THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Once upon a time the health care system in Iraq was the wonder of the Arabic world, with the best that modern medicine could provide available to all. And now

Stories of missing drugs, of desperately ill-equipped doctors and of patients left to suffer the consequences are everywhere in Iraq's public health care system. Some hospitals are filthy and infested with bugs. Others are practically falling down. More and more, the blame is being placed on Iraq's U.S.-backed government, which by many accounts is infested with corruption and incompetence.

There's no doubt that years of economic sanctions, followed by years of war, have taken a heavy toll on all public services in Iraq. However, with violence down and some tentative sense of normalcy returning, improvements in health care should be coming far faster than they are, according to doctors, patients, aid organizations and some public officials.

They fault widespread problems at all levels of Iraq's government, and the examples they cite are troubling. Health ministry workers routinely siphon drugs from hospital orders to make extra cash on the black market. Bribery is rampant. Millions of dollars meant for clinics and equipment have gone missing. Millions more have been wasted on government contracts to buy expired medicines.

The health ministry's inspector general openly admits the problems. Even so, the culprits are rarely punished.

Corruption and ineptitude aren't limited to health care, of course; they're endemic in most Iraqi public institutions. When it comes to public health, however, the repercussions are devastating, and they bring into sharp focus the failures that are threatening Iraq's American-financed effort to rebuild itself as a democracy at peace with itself and with its neighbors.

But on the good side, the American Enterprise Institute has a fine example of how government health care doesn't work.