Recently I wrote an article discussing whether municipalities, specifically New Orleans, had an obligation to bring low income people back from evacuation. In the article I discussed and asked the question does the city owe the poor a return ticket back to poverty and to their slums?

    According to many in Louisiana and along the Gulf Coast, the answer is a resounding no! It appears that many jurisdictions are rezoning and allowing previously zoned areas to expire so that they can remove the makeshift trailer parks that FEMA created after the Katrina catastrophe. The modern day "Hoovervilles" are becoming unwelcome to the local governments. These governments want to evict the evacuees and shut down the trailer parks. According to these jurisdictions the trailer parks have become crime-infested, pockets of poverty. There are some who believe that it is not about crime or poverty, but has racial implications. The residents in these jurisdictions have a concern about poor, black people living in their neighborhoods.

    There is a growing chorus here in the states to blame the Iraqi's for the strife and suffering that they are now experiencing as a result of the invasion and subsequent occupation. While this attitude is becoming politically popular, it undermines the real problems that were uncovered by the invasion. It also belies the terrible job that was done with post invasion planning and reconstruction.

We all know the talking points the Bush Administration has put out on Iraq, and we saw how Jon Stewart tried to have an interview in which he deconstructed those tired points in his interview with McCain. See also what he was thinking in that great Bill Moyers interview.

One of the most crucial points, I've always thought, has been the humanitarian efforts by the military. Some of my Republican friends (and yes, I do have a few Republican friends) like to point out that if the United States leaves, the humanitarian efforts will also end. For some time, I've thought that was not a reason to stay -- since we clearly don't make our foreign policy based on humanitarian needs (see: Darfur, Rwanda, and the list tragically goes on.) But I've also thought that it was a valid point: the Iraqi government probably doesn't have enough money or power to completely rebuild its infrastructure.

Now, a New York Times article shows us that the successes we've had in rebuilding Iraq aren't really successes.

In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle.