Gee... could that be, oh I don't know.... Halliburton?!

[MsMagnificent]

I can't say for sure what company -- but it reminds me of the $500- ashtrays our government pays for.
A no-bid contract is a wonderful thing, to some. CEO's mostly.

Baghdad Burning
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2003_08_01_riverbendblog_archive.html#106208201838841818

is a wonderful blog written by a young Iraqi woman.
It's long been one of my favorite blogs, just to see the common humanity and to read how this gentle woman lives in and views her occupied country. She is the contemporary Ann Frank, IMO anyhow. You can almost hear the irony in her voice when she mentions palaces: "which were once Saddam’s but are now America’s palaces".

And I've become very worried because her usual postings have lapsed.
Well over a week now.
And there's not one God-damned thing I can do about it, except worry.


Anyhow, this leaped (lept? :) out at me, and I thought I'd share how our hard earned tax dollars are at work (but please visit the site and read her entire article, it is very well worth it):

"In other words- there was something there in the first place. We have hundreds of bridges. We have one of the most sophisticated network of highways in the region: you can get from Busrah, in the south, to Mosul, in the north, without once having to travel upon those little, dusty, dirt roads they show you on Fox News. We had a communications system so advanced, it took the Coalition of the Willing 3 rounds of bombing, on 3 separate nights, to damage the Ma’moun Communications Tower and silence our telephones.

Yesterday, I read how it was going to take up to $90 billion to rebuild Iraq. Bremer was shooting out numbers about how much it was going to cost to replace buildings and bridges and electricity, etc.

Listen to this little anecdote. One of my cousins works in a prominent engineering company in Baghdad- we’ll call the company H. This company is well-known for designing and building bridges all over Iraq. My cousin, a structural engineer, is a bridge freak. He spends hours talking about pillars and trusses and steel structures to anyone who’ll listen.

As May was drawing to a close, his manager told him that someone from the CPA wanted the company to estimate the building costs of replacing the New Diyala Bridge on the South East end of Baghdad. He got his team together, they went out and assessed the damage, decided it wasn’t too extensive, but it would be costly. They did the necessary tests and analyses (mumblings about soil composition and water depth, expansion joints and girders) and came up with a number they tentatively put forward- $300,000. This included new plans and designs, raw materials (quite cheap in Iraq), labor, contractors, travel expenses, etc.

Let’s pretend my cousin is a dolt. Let’s pretend he hasn’t been working with bridges for over 17 years. Let’s pretend he didn’t work on replacing at least 20 of the 133 bridges damaged during the first Gulf War. Let’s pretend he’s wrong and the cost of rebuilding this bridge is four times the number they estimated- let’s pretend it will actually cost $1,200,000. Let’s just use our imagination.

A week later, the New Diyala Bridge contract was given to an American company. This particular company estimated the cost of rebuilding the bridge would be around- brace yourselves- $50,000,000 !! "

[RebelYell]

1. I overheard in a restaurant today

that Halliburton was the ONLY company that was qualified to do the work in Iraq, therefore no bids.

Anyone know if this is true? I doubt it, but asking anyway. I spent too much time on Google looking for a rebuttal, but didn't find anything.

[jdj]

5. No that is the spin they are putting out.

I think this is a Limbaugh original.

Meaning, it's a bunch of crap.

[No2W2004]

6. I read Riverbend and Salaam Pax,

There are plenty of people in Iraq who are more than qualified to rebuild their own country. Like Riverbend waa saying...Iraq was not just sand dunes, cammels, and guys running around in head dresses. Bagdad was a major urban center. People attended universities, got degrees in such things as advanced engineering, physics, science, mathmatics....men AND women. Now, thanks to the "liberation" women can no longer hold most jobs, or even get to go out to the store by themselves any more, or drive cars by themselves, or even step outside without a headscarf. Thousands of Iraqis go without jobs they are qualified for so that Haliburton and KBR can feed at the trough of public funding.

[acmavm]

8. If Halliburton is the only company in the world qualified to do bridge

work, how the hell did they get there in the first place. I would put my money on the fact that it they were built by Iraqis.

And if they're talking about repairding bridges, that's equally insane. This is a country in the middle of a bunch of countries that have tracable recorded history thousands of years before this one. What did they do without Halliburton for all those years? Because they sure as hell had bridges.

This type of crap has been easy for the bush* administration to pull because people have some crazy idea that this part of the world is nothing but an area of ignorant third world, mud hut dwellers. This goes to display how ignorant westerners are about that part of the world, especially Americans.

[RebelYell]

12. Exactly what my husband said to the woman spouting off

"I build bridges for a living. My company could do what Halliburton does, and at the going rate, not raping the US taxpayers."

[MsMagnificent]

10. I'm no expert but

WTF? Even Brain Surgeons have hundreds of other Brain Surgeons who can pinch-hit!

There is not one job in this entire world, I do not believe, that can only be done by one person/one entity.

Heck, even the Pope has back-up!

And what of putting the Iraqi's to work? You know, sweat equity in their own country? How is that such a difficult concept to understand?

It's been 18 months now and a very many still don't have water, electricty, or JOBS
Jobs that would keep them busy providing for their families instead of having all day to do nothing. So they hang out at the nearest MOO-LA's minaret and demonstrate!

In Iraq the ball has been dropped so many times it's two dimensional --no Depth!

[jilln]

2. Did the idiot really say that quote about war???

I've seen it on the tv screen???

Somehow I missed that bit of arrogance.

[MsMagnificent]

4. LOL Yep he sure did - and one just as good:

"It's hard work, chopping off hands"

I swear to you, it's on video! He said it!

[MsMagnificent]

15. It's all on this link (video)

http://www.pleasurecaptains.com/favor/howsmall.html

Enjoy! :)

[jdj]

3. she has said somewhere around the same time that the only

people doing work there are ones affiliated in some way with KBR, or Kellog, Brown and Root, which is linked with Halliburton. That may be the company.

Riverbend went radio silent from June to August this year and gave me a scare. Her postings since she came back have been really irregular, but the Fallujah massacre took alot out of her. The "Just Go" entry was written around this time. She also explained that it is really hot with no electricity and when they do have power the last thing she wants to do is sit at the computer.

[jdj]

7. Here's the quote about KBR, from 9/24/03

"The whole neighborhood knows about S. who lives exactly two streets away. He’s what is called a ‘merchant’ or ‘tajir’. He likes to call himself a ‘businessman’. For the last six years, S. has worked with the Ministry of Oil, importing spare parts for oil tankers under the surveillance and guidelines of the “Food for Oil Program”. In early March, all contracts were put ‘on hold’ in expectation of the war. Thousands of contracts with international companies were either cancelled or postponed.

S. was in a frenzy: he had a shipment of engines coming in from a certain country and they were ‘waiting on the border’. Everywhere he went, he chain-smoked one cigarette after another and talked of ‘letters of credit’, ‘comm. numbers’, and nasty truck drivers who were getting impatient.

After the war, the CPA decided that certain contracts would be approved. The contracts that had priority over the rest were the contracts that were going to get the oil pumping again. S. was lucky- his engines were going to find their way through… hopefully.

Unfortunately, every time he tried to get the go-ahead to bring in the engines, he was sent from person to person until he found himself, and his engines, tangled up in a bureaucratic mess in-between the CPA, the Ministry of Oil and the UNOPS. By the time things were somewhat sorted out, and he was communicating directly with the Ministry of Oil, he was given a ‘tip’. He was told that he shouldn’t bother doing anything if he wasn’t known to KBR. If KBR didn’t approve of him, or recommend him, he needn’t bother with anything."

[jdj]

9. a couple more paragraphs:

"For a week, the whole neighborhood was discussing the KBR. Who were they? What did they do? We all had our own speculations… E. said it was probably some sort of committee like the CPA, but in charge of the contracts or reconstruction of the oil infrastructure. I expected it was probably another company- but where was it from? Was it Russian? Was it French? It didn’t matter so long as it wasn’t Halliburton or Bechtel. It was a fresh new name or, at least, a fresh new set of initials. Well, it was ‘fresh’ for a whole half-hour until curiosity got the better of me and I looked it up on the internet.

KBR stands for Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of… guess who?!... Halliburton. They handle ‘construction and engineering services for the energy community’, amongst other things. Apparently, KBR is famous for more than just its reconstruction efforts. In 1997, KBR was sued $6 million dollars for overcharging the American army on sheets of plywood! You can read something about the whole sordid affair here." ( the link below is a great read on Halliburton
http://www.southernstudies.org/reports/halliburton.pdf )

[RapidCreek]

11. You may find this page interesting

http://www.portaliraq.com/shownews.php?id=515

[MsMagnificent]

13. Bullet proof level iii vests is their major advertiser?

How incredibly sad

[RapidCreek]

14. telling no?

Well, you know flowers thrown at your feet can be pretty dangergous.

RC