Via Mr. Happy,
a letter by Representative Henry A Waxman questioning some of the occupiers’s decisions in Iraq:
any re-construction projects could be reduced by 90% if the projects were awarded to local Iraqi companies rather than to large government contractors like Halliburton or Bechtel.
? The general in charge of northern Iraq, Major General David Petraeus, told a congressional delegation that included my staff that US engineers estimated that it would cost $15mn to bring a cement plant in northern Iraq back to Western production standards. Because this estimate far exceeded the funds available to General Petraeus, he gave the project to local Iraqis, who were able to get the cement plant running again for just $80,000.
? A journalist for the Santa Monica Daily Press, a newspaper in my district, told my staff that she attended a meeting in Baghdad where a Bechtel executive interviewed Iraqi contractors seeking jobs rebuilding the Baghdad airport. The Bechtel executive informed the Iraqis that they could not participate in rebuilding their country’s airport unless they got three different types of insurance: indemnification insurance, bid securities insurance, and performance insurance. When one Iraqi contractor asked how to obtain such insurance, which Iraqis never had to obtain before and which was not available in Iraq, he was told, “Don’t worry, there will be American insurance companies coming in to sell you insurance.”
Individual line items in the Administration’s request for an additional $20bn to rebuild Iraq raise similar questions. Item after item reads like a government contractor’s wish list. Rather than seeking funding for low-cost solutions based on inexpensive local Iraqi labor, the Administration appears to be requesting huge dollar amounts for complex projects that will be awarded to well-connected US contractors operating at expensive premiums.
The question we need to confront is whether the Administration is putting the interests of companies like Halliburton and Bechtel over the interests of the American taxpayer and the Iraqi people. When inordinately expensive reconstruction projects are awarded to high-cost federal contractors with close political ties to the White House, the Administration can create a lose-lose situation: not only do US taxpayers vastly overpay for reconstruction services, but Iraqis are denied urgently needed employment opportunities.