are you seriously touting some local Iraqis as better experts on large infrastructure construction projects than Halliburton?
Yes Nadine. I am saying precisely that. After the 1991 war, which targeted the Iraqi infrastructure heavily (unlike this one), the Iraqis fixed their infrastructure in no time and at very low monetary cost.
Why not fix the current infrastructure and let modernization wait for when they have the money, and, more importantly, time to do it?
I heard Bremer talk about at least $2 billion needed to buy an extra 2,000 MW of electric generation capacity and I was flabbergasted. In Iraq natural gas is free -- they burn it off cause they don't know what to do with it. You can buy used, inefficient, Natural gas generation plants from Europe or NA (who cares about efficiency when your fuel is free?) for practically NOTHING today. And even in the US 2,000 MW of highly efficient NG baseload generating plants go for around $1.2 billion. So, who is Bremer kidding???
This is just one small example, where I happen to have some engineering knowledge. Given that Saddam was keeping up the infrastructure on practically a shoestring, and was salting away billions and building plenty of palaces to boot, it seems to me that the Iraqi reconstruction aid is a pork barrel project of enormous proportions.
Kyros |
