andrewducker | Building and Rebuilding

A recent Rand Corporation book argues that dedication, effort, and follow through are the critical values in determining the success of a postwar reconstruction. Five years is the minimum time requirement. Yesterday Bremer told us that we must spend tens of billions more. Thomas Friedman has referred to it as a "building" effort, not a "rebuilding." In many ways we are starting from scratch. Today's New York Times (registration required) tells not only of multi-hundred-billion dollar deficits ($475 billion and possibly rising over time), but states the following shocker: "...the administration, for its part, has yet to budget anything for war-related costs in 2004 and thereafter..."

From yesterday's Volokh Conspiracy (one of the better political/legal weblogs)