[Mb-civic] Robbery_not_reconstruction_in_Iraq - Derrick Z. Jackson - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  Robbery, not reconstruction, in Iraq

By Derrick Z. Jackson  |  April 18, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

The great liberator of Iraq was actually the hyena that cleaned out the 
nation.

Piece by piece, Halliburton over here, a corrupt company over there, we 
have heard various individual cases of overcharging and fraud by 
American firms in the reconstruction of Iraq. Last weekend, a Globe 
story connected some of the dots of corruption. Of $20.7 billion in 
Iraqi bank accounts and oil revenues seized by the Coalition Provisional 
Authority in the US-led invasion of Iraq, $14 billion was given out for 
reconstruction but tens of millions of dollars were unaccounted for. A 
year ago, an audit by the inspector general found no evidence of work 
done or goods delivered on 154 of 198 contracts. Sixty cases of 
potential swindles are under investigation.

Halliburton and its hundreds of millions of dollars of overcharges or 
baseless costs are well known. But millions more were taken by companies 
that promised to build or restore libraries or police facilities, or 
deliver trucks and construction equipment. Money was given to the puppet 
government with no follow-up. US government investigators can account 
for only a third of the $1.5 billion given by the CPA to the interim 
government and it appears that a substantial portion of the $8 billion 
given to Iraqi ministries went to ''ghost employees.''

Because of the way the United States set things up after the invasion, 
contractors are immune from prosecution by Iraqis. And even when firms 
are prosecuted, the millions of dollars in fines go to the US Treasury, 
not the Iraqi people. It amounts to two invasions. First the bombs. Then 
the banks.

This is robbery, not reconstruction.

It also amounts to yet another slow-motion lie by the Bush 
administration. The magnitude of the corruption brings into sharper 
relief the claims made by then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz a 
month before the war.

The claims came from the same infamous testimony before the House Budget 
Committee where Wolfowitz said Army chief of staff Eric Shinseki was 
''wildly off the mark'' for saying several hundred thousand troops would 
be needed to stabilize Iraq. Wolfowitz told the committee that the 
administration was ''doing everything possible in our planning now to 
make post-war recovery smoother and less expensive.''

Besides pooh-poohing Shinseki's estimates, Wolfowitz said a Washington 
Post story that quoted administration officials as saying the initial 
invasion would cost $60 billion to $95 billion was also way off the 
mark. Speaking about such administration officials, Wolfowitz said, ''I 
don't think he knows what he's talking - he or she knows what they're 
talking about. I mean, I think the idea that it's going to be eclipsed 
by these monstrous future costs ignores the nature of the country we're 
dealing with.''

''It's got already, I believe, on the order of $15 billion to $20 
billion a year in oil exports, which can finally - might finally be 
turned to a good use instead of building Saddam's palaces. It has one of 
the most valuable undeveloped sources of natural resources in the world. 
And let me emphasize, if we liberate Iraq, those resources will belong 
to the Iraqi people, that they will be able to develop them and borrow 
against them.''

''It is a country that has somewhere between, I believe, over $10 
billion -- let me not put a number on it - in an escrow account run by 
the United Nations. It's a country that has $10 billion to $20 billion 
in frozen assets from the Gulf War, and I don't know how many billions 
that are closeted away by Saddam and his henchmen. But there's a lot of 
money there and to assume that we're going to pay for it is just wrong.''

Wolfowitz was wrong on nearly every point, except for the idea that 
there was about $20 billion floating around Iraq to seize. It has been 
three years and all Iraq has become is a ''free-fraud zone,'' according 
to one of the attorneys for whistleblowers in Iraqi swindles. Recently, 
the Army found that Halliburton had $263 million of exaggerated or 
unexplainable costs on a $2.4 billion no-bid contract, yet still paid 
Halliburton $253 million of the $263 million.

Halliburton is in 103rd place in the Fortune 500 with $21 billion in 
revenues and just under $2.4 billion in profits. Halliburton gets its 
$2.4 billion no-bid contract nearly paid in full while the Iraqi people 
are out of much of their $21 billion. We liberated Iraq. The resources 
belong to American contractors.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/04/18/robbery_not_reconstruction_in_iraq/
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