[With no help, for less than 2 billion dollars. This whole government is on LSD]
Bush Has an Audacious Plan To Rebuild Iraq Within a Year
By NEIL KING JR. Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
March 17, 2003; Page 1
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's audacious plan to rebuild Iraq envisions a sweeping overhaul of Iraqi society within a year of a war's end, but leaves much of the work to private U.S. companies.
The Bush plan, as detailed in more than 100 pages of confidential contract documents, would sideline United Nations development agencies and other multilateral organizations that have long directed reconstruction efforts in places such as Afghanistan and Kosovo. The plan also would leave big nongovernmental organizations largely in the lurch: With more than $1.5 billion in Iraq work being offered to private U.S. companies under the plan, just $50 million is so far earmarked for a small number of groups such as CARE and Save the Children.
Washington is under international pressure to broaden a postwar rebuilding effort, even as it continues to do battle with traditional allies over the merits of launching a war on Iraq. The administration recently has signaled it may seek down the road to give the U.N. and other countries a larger role. President Bush, after a one-hour summit in the Azores Islands, said yesterday that if it comes to war he plans to "quickly seek new Security Council resolutions to encourage broad participation in the process of helping the Iraqi people to build a free Iraq."
But U.N. officials said they still have no clear indication how the administration might involve the international body, especially if many of the large rebuilding tasks are already farmed out to U.S. companies directly answerable to Washington.
The U.S. plan as currently laid out would thrust the U.S. to the forefront of nation building, an endeavor Mr. Bush disparaged during the 2000 presidential campaign, before Afghanistan and Iraq. Within weeks of a war ending, the administration plans to begin everything from repairing Iraqi roads, schools and hospitals to revamping its financial rules and government payroll system. Agencies such as the U.S. Treasury Department would be deeply involved in overhauling the country's central bank, and some U.S. government officials would serve as "shadow ministers" to oversee Baghdad's bureaucracies.
The White House is expected to ask Congress for as much as $100 billion to wage a war in Iraq and pay for the aftermath. Included in this would be a request for $1.8 billion this year for reconstruction and about $800 million for relief assistance. However, the U.N. Development Program estimates that reconstruction alone could cost $10 billion a year over three years.
European officials, and even some prominent Iraqi dissidents, have reacted to the current U.S. plans with disbelief. They charge that efforts to keep the U.N. and non-U.S. contractors on the sidelines will delay reconstruction in Iraq and stir deeper ill will toward Washington. Some U.S. humanitarian groups charge the Bush administration has downplayed the difficulty of the postwar work in the hopes of scoring some quick public-relations points.
"We don't think the relief and reconstruction needs of the Iraqi people will be adequately met, based on the overly optimistic scenarios we understand the U.S. government is using," says Mary McClymont, head of InterAction, the largest American alliance of nongovernmental organizations doing overseas relief and development work.
Chris Patten, head of the European Union's external relations, has slammed the Bush plan as "maladroit," and suggested in a speech last week that the EU wouldn't contribute to rebuilding unless the U.N. led the effort. A German official said the U.S. should be "magnanimous" in an expected military victory, enlisting European partners in the cleanup.
Senior U.S. administration officials say problems in rebuilding Afghanistan -- including work on the Kabul-Kandahar-Herat highway, a pivotal project that is proceeding slowly -- prove that a multilateral approach only slows postwar assistance. "At least to start, we intend to handle the big jobs ourselves," said one Bush official closely involved in the postwar planning.
U.S. officials say they also want credit for the reconstruction. "The administration's goal is to provide tangible evidence to the people of Iraq that the U.S. will support efforts to bring the country to political security and economic prosperity," says a U.S. contract document for up to $900 million in reconstruction work.
Much of the heaviest work will fall to U.S. companies through a growing web of contracts with the Pentagon and the U.S. Agency for International Development. USAID is expected this week to pick the prime contractor for a $900 million job rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, including highways, bridges, airports and government buildings. The agency is also contracting for five other large jobs, worth a total of between $300 million and $500 million, administering Iraq's seaport and international airports, revamping its schools and health-care system, and handling large scale logistics such as water transport. The Army Corps of Engineers is also taking bids for work worth up to $500 million for building projects such as roadways and military barracks. Additional contracts to refurbish Iraq's neglected oil industry would likely be handled through the U.N., which currently administers Iraq's oil exports.
Four groups of U.S. companies are competing for the $900 million contract, which was put out for bids in secret last month. The companies were picked under rules that allow U.S. agencies to skirt open and competitive bidding procedures to meet emergency needs. All have done government work for years and have deep political ties to Washington. Vice President Dick Cheney once served as head of Halliburton Co., whose subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root is part of one bidding consortium.
Other big bidders are Bechtel Group Inc.; Parsons Corp., which has allied with Brown & Root; and Louis Berger Group and Fluor Corp., which are bidding as a team. These companies made political contributions of a combined $2.8 million between 1999 and 2002, more than two-thirds of which went to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group. Bechtel was the largest single donor, having given $1.3 million in political contributions.
Another bidder is Washington Group International Inc.
Some of the same companies are believed to be bidding for the Army Corps of Engineers contracts. It couldn't be determined who the bidders were for the other USAID contracts.
The U.S. postwar plans for Iraq, being directed by the new Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in the Pentagon, are striking in their scope and intended speed. The administration's plan to rehabilitate the Iraqi school system, for example, envisions the chosen contractor sending in teams to obtain payroll lists and assess teacher salaries just as U.S. military forces secure parts of Iraq, according to a 10-page USAID contract proposal that went out to companies last month. The contract, officials say, could total $100 million, and will cover five pilot programs for "accelerated learning" to be launched within three months, and then rolled out nationwide within 10 months. Only a third of Iraqi children now enroll in secondary school, but within a year the contractor will have "all children back in school."
The USAID plan also envisions getting books and other necessary supplies to 4.1 million Iraqi schoolchildren within a year, while 25,000 schools would have all they need "to function at a standard level of quality." The schools would then be turned over to the Iraqi Ministry of Education, which would have "increased capacity to effectively assume teacher training and school administration."
Brian Atwood, head of USAID during the Clinton administration, said it may be possible to refurbish many of Iraq's schools in a year, but it will take much longer to train teachers and strengthen the curriculum. "I don't think we have the capacity to do much beyond the superficial on our own in just a year," he said.
USAID has similarly sweeping plans for the Iraqi health system, where the Bush administration is seeking a private contractor to administer and supply the country's 270 general hospitals and 1,000 clinics. That contract, also valued at about $100 million, would include training new doctors and bringing in others from surrounding countries. Within a year, according to USAID, the Ministry of Health "will be reformed and prepared to take over operation of the health care system."
Critics charge that the schedules -- in and out in 12 months -- are unrealistic, at best. "The idea that this is all done in a year . . . flies in the face of human history," says Mark Malloch Brown, head of the U.N. Development Program. He expects the U.S. will ultimately decide to turn Iraq rebuilding over to international institutions.