Contrast the previous Newsweek article with this Washington Post piece:

The money for most military projects in Iraq goes through something called the commander's emergency response program. About $100 million has been allocated so far and the 101st Airborne Division, which oversees northern Iraq, has spent about $31 million of it. It has been used, officials said, for more than 11,000 projects such as hiring a civil defense corps, patching roads and fixing an oil refinery and a sulfur plant.

It's a new idea that has allowed soldiers who are patrolling the streets, and have a ground-level view of people's needs, to make a quick impact without having to go through the bureaucratic details that government contracts usually require.

It took the Post most of the article to produce the obligatory "ripe with potential for abuse" quote from some UK peacenick (who's probably already pulled out).

My opinion is we have three options: we can do this fast, we can do it well, we can do it properly. The trick is we can only choose two of these options. I personally would rather see it done fast and well and accept a certain amount of "opaqueness" and perhaps even outright graft. Trying to do it "properly" means wasting time that could be spent reconstructing doing the endless reams of paperwork the beancounters need to make things "transparent", just to please people who've already decided they can't be pleased.

But that's just me.