Iraqi army and police forces, and much of the rest was spent on private security for rebuilding projects. Experts had estimated Iraq needed $55 billion to recover from war, mass looting and years of economic deterioration.

By this 2007 fiscal year, new reconstruction aid had dwindled to $750 million. On Wednesday night, Bush proposed adding $1.2 billion to that. By comparison, Washington is spending roughly $100 billion a year on the war itself.

"It is symbolic, at best, and is unlikely to have substantial impact in Iraq," Gordon Adams, a budget expert at Washington's Woodrow Wilson Center, said of the Bush aid proposal.

In its December recommendations, the Iraq Study Group had called for boosting U.S. reconstruction assistance to $5 billion a year.

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