What Went Wrong with the Rebuilding of Iraq?

[Up2Late]

Source: NPR - Morning Edition

What Went Wrong with the Rebuilding of Iraq?

Listen to this story...
by Jackie Northam

Morning Edition, May 16, 2007 · First of a two-part series.

There is little to show for the tens of billions of dollars spent over the last four years to rebuild Iraq....

(edit)

Shortly after Baghdad fell in 2003, huge contracts were awarded to several U.S. companies. Some were no-bid, such as the $1.4 billion contract handed to Halliburton to rebuild Iraq's oil industry. For other contracts, there was limited competition.

"Basically, these were contracts that said to a contractor, 'I'm going to have hundreds of projects all over the country. I'm not quite sure what those projects are going to look like,' " said Steve Schooner, the co-director of the government procurement law program at George Washington University Law School....

(edit)

The speed with which the reconstruction contracts were awarded inevitably led to some mistakes, said Earnie Robbins, a senior vice president with Parsons Corp., a California-based construction firm that was awarded a roughly $1 billion contract for projects in Iraq.

"They actually issued us a site to build a facility that, when we went to the GPS coordinates provided — or when we tried to — it was discovered that that site was actually not in Iraq; it was in Iran," said Robbins. He said several other potential sites were in the middle of lakes or riverbeds, while another site was already occupied by a mosque.
(more at link)

Read more: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10204557

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This is a great report! The audio AND the Transcript is at the NPR link! I'm not sure if part 2 is on today's "All Things Considered" or tomorrow's Morning Addition.

[Solly Mack]

1. k/r

unreal and yet...

[Warren Stupidity]

2. There was no rebuilding. There was only treasury looting.

Our treasury. Any rebuilding was for show only. They never had any intention other than to wreck what remained of Iraq's devastated infrastructure. Their only intention was to assure that an independent Iraqi state could not arise out of the military overthrow of the saddam regime.

[aquart]

3. Yup. They idiotically thought this would make it easier.

Easier to loot, easier to control. Showing a fundamental misunderstanding of everything in the Middle East.

[Barrett808]

13. Yes, the 'reconstruction" was camouflage to disguise the wholesale looting.

And don't forget the systematic looting of Iraq's infrastructure by professional, international gangs. Back in 2004, NYT had a front page shot of a line of trucks receding to the horizon. They were carrying brand new generators, copper wire -- you name it -- to junkyards in Jordan.

[va4wilderness]

4. I keep waiting...

for a another cargo plane full of hundred dollar bills to fly in. I'm sure a lot of good folks could really use some more of that money. ....

"It's hard even now to imagine $12 billion in hundred-dollar bills, wrapped into bricklike bundles, then put on huge pallets and brought over by troop carrier airplanes to be dispersed in a war zone," Waxman said.

No wonder they (we!) were broke by the time Katrina relief was needed in New Orleans.

[ck4829]

5. Letting Bush's friends be in charge of it

[Hand]

6. Short answer: Everything. nt

[dipsydoodle]

7. "inevitably led to some mistakes"

nice line that. Polite way of saying "complete and utter fuck ups".

[petepillow]

8. It was for all the wrong reasons...Namely: FOR PROFIT

Everything profitable was put on first priority. And that leaves everything else last.

The end.

[VWolf]

9. Much simpler question to ask - What went right?

*crickets*

[Psephos]

18. you got that right n/t

[Rosa Luxemburg]

10. Bush in 2000 election debate 'no nation building'

I guess he meant it. Instead just looting.

[BadGimp]

11. Nothing went wrong.

Everything went 100% according to plan.

The objective was to set up an indefinite occupation of Iraq in order to control the oil. Hence the plan worked perfectly.

"Occam's Razor" people. http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=gmail&q=%22Akum's%20Razor%22

[jmondine]

17. Exactly

There was never any intention to rebuild the country, just as there never was any intention to set up a democracy. This whole war is about western corporate control of the region's resources, primarily oil.

But of course, this war is not about the oil. Just because the president is from a rich Texas oil family, and the vice president was the former head of Haliburton, and Iraq is one of the richest oil producing countries in the world. These are all just coincidences. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just a crazy conspiracy theorist.

No wonder the rest of the world thinks we're a bunch of morans.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. What went wrong? Tearing Iraq down in the first place.

You cannot do evil and expect good outcomes.

[Speaker]

14. What Went Wrong with the Rebuilding of Iraq?

Reality.

Physics is physics.

[Up2Late]

19. "Physics is physics." Good answer!

I like that one, simple, and to the point!

Welcome to DU.:toast:

[Speaker]

22. Thank You n/t

[LiberalFighter]

15. Quicksand?

[MasonJar]

16. The same thing that happened to the rebuilding of the great cosmopolitan city

of New Orleans...incompetence and greed and lack of concern and someone else's money.

[newspeak]

24. that was my thought

what went wrong in rebuilding New Orleans? I believe Iraq is being looted, as we are being looted. Where's the billions of gallons of oil from Iraq, where's our money? We are all being looted-maybe that's why * bought property down in Paraguay-one day it may catch up to his greedy, unethical friends, as well as, to him.

[xxqqqzme]

20. I highly recommend

Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Inside Iraq's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. It is a a story of monumental fuck-ups, hubris, clueless thinking and most of all a total lack of any plan to do anything to fix what we destroyed.

[calimary]

21. What went wrong? bush put his lady friend in charge. Remember when

contradicta won the "tug-of-war" over the job of "coordinator of post-war Iraq" - beating out rummy? Yep. I sense a pattern here. His pal wolfowitz has fucked things up over his girlfriend. bush, too, I guess...

[Up2Late]

23. Here's part 2 of this report, also very good

Rebuilding Iraq: A Contract Goes Awry

Listen to this story...(at link)

by Jackie Northam

Morning Edition, May 17, 2007 · Among the thousands of projects undertaken to reconstruct Iraq, one case offers a good microcosm of the challenges and missteps that have bedeviled the multibillion dollar rebuilding effort.

In mid-2004, a California construction company, Parsons Corp., was given a project to build 151 primary health care centers across Iraq....

(edit)

Getting a definitive answer on the number of clinics completed by Parsons is not easy. Of the original 151 promised, the construction company says it handed over 20 fully equipped, completed health-care centers.

The Army Corps of Engineers disputes that number, saying it received only six completed clinics. Some of those needed additional work, the Corps says. The Corps says Parsons was given another month to finish the other 14 clinics. That deadline was not met, the Corps says.

(more at links)

<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10225672>