As Bechtel Goes - New York Times
The New York Times

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November 3, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
As Bechtel Goes
By
PAUL KRUGMAN

Bechtel, the giant engineering company, is leaving Iraq. Its mission - to
rebuild power, water and sewage plants - wasn't accomplished: Baghdad
received
less than six hours a day of electricity last month, and much of Iraq's
population lives with untreated sewage and without clean water. But Bechtel,
having
received $2.3 billion of taxpayers' money and having lost the lives of 52
employees, has come to the end of its last government contract.

As Bechtel goes, so goes the whole reconstruction effort. Whatever our
leaders may say about their determination to stay the course complete the
mission,
when it comes to rebuilding Iraq they've already cut and run. The $21
billion allocated for reconstruction over the last three years has been
spent, much
of it on security rather than its intended purpose, and there's no more
money in the pipeline.

The failure of reconstruction in Iraq raises three questions. First, how
much did that failure contribute to the overall failure of the war? Second,
how
was it that America, the great can-do nation, in this case couldn't and didn't?
Finally, if we've given up on rebuilding Iraq, what are our troops dying
for?

There's no definitive way to answer the first question. You can make a good
case that the invasion of Iraq was doomed no matter what, because we never
had
enough military manpower to provide security. But the lack of electricity
and clean water did a lot to dissipate any initial good will the Iraqis may
have
felt toward the occupation. And Iraqis are well aware that the billions
squandered by American contractors included a lot of Iraqi oil revenue as
well
as U.S. taxpayers' dollars.

Consider the symbolism of Iraq's new police academy, which Stuart Bowen, the
special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, has called "the most
essential
civil security project in the country." It was built at a cost of $75
million by Parsons Corporation, which received a total of about $1 billion
for Iraq
reconstruction projects. But the academy was so badly built that feces and
urine leak from the ceilings in the student barracks.

Think about it. We want the Iraqis to stand up so we can stand down. But if
they do stand up, we'll dump excrement on their heads.

As for how this could have happened, that's easy: major contractors
believed, correctly, that their political connections insulated them from
accountability.
Halliburton and other companies with huge Iraq contracts were basically in
the same position as Donald Rumsfeld: they were so closely identified with
President
Bush and, especially, Vice President Cheney that firing or even disciplining
them would have been seen as an admission of personal failure on the part
of top elected officials.

As a result, the administration and its allies in Congress fought
accountability all the way. Administration officials have made repeated
backdoor efforts
to close the office of Mr. Bowen, whose job is to oversee the use of
reconstruction money. Just this past May, with the failed reconstruction
already winding
down, the White House arranged for the last $1.5 billion of reconstruction
money to be placed outside Mr. Bowen's jurisdiction. And now, finally,
Congress
has passed a bill whose provisions include the complete elimination of his
agency next October.

The bottom line is that those charged with rebuilding Iraq had no incentive
to do the job right, so they didn't.

You can see, by the way, why a Democratic takeover of the House, if it
happens next week, would be such a pivotal event: suddenly, committee
chairmen with
subpoena power would be in a position to investigate where all the Iraq
money went.

But that's all in the past. What about the future?

Back in June, after a photo-op trip to Iraq, Mr. Bush said something I agree
with. "You can measure progress in megawatts of electricity delivered," he
declared. "You can measure progress in terms of oil sold on the market on
behalf of the Iraqi people." But what those measures actually show is the
absence
of progress. By any material measure, Iraqis are worse off than they were
under Saddam.

And we're not planning to do anything about it: the U.S.-led reconstruction
effort in Iraq is basically over. I don't know whether the administration is
afraid to ask U.S. voters for more money, or simply considers the situation
hopeless. Either way, the United States has accepted defeat on
reconstruction.

Yet Americans are still fighting and dying in Iraq. For what?

Copyright 2006

Posted by Miriam V.