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4.21.04 Apparently Cronies Rule the World
Ah, now we get to the really juicy story. While the right-wingers
pounce on the U.N. for corruption in the Oil-for-Food program, a similar
tale of corruption is unfolding within their beloved administration.
Marketplace is producing an interesting radio series on "The
Spoils of War."
...not all of the $22 billion being spent to
rebuild Iraq is going where it should. Who's watching the money as
it streams through Baghdad? Just about no one, and bribes and black
marketeering are rampant, witnesses say. A leading anti-corruption
group claims as much as 90 percent [should read 20%] of U.S. money
spent in Iraq is being lost to corruption. From Halliburton
subsidiaries charging double for gas, Iraqi officials and Arabic
translators unrestrained from pocketing millions of dollars, or even
members of the interim governing Council accusing each other of
taking tens of millions in bribes. Trouble is, the root of the
problem can't be found anywhere near the Green Zone. Try the White
House, and Capitol Hill, where oversight of Iraqi construction crews
and U.S. contractors like Halliburton has only just begun to be
assigned… more than a year after the war began.
Why is it that the Bush people don't
have a problem with Halliburton charging
twice as much for gasoline as the government's own Defense Energy
Support Center? Is "privatization" just another word for cronyism?
Iraqi leadership is thoroughly
corrupt. Saddam & Sons were only the strongest of the strongmen. Jason
Vest has written a
troubling article based on a memo by a staffer at the Coalition
Provisional Authority.
Fanning the embers of distrust is
the U.S.'s failure to acknowledge that the constituencies of key
Governing Council members "are not based on ideology, but rather on
the muscle of their respective personal militias and the patronage
which we allow them to bestow," according to the memo's author.
Using the Kurds as an example, he
reveals that "we have bestowed approximately $600 million upon the
Kurdish leadership, in addition to the salaries we pay, in addition
to the U.S. AID projects, in addition to the taxes which we have
allowed them to collect illegally."
We lament Iraqi cronyism while Bush
administration cronies at Halliburton are under criminal investigation
for robbing U.S. taxpayers. Looks like Bechtel cronies might also be in
for some scrutiny. In the same article, Vest says:
...the steam turbines at Iraq's
Najibiya power plant have been dormant since last fall. As Yaruub
Jasim, the plant's manager, explained, "Normally we have power 23
hours a day. We should have done maintenance on these turbines in
October, but we had no spare parts and money." And why not?
According to Jasim, the necessary replacement parts were supposed to
come from Bechtel, but they hadn't arrived yet--in part because
Bechtel's priority was a months-long independent examination of
power plants with an eye towards total reconstruction. And while
parts could have been cheaply and quickly obtained from Russian,
German, or French contractors--the contractors who built most of
Iraq's power stations--"unfortunately," Jasim told Chatterjee and
Docena, "Mr. Bush prevented the French, Russian and German companies
from [getting contracts in] Iraq."
I'm suspecting Bechtel is angling for
that "total reconstruction" contract.
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mad
in pursuit: greed & arrogance