WASHINGTON: Waste and corruption that marred Iraq’s reconstruction will be repeated in Afghanistan unless the US transforms the unwieldy bureaucracy managing tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure projects, government watchdogs warned Monday.

Much of the $50 billion devoted to rebuilding and assisting Iraq was marred by waste, fraud and confused planning by rival government agencies, said Stuart Bowen, special Inspector General for Iraq reconstruction.

During its first public hearing Monday, Bowen told the Commission on Wartime Contracting that the 456-page study, entitled: “Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience,” reviews the problems in an effort the Bush Administration initially thought would cost $2.4 billion, and concludes that the US reconstruction effort in Iraq was a failure, largely because there was no overall strategy behind it.

Goals shifted from “liberation” and an early military exit to massive, ill-conceived and expensive building projects under the Coalition Provisional Authority of 2003 and 2004. Many of those projects were abandoned as security worsened.

Bowen writes that he knew the reconstruction was in trouble when he first visited Iraq in January 2004 and saw duffel bags full of cash being carried out of the Republican Palace, which housed the US occupation government.

After five years of investigations and 250,000 pages of audits, Bowen said he would like to say that the $50 billion cost of the U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq was money accounted for and well spent.

“But that’s just not happened,” Bowen said.

Instead, the largest single-country relief and reconstruction project in US history — most of it done by private US contractors — was full of wasted funds, fraud and a lack of accountability under what Bowen, the congressionally mandated special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, calls an “ad hoc-racy” of lax or nonexistent government planning and supervision.

The US government “was neither prepared for nor able to respond quickly to the ever-changing demands” of stabilizing Iraq and then rebuilding it, said Bowen. “For the last six years we have been on a steep learning curve.”

Overall, the Pentagon, State Department and US Agency for International Development have paid contractors more than $100 billion since 2003 for goods and services to support war operations and rebuilding projects in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bowen, who has made 21 trips to Iraq since he was appointed in October 2004, said better cooperation among federal agencies, more flexible contracting rules, constant oversight and experienced acquisition teams are among the changes urged by the officials in order to make sure money isn’t wasted and contractors don’t cheat.

“There are 154 open criminal investigations into allegations of bribery, conflicts of interest, defective products, bid rigging and theft in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait,” said the Pentagon’s principal deputy inspector general.

Bowen said his office found fraud to be less of a problem than persistent inefficiencies and hefty contractor fees that “all contributed to a significant waste of taxpayer dollars.”

The book recounts the deep divisions between the Pentagon, under Donald H. Rumsfeld; the State Department under Colin L. Powell; and the White House office of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage recounts an argument between Rumsfeld and Rice in the fall of 2003 during which each claimed the other was in charge of supervising the CPA.

But now, Bowen says, President Obama could take several steps to mitigate future damage.

These include focusing more attention on military and civilian personnel and to reconstruction and relief assignments, and taking advantage of the expertise developed through hard-won experience in Iraq.

Instead of the “multiple versions” of the federal acquisition regulations adopted and amended by “multiple agencies” operating in Iraq, Obama “could just issue a regulation applicable to Afghanistan that everyone will follow” in issuing and supervising contracts, he said.

“To bring this all together,” Bowen said, “the president should order a high-level group drawing from the departments of State and Defense and the US Agency for International Development that would turn Obama’s orders into action.

The panel has until August 2010 to produce a final report. It can refer to the Justice Department any violations of the law it finds.