Faced with escalating costs and continued instability in Iraq, U.S. officials in Baghdad have decided to boost Bechtel Group Inc.'s postwar reconstruction contract by $350 million, or more than 50%.
The decision to steer additional funds to Bechtel is the latest sign that the Bush administration has seriously underestimated the cost and complexity of rebuilding Iraq. Although the U.S. plans a dramatic push for new reconstruction funds -- part of what one U.S. official said will be a $2.75 billion emergency budget request for Iraq next month -- the administration remains vague on what the overall project is likely to cost.
The new Bechtel money, which could be turned over within days, is part of at least $1 billion the U.S. hopes to pour into Iraqi power generation alone over the next year. U.S. officials and Bechtel assessment teams now estimate Iraqi reconstruction will cost at least $16 billion and likely much more. L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. official in Iraq, has said that the costs of rebuilding Iraq and revitalizing its economy could top $100 billion.
San Francisco-based Bechtel was originally awarded an 18 month, $680 million contract for Iraqi reconstruction work on airports, water, power, schools, roads and government buildings. After business rivals and some legislators criticized the limited competition involved in that award, Andrew Natsios, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, promised that no additional taxpayer money would go into the Bechtel contract beyond the $680 million ceiling.
According to a funding document from the U.S.-led Iraqi provisional authority, however, U.S. officials recently decided that Bechtel requires the additional $350 million "to maintain momentum in high-priority infrastructure projects." Mr. Bremer approved the new projects on Aug. 20, according to the document.
Wednesday, an AID spokeswoman said that "security conditions" had evidently led Mr. Bremer to lift the limit and give more work to Bechtel. The additional $350 million will come from what's left of a $2.5 billion Iraq reconstruction fund Congress approved early this year.
All Bush administration promises are broken because all Bush administration promises are, essentially, lies.
US taxpayers will pay for Bechtel's reconstruction of Iraq's power grid, because the Bush administration insisted on the urgency of invading a country without WMDs. But US consumers will pay for the reconstruction of America's post-blackout power grid.
Since the US tax base is increasingly made up of the lower and middle classes, thanks to Bush administration tax relief for the most wealthy, working Americans will first pay Bechtel and Halliburton to rebuild Iraq and further enrich the Dick Cheneys and Riley Bechtels who have built a rhetoric-rich neocon smokescreen for their crass robber baron capitalism. Then, once taxes have paid for Republican enrichment, what remains of the lower classes' after-tax dollars will go toward higher utility prices to rebuild the American power grid for negligent power providers like FirstEnergy, the likely source of the blackout, a company led by a Bush Pioneer who had raised several hundred thousand dollars for his 2000 presidential campaign.
Billionaire Riley Bechtel, like Cheney's employer Halliburton and a phalanx of shadowy cronies, is using his insider status within the Bush administration to place personal profit above the national interest.
$100 billion, the latest underestimate, is an extraordinary price to pay for imaginary Iraqi weapons. The lies of the Bush administration may be among the most profitable the world has ever seen, and among the most needlessly expensive that taxpayers will ever bear.
